Reading Comprehension
What the section tests
Reading Comprehension in LC Portuguese uses authentic or adapted texts - news briefs, institutional notices, literary extracts, and opinion pieces - and asks for main idea, explicit detail, inference, writer stance, and cohesion. You are not tested on translating every word; you are tested on building a reliable gist and then locating evidence.
Core rules
- Identify genre and register first: an edital (official notice) uses formal impersonal constructions; a crônica uses evaluative adjectives and first-person stance.
- Track cohesive chains: este/esse/aquele, o qual, cujo, tal, and connectors such as no entanto (contrast), portanto (conclusion), além disso (addition), ou seja (reformulation).
- Watch verb mood: subjunctive after embora, caso, desde que often signals hypothesis or concession, not fact.
- Treat false friends as traps: atual = current, not actual; realizar = carry out/achieve; livraria = bookshop; propina = bribe.
Worked example
Text: Embora o prazo tenha sido prorrogado, poucos candidatos entregaram a documentação. Question: What does the sentence imply? Reasoning: Embora introduces a concessive clause with subjunctive tenha sido; the main clause says poucos (few), not alguns (a few). The extension happened, but submission remained low. A correct answer says the extension did not produce a high number of submissions; a distractor saying no candidate submitted overstates poucos.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing an option that is true in the world but not stated in the text.
- Confusing poucos (few) with alguns (some).
- Ignoring scope words: apenas, somente, pelo menos, cerca de.
- Missing pronoun reference across sentences.