Junior High Edition · Grades 7–9
Today's exams reward reading data and judging experiments, not memorization. These two books train exactly that.
Background: original 2025 and 2026 CAP Science exam pages
The single largest question type on CAP Science
37%
is graph and table reading.
Calculation makes up just 8%. When practice time is split the other way round, as it is in most workbooks, no amount of drilling trains the skills the CAP actually tests.
§ 01
The problemThe Mismatch
When a child is stuck at a B in science, the first thought is usually effort. Lay out five years of exam papers, though, and the issue is rarely how much they practice. It is what they practice.
Review workbooks are fine. They just skip this part
Standard review workbooks cover concepts and calculation well, but graph reading, the largest share of the exam, has no material dedicated to it.
Of the 50 questions on the paper, those testing experimental design and variables
9 questions
Two years running.
In 2022, 2023 and 2024 there were only 4 or 5 a year. In 2025 the number jumped to 9, and in 2026 it was 9 again. Once it doubled, it stayed there.
§ 02
Unlock Inquiry · Why nowThe Shift
It is not only the CAP. School midterms and monthly tests are changing too. The CAP is simply the clearest and easiest to verify: across five years of papers, the shift has a clear starting point.
2024
That year, the four long-passage sets were still about social issues
2025–26
All eight long-passage sets became experiments
Every single one is experimental inquiry
The shift is deliberate, and it is here to stay
The official assessment framework states it in black and white: "the ability to plan and carry out scientific inquiry." The early years of a shift are exactly when study materials lag behind the exam. Unlock Inquiry is devoted entirely to this one skill.
Why three in ten students chose D
A fair comparison changes only one condition at a time. Option C changes both water temperature and salt, so there is no telling which one made the difference. That is why C is the answer. Three in ten students chose D. Not out of carelessness, but because no one had taught them how to think it through.
How 180,000 students answered (official statistics)
The weakest-performing students only · same trap, option D
That 30.51% is the average across all 180,000 students. Among the weakest-performing group, the share who fell into the same trap is higher.
In this group, more students chose the wrong answer D (43.99%) than the right answer C (26.89%). The weaker the student, the more likely the trap.
§ 03
What to practiceTwo Skills, Two Books
Making sense of unfamiliar science material is one skill. Judging whether an experiment is sound is another. We gave each its own book so each can be trained in depth, and there are English books too.
2027 edition cover
Book one
Trains understanding
50 long-form science articles, each with 5 questions. Your child learns to pick out the key points of unfamiliar science material, read its graphs and draw conclusions. Graph reading, 37% of CAP Science, is this book's home ground.
2027 edition cover
Book two
Trains judgment
The whole book trains one thing: understanding experiments, evaluating designs and weighing evidence. Variables, control groups, whether a conclusion holds up: the inquiry questions that have grown sharply on the CAP since 2025 map directly onto this book.
Plus two · English
One in five reading sets on the CAP English paper uses science material. The English books have their own articles and questions, written in English for long-form reading practice; the science gives children a reason to read to the end. Science for depth, English for breadth: 2 + 2, complete.
§ 04
Unlock Inquiry · How the traps are builtMisconceptions
The national testing center publishes how many students chose each option on every question. That data puts a number on how students go wrong.
Source: Research Center for Psychological and Educational Testing, CAP Science item analyses, 2024 · 2025 · 2026 (published under past papers on the official CAP website; in Chinese). Questions: 2024 Q29; 2025 Q26, Q38, Q43; 2026 Q12, Q23, Q46.
Unlock Inquiry is designed to hit exactly these weak spots
The official data shows exactly how students go wrong. We turn the misconceptions that catch the most students into the wrong options in our questions, so children fall into these traps at home, not in the exam room.
§ 05
Unlock Science Reading · Home groundSame Layout
Font size, page layout and the way graphs are drawn all follow the CAP exam paper.
What they practice is what they will see on exam day
Every day, your child works with the exam's type, the exam's layout and the exam's graphs. Familiarity means calm on exam day, with all their energy left for the questions.
§ 06
Built into both booksDiagnosis
Copying down the right answer is not a correction. So we built diagnosis into the structure of the questions.
Unlock Science Reading: 5 questions per article, one skill per question
01
The answer is right there in the text, so every article starts with a point on the board.
