'Closed' on the door: reading a short notice precisely
At a school in Brighton, two notices are on the same corridor wall.
Notice 1, on the sports hall door: 'SPORTS HALL CLOSED FOR REPAIRS THIS WEEK. Badminton club moves to the park - same time as usual. Bring your own racket.'
Notice 2, in the library: 'All library books must be returned before Friday. Magazines can be kept for two weeks.'
The class is practising the three-option multiple-choice reading task. For Notice 1 the question is: 'What does the notice say about badminton club?' The options are: A it is cancelled this week; B it is in a different place; C you must bring a racket to the sports hall.
Yuki chooses A, Ahmed chooses B, and both insist the notice 'says it clearly'.
1. Which option is correct, and what exactly makes the other student's choice attractive but wrong?
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Correct answer: B.
The evidence is the clause Badminton club moves to the park. Moving to a new venue is the definition of being in a different place.
Why A attracts Yuki: the words CLOSED and badminton club sit close together on the notice, so the brain joins them. But the notice says the hall is closed - the building - not the club. The club continues, at the park, at the usual time. 'Closed' is a word about the venue, not about the activity.
This is the standard trap in this part of the test: a wrong option is built by lifting words from the text and attaching them to the wrong subject. Yuki has pattern-matched two nearby words instead of reading the sentence that contains the club.
2. Option C also uses words from the notice. Explain how it is constructed and give the checking rule you would teach.
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Option C - you must bring a racket to the sports hall - reuses the phrase Bring your own racket almost word for word. That is why it feels right. But the notice attaches the racket instruction to the park, the new venue; the sports hall is shut for repairs, so nobody is bringing anything there.
The construction is: true words + wrong place / wrong person / wrong time.
The checking rule:
- Find the sentence in the text that the option seems to come from.
- Read the whole sentence, not the key word.
- Check every element of the option against it - who, what, where, when.
- If one element is wrong, the option is wrong, however many words match.
Word-matching is a distractor detector, not a sign of the right answer.
3. A student reads Notice 2 and asks: 'So I must return the magazines before Friday too?' What is the correct reading, and what is the reading skill being tested?
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No. Notice 2 gives two different rules for two different things:
- Books: must be returned before Friday - an obligation with a deadline.
- Magazines: can be kept for two weeks - permission with a different time limit.
Nothing in the notice puts magazines under the Friday deadline; the second sentence replaces the first rule for that item.
The skill being tested is tracking reference and modality across two sentences: noticing that magazines is a new subject, and that must (obligation) and can (permission) are not interchangeable. A student who reads the notice as one general instruction about 'library things' will answer wrongly. Teach students to underline the subject of each sentence before they look at the question.