Leseverstehen / Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension in the SH Abitur is not only a separate multiple-choice section: it underpins the text-based writing task. You receive a fictional extract (short story, novel, drama, poem) or a non-fictional text (speech, editorial, blog post, cartoon with commentary) and must first show that you have understood it - reproducing content (AFB I), then reorganising and analysing it (AFB II), then evaluating it (AFB III).
Comprehension first
- “Outline” and “summarise” tasks require present tense, your own words, no quotations and no opinion.
- Answer only what is asked: an “explain with reference to lines 12–25” task is not an invitation to summarise the whole text.
- Quote briefly and precisely, always with a line number; paraphrase when the task says “in your own words”.
Analytical toolbox
Fiction: narrative perspective (first or third person, limited or omniscient), characterisation (direct comment versus indirect signals - what a figure says, does, how others react), setting, imagery, tone, and stylistic devices such as metaphor, personification, anaphora, rhetorical question, parallelism and contrast. Always device + quotation + effect. Non-fiction: claim, evidence and conclusion; ethos, pathos and logos; diction, irony and the architecture of the argument.
Worked example
Task: “Explain the narrator's attitude towards her mother (ll. 12–25).” The passage reads: “She meant well, as she always did, which was precisely the problem.” Reasoning: the concessive “meant well” together with “precisely the problem” and the ironic repetition “as she always did” signals affectionate exasperation - not hatred. A candidate who writes “she hates her mother” over-reads a single clause. Answer shape: two short quotations with line numbers, one named device (irony), one sentence on its effect.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing narrator and author: a first-person narrator's views are not automatically the writer's.
- Ignoring the line range given in the task, which narrows the answer and marks lazy reading.
- Over-reading single words into a full interpretation without textual support.
- Replacing paraphrase with translation of German-sounding syntax, so the answer reads unidiomatic.
- Missing implied meaning: irony, hedging and understatement are frequently the actual target of the item.