Reading
Reading is the broadest domain: notices, advertisements, personal and formal letters, journalistic prose, and literary fragments, each with questions on main idea, explicit detail, inference, vocabulary in context, purpose, and tone. Speed matters, but marks come from precise reference tracking and connective logic.
Classify the text before reading closely
Genre predicts structure. Se ruega / Se informa / Queda prohibido signal an official notice; Estimado señor / Atentamente frame a formal letter; Se vende / Se busca mark a classified ad; a narrative opening in the imperfect sets a scene. The question stem tells you whether to hunt a detail or summarize the whole.
Follow the grammar of reference
Spanish drops subject pronouns, so track verb endings to know who acts. Relative pronouns - el que, la cual, cuyo/cuya - attach descriptions to a specific noun. Neuter lo refers to an idea, not a noun (lo importante es…). Watch se: passive (se construyó) versus impersonal (se dice).
Connectives decide the answer
Sin embargo / no obstante (contrast), por consiguiente / por lo tanto (consequence), ya que / puesto que (cause), a pesar de (concession), siempre que (condition), mientras que (contrast), sino (correction). Most wrong answers invert one of these relations.
Vocabulary in context
Use syntax and word family, not English resemblance. Frequent false friends: actual (current), realizar (carry out), asistir (attend), largo (long), éxito (success), lectura (reading), pariente (relative), sensible (sensitive), firma (signature), once (eleven).
Worked example
Text: Se informa a los socios que, debido a obras en el gimnasio, la piscina permanecerá cerrada hasta nuevo aviso. Rogamos disculpen las molestias. Purpose? Se informa plus permanecerá cerrada hasta nuevo aviso announces a temporary closure; the works are the stated cause, not an invitation to the gym; rogamos disculpen is an apology, not a complaint. The answer is the temporary closure of the pool; options about selling memberships or protesting the works misread both function and cause.
Traps
- Answers that recycle passage words but reverse cause and effect.
- Ignoring limits: hasta nuevo aviso, salvo, a menos que.
- Choosing a supporting detail as the main idea.
- Over-reading: inference must follow from the text, not from real-world assumption.