10 exam-style questions with answers and explanations, straight from our 1,030-question bank. Tap an answer to check yourself. When you're ready, take the scored version in the free practice test.
The TX PACT 701 exam has 45 questions and runs 1 hour 15 minutes.
These 10 free TX PACT 701 questions are organized by exam domain, so you can see how each part of the TX PACT: Essential Academic Skills (Subtest I: Reading) (701) blueprint is tested. Reveal the answer and explanation under each question.
Domain 1: Understand the Meaning of Words and Phrases
Question 1
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) When the district lengthened its lunch period from twenty minutes to thirty-five, administrators expected little beyond fewer complaints about the cafeteria lines. (2) The effect proved salutary in ways no one had predicted: discipline referrals fell by nearly a third, and teachers reported that afternoon classes began more calmly than they had in years.
Which of the following phrases best defines the word salutary as it is used in the passage?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A - Producing a beneficial effect
Question 2
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) The committee's initial report recommended closing three branch libraries outright. (2) After hearing two hours of public comment, members voted to temper the recommendation, proposing reduced hours at two branches and no closures at all.
As it is used in the passage, the word temper most nearly means:
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C - To moderate or soften
Question 3
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) For six years the oral history project collected recordings from residents who had lived through the 1953 flood. (2) The archive now holds more than four hundred interviews, fully indexed and searchable. (3) One volunteer described the collection as a memory that refuses to sleep - always available, always ready to answer a question no one has thought to ask yet.
The volunteer's description of the collection as a memory that refuses to sleep is intended to convey that the archive:
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A - It remains continuously available for use
Question 4
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) Critics called the mayor's budget parsimonious, pointing to cuts in park maintenance and after-school programs. (2) Her supporters preferred a different word for exactly the same set of decisions.
Which word would the mayor's supporters most likely use in place of parsimonious?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D - prudent
Domain 2: Understand the Main Idea and Supporting Details in Written Material
Question 5
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) In August 2019, researchers drove instrument-equipped vehicles through a mid-sized American city, recording air temperature every second along a fixed route. The readings varied by as much as sixteen degrees between neighborhoods separated by less than three miles.
(2) The hottest readings clustered in districts of dense pavement, flat dark roofs, and almost no street trees. The coolest fell in areas where mature canopy shaded sidewalks and yards for most of the day.
(3) City records showed that the shaded neighborhoods had been platted with wide planting strips in the 1920s, while the hottest districts were rezoned for industry in the 1950s and stripped of street trees to widen truck routes.
(4) Emergency room admissions for heat-related illness that summer followed the same map.
Which of the following best expresses the main idea implied but not directly stated in the passage?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B - Past land-use decisions still shape which neighborhoods face the most dangerous heat.
Question 6
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) Districts across the state have begun replacing traditional summer reading lists with choice libraries, in which students select any title from a curated collection of several hundred books. (2) Early results are mixed. (3) In one suburban district, the share of students who finished at least one book over the summer rose from 41 percent to 68 percent. (4) In a neighboring district running the same program, the figure barely moved - a difference administrators attribute to the fact that the second district's public library branches were closed for renovation through most of July and August.
The information about the library branch closures in the final sentence serves primarily to:
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A - explain why the two districts produced different results
Question 7
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) A cook who follows a recipe exactly can produce a good meal. (2) A cook who understands why the dough must rest, why the pan must be hot before the fish goes in, and what the acid is doing to the onions can produce a good meal from whatever happens to be in the kitchen. (3) The same distinction separates students who have memorized procedures from students who have understood them. (4) Fluency with steps is useful; knowing what the steps accomplish is what allows a learner to handle a problem that does not match the examples.
Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C - Knowing why a procedure works allows a learner to adapt it.
Domain 3: Understand a Writer's Purpose and Audience, Point of View, and Intended Meaning
Question 8
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) It is often said that the human tongue has distinct zones for sweet, salty, sour, and bitter - a map reproduced in countless textbooks for most of a century. (2) The diagram traces back to a 1901 German paper that reported only slight regional differences in sensitivity, which a translator's summary rendered as sharp boundaries. (3) Later researchers found receptors for every basic taste distributed across the entire surface of the tongue. (4) The map survives anyway, printed in materials that were themselves copied from earlier materials.
The author's main purpose in the passage is to:
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B - explain how a widely repeated claim came to be mistaken
Question 9
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) Prior to administration, verify that the reconstituted solution is clear and free of particulate matter; discard if any discoloration is observed. (2) Titrate to the target range over 48 to 72 hours, adjusting for renal function per the dosing table in Appendix C. (3) Concurrent use with agents that prolong the QT interval requires baseline and follow-up ECG monitoring.
The passage is intended primarily for readers who:
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D - already possess specialized clinical training
Question 10
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
(1) The county's new zoning ordinance passed by a single vote. (2) In its coverage the next morning, one newspaper reported that the council had 'pushed through' the measure after 'a marathon session that stretched past midnight.' (3) A second paper reported that the council had 'adopted' the measure 'following extended public deliberation.'
Compared with the second paper's account, the first paper's word choices are most likely to lead readers to view the council's action as:
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B - hurried and forced through over resistance