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DE POST: Verbal reasoning and reading comprehension

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Verbal reasoning and reading comprehension

Domain 2 - Verbal reasoning and reading comprehension

Short passages, usually one to three paragraphs of business or service text in German or English, followed by statements you must mark as supported, contradicted or not decidable from the text. The passages are deliberately plain; marks are lost on quantifiers, negations and small scope words rather than on vocabulary.

Core rules and concepts

  • Answer only from the text. General knowledge, even when true, is not evidence.
  • Three verdicts: true (the text states it), false (the text states the opposite), cannot say (the text neither states nor implies it).
  • Watch quantifiers: alle, einige, die meisten, nur, ausschließlich, always, some, only. A statement that swaps "some" for "all" is false.
  • Watch modality: muss, kann, soll, darf, will, may, must, should. "Kann" in the text does not support "wird" in the statement.
  • Paraphrase is the signal of a correct answer; identical wording is often the trap, lifted out of context.

Worked example

Passage: "Ab 1. März öffnen die Innenstadtfilialen montags bis freitags bereits um 8 Uhr; samstags bleibt es bei 9 Uhr. Die verlängerten Zeiten gelten zunächst sechs Monate, danach wird evaluiert. Postfachkundinnen und -kunden können ihre Sendungen unabhängig davon während der gesamten Öffnungszeit abholen."

Statement A: "Samstags öffnen die Filialen ab März um 8 Uhr." - False. The text keeps Saturday at 9 Uhr. Statement B: "Die neuen Zeiten gelten dauerhaft." - False. Six months, then evaluation. Statement C: "Postfachkunden können ihre Sendungen auch nach 18 Uhr abholen." - Cannot say. No closing time appears in the text.

Traps that cost marks

  • Marking "cannot say" as "false" because the statement feels unlikely; improbability is not contradiction.
  • Matching a keyword ("Postfach") and skipping the rest of the sentence.
  • Ignoring a connector such as "unabhängig davon" or "jedoch", which reverses the expectation set by the previous line.
  • Reading the passage first and the question second, then re-reading everything under time pressure.
  • Confusing a main-idea question with a detail question and choosing a true but minor detail.