The Hostel Confirmation: Reading What Is Actually Written
An Irish student, Cian, is reading a booking confirmation from a Jugendherberge in Freiburg for a school trip. The text says: 'Die Zimmer sind ab 16:00 Uhr bezugsfertig. Frühstück ist nicht im Preis inbegriffen; es kostet 7,50 € pro Person. Eine Stornierung ist kostenlos bis sieben Tage vor Anreise. Danach fallen 80 % des Übernachtungspreises an.' The group's bus arrives at 14:00, and the teacher has told pupils to say that breakfast is included and that they can cancel at any time. Cian's notes read: 'Room from 14:00; breakfast included; free cancellation.' He wrote these quickly by matching the numbers 14 and 7 and the word 'kostenlos' to his prior expectations. He now has to answer three comprehension questions in German and has 10 minutes left. He is unsure whether to change his notes because the first line 'ab 16:00 Uhr' looks like a detail.
1. Correct Cian's three notes and explain the textual cue that decides each one.
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- Room access: Correct to 16:00, not 14:00. The cue is 'ab 16:00 Uhr bezugsfertig'. 'Ab' marks the start of availability; 14:00 is the bus arrival, not the room time. Cian matched the number 14 from the teacher's sentence, not from the hostel text.
- Breakfast: Correct to not included; 7,50 € extra. The cue is 'nicht im Preis inbegriffen'. The negation 'nicht' directly controls 'inbegriffen'. Cian saw the word 'Frühstück' and assumed inclusion.
- Cancellation: Correct to free only up to seven days before arrival; after that 80 % is charged. The cues are 'bis sieben Tage vor Anreise' and 'danach'. 'Bis' sets a deadline, and 'danach' signals that the condition changes. 'Kostenlos' does not mean 'at any time'.
The general error is ignoring function words - 'ab', 'nicht', 'bis', 'danach' - and reading only content nouns and numbers.
2. Name the reading habit that produced Cian's errors and give one practical fix he can use in the remaining 10 minutes.
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The habit is expectation-driven matching: Cian scans for familiar words and numbers that confirm what the teacher said, rather than reading the sentence structure. This is sometimes called confirmation bias in reading. He is not guessing randomly; he is selecting the text that fits his prior script.
The practical fix is a polarity check. Before answering, he should circle every 'nicht', 'kein', 'nur', 'ab', 'bis' and 'danach' in the passage and write '+' or '−' beside each statement. For example, 'Frühstück ist nicht im Preis inbegriffen' gets a '−' next to 'breakfast included'. If the sign does not match his note, the note changes - regardless of how familiar the number looks.
A second fix is to read the German sentence aloud in a whisper and stop at the comma. The decisive information in this text consistently comes after the comma or after the semicolon.
3. Answer in German: Um wie viel Uhr sind die Zimmer bezugsfertig, und was kostet das Frühstück?
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Die Zimmer sind ab 16:00 Uhr bezugsfertig. Das Frühstück ist nicht im Preis inbegriffen und kostet 7,50 € pro Person.
A full-credit answer needs both facts and the negative relationship: the breakfast is not free, and the extra cost is 7,50 €. Saying only '7,50 €' without 'nicht im Preis inbegriffen' is weaker because it does not show that the candidate understood the inclusion question. The time answer must be 16:00; 14:00 is the arrival time of the bus and is a distractor.