Reading
B1 Preliminary for Schools Reading is Paper 1: 45 minutes, six parts and 32 questions. It tests how well you understand everyday written texts, from short notices and messages to longer articles and stories. The paper moves from matching meaning at word-and-sentence level to following cohesion across a whole text, and it ends with two cloze tasks that test grammar and vocabulary in context.
What each part asks
- Part 1: five short texts, each with a three-option multiple-choice question.
- Part 2: five people's needs matched to eight short descriptions.
- Part 3: five multiple-choice questions on one longer text.
- Part 4: five removed sentences put back into a text, choosing from eight options.
- Part 5: six multiple-choice cloze gaps.
- Part 6: six open cloze gaps, one word per gap.
Core rules
Read the question before the text so you know what to look for. In Part 1, identify the purpose of the notice: is it warning, inviting, informing or prohibiting? In Part 2, every detail in a person's description must match the text; one correct detail is not enough. In Part 3, the questions follow the order of the text, so locate the relevant paragraph and read around the line. In Part 4, test cohesion: pronouns, reference words, linking phrases and the logical flow between sentences. In Parts 5 and 6, use grammar and collocation, not just meaning.
Worked example
Open cloze: 'The library is closed on Mondays, ___ it opens at ten on all other days.' The answer is 'but'. The first clause says closed; the second gives an opening time on other days. The relationship is contrast, and the comma before the gap supports a coordinating conjunction. 'And' would add a similar idea, 'so' would show a result, and 'because' would reverse the logic. Only one word fits the gap and the sentence.
Traps
The biggest trap is choosing an option because it repeats a word from the text. The correct answer usually expresses the same idea in different words. In Part 2, a partial match is a distractor. In Part 4, a sentence can share the topic but break the pronoun chain. In Part 6, do not write two words or a contraction if the gap needs one word.