What's tested
The reading paper has four parts: four different texts and three different types of comprehension task (multiple matching, gapped text, multiple choice). The texts come form a variety of sources, e.g. newspapers, magazines, brochures and journals, and may deal with a range of general interest topics. You will need a high level of vocabulary to understand the texts so it is important that you read English language newspapers and/or magazines. The texts never come from fiction books so while reading fiction may improve your general level of vocabulary, it may not be the type of vocabulary that you will see in examination texts.
Multiple matching
Multiple matching tasks test your ability to find specific information in a long text or a series of short texts connected by theme. There will be a set of questions which you will need to match to the relevant information in the text. Some examples of matching tasks are:
- matching a list of attitudes to a set of people
- matching a list of opinions to a set of book or film reviews
- matching a list of statements to different sections of a text
TIPS
- Read the questions first and highlight any key words. The questions are written in a very precise way, which means that wrong answers will not match them. By reading the questions first, you will also have an idea of what to look for while you are reading. If you start by reading the text first, you may waste time trying to understand part of the text or some vocabulary that is not being tested.
- Beware of choosing an answer just because you notice a word in the question that is a synonym for a word in the text.