Reading comprehension
Reading comprehension tests your ability to process written German from notices, emails, articles, reports, and longer prose. You need gist, specific detail, inference, writer purpose, tone, and register. Questions may require short answers, matching, true/false with justification, or completing gaps. Accurate reading depends on recognizing text type and cohesive links, not on translating every sentence.
Core reading rules
- Identify the text type and audience first: Aushang, Anzeige, Leserbrief, Bericht, E-Mail, Kommentar. This sets expected register and purpose.
- Use headings, layout, cognates, and known vocabulary to predict content; then scan for names, dates, figures, and negatives.
- Follow cohesion: pronouns (er, sie, es, dabei, dafür), connectors (allerdings, daher, trotzdem, sodass), and reference words.
- Break long nouns into parts: Fahrgastbeschwerde = Fahrgast + Beschwerde; separable verbs may split (stattfinden → findet ... statt).
- Distinguish fact from opinion, and main clause from concession: obwohl, zwar ... aber, nicht nur ... sondern auch.
Worked example
Sentence: “Obwohl die Stadt die Buslinie verlängert hat, beschweren sich viele Fahrgäste über den Anschluss.” Question: What are passengers complaining about? Answer: The connection/transfer, not the length of the route. Reasoning: Obwohl marks a contrast; the main clause carries the complaint. Verlängert is positive information, while Anschluss means connection to another service. A reader who stops at “Buslinie verlängert” may wrongly answer that the route is too short.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing an option because it repeats a word from the text; correct answers often paraphrase.
- Missing negation: nicht, kein, ohne, kaum, selten.
- Confusing seit (since/for) with vor (ago).
- Treating a quoted opinion as the writer’s own view.