Reading Comprehension
Reading Comprehension
This domain tests how you extract meaning from written Spanish: informative articles, literary excerpts, advertisements, emails, and opinion pieces. Questions target main idea, supporting detail, inference, author’s purpose, tone, and vocabulary in context. The texts are authentic in register and length.
Core rules
- Identify the text type and register first: an advertisement uses imperatives and exclamation; a literary excerpt uses metaphor and narration; an email uses greetings and closings.
- Skim for structure: title, first and last sentences of paragraphs, and discourse connectors (sin embargo, por consiguiente, a pesar de).
- Resolve pronoun references: este, aquel, cuyo, el cual often point backward; trace them to the noun.
- Use morphology for unknown words: -ción (noun), -oso (adjective), des- (negation), -mente (adverb).
- Separate fact from opinion: evaluative adjectives (lamentable, exitoso) and verbs of belief (señalan, sostienen) signal stance.
Worked example
Text: Aunque la ciudad invirtió millones en carriles bici, el número de ciclistas apenas aumentó; los expertos señalan que la falta de aparcamientos seguros disuade a muchos. Question: What is the author’s purpose? Reasoning: Aunque introduces concession, apenas aumentó signals a disappointing result, and los expertos señalan explains the cause. The purpose is to explain why a policy underperformed, not to promote cycling. The trap is selecting “promote bicycle use” because the topic is bikes; topic and purpose are not the same.
Traps
- Word-matching: an option that repeats text vocabulary but distorts the relationship.
- Missing no, excepto, salvo, or apenas, which reverse meaning.
- Confusing tone (ironic, nostalgic, critical) with topic.
- False cognates: éxito (success), sensible (sensitive), actual (current), embarazada (pregnant).
- Ignoring the question stem’s scope: “according to the author” vs. “according to the experts.”