Reading (Darllen) - Canolradd B1
Reading (Darllen) tests your understanding of written Welsh at B1: emails, notices, articles, reviews, forms and short literary extracts. The paper asks you to find main points, specific detail, opinion and inference, and to recognise how a text is organised. You do not need to translate every sentence; you need to locate the evidence that answers each question.
A reliable reading sequence
- Skim the whole text first for topic, text type and purpose: a notice instructs, a review evaluates, an email maintains a relationship.
- Scan for names, numbers, dates and place names before close reading.
- Read the question, then return to the sentence that contains the answer. Underline the evidence.
- Distinguish fact from opinion: 'mae'r llyfrgell yn cau am chwech' is fact; 'mae'r gwasanaeth yn wych' is evaluation.
- For matching tasks, compare the heading with the whole paragraph, not with one repeated word.
Grammar and word-building clues
- Verb forms signal time: 'mae' present, 'roedd' imperfect, 'bydd' future, 'basai' conditional, 'wedi' perfect.
- Relative clauses with 'sy'n' and subordinate clauses with 'er bod', 'cyn', 'wedi' and 'er mwyn' carry much of the detail.
- Prefixes and suffixes widen vocabulary: 'an-' (not), 'ail-' (re-), '-iad' (noun of action), '-wyr' (people), '-fa' (place).
- Mutations can hide a dictionary form: 'i Fangor' is 'Bangor'; 'o Gaerdydd' is 'Caerdydd'.
Worked example
Text: 'Mae'r llyfrgell yn cau am chwech ar nos Fercher, ac mae'n bosibl benthyca hyd at ddeg o lyfrau am dair wythnos.' Question: 'Ydy hi'n bosibl benthyca deg o lyfrau am dair wythnos?' Answer: 'Ydy.' Reasoning: 'hyd at ddeg' means up to ten, so ten is permitted; 'am dair wythnos' gives the loan period; 'benthyca' is 'borrow'; 'o lyfrau' shows soft mutation after 'o', confirming the noun is 'llyfrau'. The closing time is irrelevant to this question, which is a common distractor.
Traps that cost marks
- Matching a word in the question to the same word in the text without checking the surrounding negation or condition.
- Missing 'dim ond' (only), 'ar ôl' (after) and 'cyn' (before), which change the order of events.
- Treating a cognate as safe: Welsh and English lookalikes often differ in meaning.
- Ignoring headings and paragraph openings that give the structure of an article.
- Writing a full sentence when the task asks for one word or a tick.
- Panicking at an unknown word when the next sentence explains it.