Unknown Vocabulary in an Informational Reading Text
A B1 reading text of about 250 words describes a town's new recycling scheme. It contains several words the candidate does not know: conferimento, sfuso, compostaggio, sanzione. Item 3 asks: 'According to the text, what happens if someone puts the wrong material in the container?' Options: (a) they receive a warning letter, (b) they may have to pay a fine, (c) their container is not collected. The relevant sentence reads: 'In caso di errori ripetuti, il Comune può applicare una sanzione amministrativa.' The candidate leaves the item blank and says the text was 'too hard' because of the four unknown words. She answered the other four items correctly.
1. Assess whether this text is genuinely too hard for her, using the evidence in the situation, and identify the strategy she failed to use.
Read the worked answer
The evidence says the text is not too hard. She answered four of five items correctly, so her comprehension of the passage's main content is intact. The problem is local: one unknown lexical item sitting exactly on an answer-bearing sentence, and no strategy for handling it.
The strategy she failed to use is morphological and contextual inference combined with option elimination:
- Sanzione is transparently related to English 'sanction'; more importantly, the collocation applicare una sanzione plus in caso di errori signals a consequence imposed for wrongdoing - a penalty, not a letter or a non-collection.
- Option (c) is contradicted by the text's framing: the sentence describes an action the Comune may apply, not a collection policy.
- Option (a) requires a word like avviso or diffida; nothing in the sentence supports a warning.
- Option (b) is the only one consistent with 'a penalty applied by the authorities for repeated errors'.
A candidate at B1 is not expected to know every word. She is expected to keep reading, use word formation and co-text, and eliminate options that the surrounding text does not support.
2. She wants to 'learn all the unknown words' before attempting the text again. Respond to that plan.
Read the worked answer
The plan is well-intentioned but misdirected, and it teaches the wrong exam behaviour. Three problems:
- It is not available in the exam. There will always be unknown words. A strategy that requires knowing them all in advance cannot transfer.
- It confuses two different goals. Learning conferimento, sfuso and compostaggio is useful for general vocabulary, but only sanzione was load-bearing for an item. Pre-teaching all four would have made this particular text easy without making her a better reader.
- It rewards avoidance. Leaving an item blank when four of five were correct is a scoring decision, not a comprehension failure.
Better sequence for the same text:
- First pass, no dictionary, timed. Answer all items, guessing where necessary, and mark confidence (sure / unsure / guess).
- Second pass. For each unsure item, write the sentence that decides it and underline the words that carry the decision.
- Then look up only the words that blocked a decision, and record them with the sentence, not in a bare list.
- Finally, note for each unknown word whether it was (i) needed for an item, (ii) needed for general sense, or (iii) decorative. Only (i) and (ii) go on the vocabulary list.
This converts one hard text into a strategy lesson rather than a vocabulary list.