Reading: understanding written Spanish and explaining it in English
Reading is assessed in the external examination. You read a range of Spanish texts - emails, blogs, articles, adverts, notices, timetables, reviews and short literary extracts - on topics of most immediate relevance, and answer in English. Marks reward demonstration of understanding: restating the meaning, explaining a reason, or drawing a conclusion the text supports.
Three reading speeds
- Skim first for gist: title, opening sentence, who wrote it and why.
- Scan for the specific details the questions name: times, prices, conditions, places.
- Read closely around the answer to catch the qualifying word that changes it - «solo», «excepto», «aunque», «sin embargo», «por lo tanto».
Inferring unfamiliar words
Use the sentence, not the dictionary. «El albergue está en el centro, aunque no tiene wifi» - you do not need «albergue» to know the drawback is missing wifi. Cognates help but can mislead: actual means current, asistir means to attend, largo means long, éxito means success, realizar means to carry out, embarazada means pregnant.
Worked example
Text: «El nuevo centro deportivo abre el sábado. La entrada es gratuita para los menores de dieciséis años, aunque es necesario reservar por internet.» Question: what must under-16s do to enter free? Reasoning: «aunque» introduces a condition that limits the good news, and «es necesario» plus an infinitive signals obligation. The answer is: they must book online in advance - not simply "entry is free", which is only half the sentence.
Traps
- Quoting Spanish without explaining it in English earns little.
- Matching a word in the question to a look-alike Spanish word instead of reading the sentence.
- Ignoring negatives: «nunca», «nadie», «nada», «tampoco».
- Leaving one half of a two-part question unanswered; both parts carry marks.
- Missing time markers such as «los lunes», «a partir de», «hasta».