Reading and Responding: Close Reading of German Texts
What this domain tests
You read authentic-style German texts - articles, letters, blogs, advertisements, literary extracts - and answer questions in English or German. The paper tests literal comprehension, inference and the ability to identify purpose, audience and tone.
Concepts to master
- Skimming for gist, then scanning for the specific detail a question asks about.
- Recognising text types from layout and register: Anzeige, Leserbrief, Tagebuch, Speisekarte, Bericht.
- Understanding compound nouns by reading the last element: Umweltschutzgesetz is a law about environmental protection.
- Separable verbs in main clauses: Er ruft seine Mutter an - the answer lies with anrufen.
- Pronouns and reference: tracking what er, sie, es, dort, damit refer back to.
- Inference cues: offenbar, anscheinend, wahrscheinlich, kaum.
Traps in questions
Candidates lose marks by copying whole sentences from the text instead of answering precisely; HSC marking rewards relevant, paraphrased content. Another trap is the question Was ist die Absicht des Textes? where students give the topic rather than the purpose. A third trap is the negative: kaum, selten, nicht mehr invert meaning, and a sentence with nicht can be misread as positive. Finally, do not translate word for word - if a word is unknown, use context and the rest of the sentence.
Worked example
Text: Obwohl viele Jugendliche kaum noch Zeitungen lesen, informieren sie sich offenbar regelmäßig über soziale Medien. Question: How do young people get their news, and what does this suggest? Answer: They get information regularly through social media, even though they hardly read newspapers anymore. Note kaum noch (hardly any longer) and offenbar (apparently) signal the inference.
Rule of thumb
Match the number of points in your answer to the marks available, quote only short key phrases, and always answer the exact question word - why, how, what does this suggest.