02
Taking a principle from the textbook into a situation your child has never seen.
03
Reading the relationships a chart shows but never states.
04
Is the experiment sound? Does the conclusion actually hold up?
05
Pulling ideas together across paragraphs, or explaining the reasoning behind an answer.
Every question is labeled with the skill it trains
A wrong answer points straight to a skill. Missing evaluating-inquiry questions three articles in a row means that skill needs work. Three articles give you three data points, with no separate test needed. Unlock Inquiry works the same way: every question maps to one of six inquiry skills.
Unlock Science Reading · Unit 07
Coral in a Marine Heatwave
Choose your answers
This unit
3/ 5 correct
To review
This semester · 14 articles
After five answers, you get
Each question maps to one skill, so a missed question tells you which skill is still shaky.
Not just the right answer, but the step where your child most likely got stuck.
Every article adds to the record. After a few, the skill that keeps slipping is plain to see.
Screens are for illustration. The live diagnosis is in Chinese.
Of the reading sets on the CAP Chinese and English papers
17.5%
Across 40 reading sets each in Chinese and English from 2022 to 2026, about one in six is about scientific research.
§ 07
Why the two books work togetherCross-Subject
We went through all 80 reading sets on the Chinese and English papers as well. Science has long since spread beyond the science paper.
Chinese · 40 reading sets
15%
use science material
English · 40 reading sets
20%
use science material
The passage is adapted from an ecology study in Science, and the question asks what the findings cannot support. That is a scientific reasoning question.
The passage describes a controlled experiment, two groups and one variable, and asks what the study set out to find. That is a scientific inquiry question.
One set of skills, three subjects
Unlock Science Reading trains understanding; Unlock Inquiry trains judgment. Science, Chinese and English all test both. That is why the books are designed as a set, and why we made the English books.
§ 08
Pre-orderTimeline
Pre-order timeline
Super Early Bird only · until 2026/11/30
Buy science,
get English
Buy the science book and receive the English-subject book with the same title free.
Free shipping from one book, outlying islands included
Junior high and senior high editions share one pre-order page (in Traditional Chinese): choose the school level, then the science or English book.
§ 09
SampleSample Pages
The 2027 editions feature all-new topics. Final content may differ from these samples.
Unlock Inquiry · Science
Unlock Inquiry · English
Unlock Science Reading · Science
Unlock Science Reading · English
Source of the topic
2024 was the hottest year on record (World Meteorological Organization, announced January 2025), and cities worldwide are promoting cool roofs. The experimental data is scenario data written to follow the physics. The pages above are in Chinese.
Skill trained by each question
1.(B) 2.(A) 3.(B) 4.(B) 5.(C)
Source of the topic
From December 2025, Australia requires major social media platforms to keep under-16s from holding accounts. A school newspaper report is paired with a reader's letter, mirroring the two-text reading sets on the CAP English paper. The recommended sleep hours follow the 2016 American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus (8 to 10 hours a night for ages 13 to 18). The survey data is scenario data.
Skill trained by each question
1.(C) 2.(B) 3.(D) 4.(A) 5.(A)
Source of the topic
The fourth global coral bleaching event, confirmed by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in April 2024 and still spreading in 2025. Heat stress is calculated using the definition from NOAA Coral Reef Watch. The pages above are in Chinese.
Skill trained by each question
1.(B) 2.(C) 3.(B) 4.(D) 5.(A)
Source of the topic
A coral bleaching story, written separately in English rather than translated, paired with a coral diagram, a heat-stress level chart and a dive club notice. The reef area and species share are NOAA estimates.
Skill trained by each question
1.(B) 2.(D) 3.(C) 4.(A) 5.(A)
§ 10
QuestionsFAQ
Every question is modeled on the CAP and goes through five checks:
Because the CAP paper is black and white.
Closely:
They are designed for that:
Very little:
Not at all. Each book stands on its own, and together they cover two sides of the same skill set:
No. They are two different books:
CAP exam questions and item analyses are public materials released by the Research Center for Psychological and Educational Testing, National Taiwan Normal University. STARK Lab has no partnership, license or endorsement from the Center.
Super Early Bird until November 30, 2026: buy the science book and receive the English-subject book with the same title free.
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