Reading: purpose, cohesion and paraphrase
The Reading paper checks that you can process several short texts quickly and one or more longer texts in depth: notices, messages, articles and reports. It rewards reading for purpose - deciding what a text is doing (warning, inviting, refusing, recommending) - rather than translating every word. Timing matters because items are worth the same, so a hard question should not eat the time of three easy ones.
What each task type demands
- Short notices, signs and messages: the question asks what the writer wants you to do or means. The answer turns on function, not literal content.
- Gapped text: sentences are removed, and cohesion tells you where each one belongs - pronouns, linkers and repeated ideas.
- Matching headings or statements to paragraphs: match the main idea of the paragraph, not a word that happens to appear in it.
- Longer text with multiple choice: inference, attitude, purpose and detailed meaning, where the answer is supported by the text but not copied from it.
Worked example
A paragraph ends: "...staff have been reluctant to adopt the new booking system." The next missing sentence begins: "This reluctance is understandable." Reasoning: "this reluctance" is a noun phrase pointing back to "reluctant", so the sentence must follow the one that introduces that idea, and it explains rather than contradicts it. A distractor opening "However, the system..." would need a contrasting idea immediately before it, which the paragraph does not provide.
Traps that cost marks
- Word matching: an option shares vocabulary with the text but changes the meaning or the direction of the argument.
- Answering from general knowledge rather than from the text, which may say the opposite of what you expect.
- Ignoring the question stem and reading only the options, so you answer a different question.
- Spending too long on one item and rushing the final text.