Reading Comprehension: Scanning, Skimming, and Inference
What the section really tests
Reading tasks present notices, emails, short articles, advertisements, and simple literary passages. You must locate explicit information, understand the main purpose, follow chronological or causal order, and draw modest inferences (how someone feels, what happens next). The skill is triage: read the question first, then hunt for the matching passage segment.
Concepts to master
- Text types and their conventions: a Bekanntmachung (notice) is terse and imperative; an Anzeige (ad) uses superlatives and abbreviations; an email opens with Liebe/Lieber (informal) or Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren (formal).
- Connectors that carry logic: deshalb (therefore), trotzdem (nevertheless), weil (because), damit (so that), zuerst/dann/danach (sequence). These often hold the answer.
- Reference words: er, sie, es, dieser, davon point back to a noun; questions frequently ask what a pronoun refers to.
- Compound nouns: the gender and meaning come from the last element: die Haustür is feminine, a door, not a house.
Traps to expect
Questions that quote words from the text but reverse the meaning ("The museum is free on Sundays" when the text says montags). Options that are true of the topic generally but absent from the passage. "Main idea" options that are too narrow (one detail) or too broad. Negation in notices: Rauchen verboten, kein Zutritt.
Worked example
Text: "Wegen Bauarbeiten bleibt die Bibliothek bis Freitag geschlossen. Bücher können Sie online verlängern." Question: What can users do? The first sentence is a distractor explaining closure; the answer lies in the second: renew books online. Mark the keyword verlängern and match it to "renew," ignoring options about visiting the building.
Rule of thumb
Read the question stem, underline its keyword, then scan for that keyword or a synonym. Answer only from the text-never from background knowledge.