Reading - The Sunday Swim Question (matching a question to a short text)
Marco is sitting the A2 Reading paper: 25 questions in 40 minutes. Question 7 says: 'You want to go swimming with your two children on Sunday morning. Which text says when you can do this?' The four texts are:
- A POOL CLOSED - repairs until 3 June
- B SUNDAY SWIM, 7–11 a.m. - children welcome
- C FAMILY SWIM, Sunday 2–4 p.m.
- D LEARN TO SWIM - Mondays, 6 p.m.
Marco chooses C. 'It says Sunday,' he explains, 'and it says family, and I have children.' Not sure, he then re-reads all four texts for another five minutes. When he looks up he has 18 questions left and 22 minutes.
1. Was Marco's choice reasonable? Explain what went wrong and give the correct answer.
Read the worked answer
Correct answer: B.
Marco matched one word ('Sunday') and one idea ('family') and then stopped looking. The question contains three conditions, and a text must pass all of them:
- Sunday - this rules out A (closed until 3 June) and D (Mondays only).
- Morning - this rules out C: 2–4 p.m. is the afternoon.
- With two children - B passes ('children welcome'). A text saying 'adults only' would fail here.
Procedure that would have worked: before reading the texts, underline the content words in the question - swimming, two children, Sunday, morning - then test each text against all four words.
Why C is dangerous: it is a deliberately built trap. It repeats the most attractive word in the question ('family') while failing a different condition (time of day). In A2 reading, a text that shares vocabulary with the question is not automatically the answer; shared words are often exactly what makes a text wrong.
2. Marco has now spent about six minutes on Question 7 alone. What should he do, and why?
Read the worked answer
With 25 questions in 40 minutes he has roughly 1.5 minutes per question. Six minutes on Q7 has already cost him three or four questions elsewhere.
What to do:
- Put a star next to the question number, write the answer he thinks is most likely (B), and move on immediately.
- In this paper a wrong answer and a blank score the same, so a quick guess costs nothing and protects his time.
- Return to starred questions only if time is left at the very end.
What not to do: re-read all four texts 'to be sure'. Re-reading the same words without a new question to ask rarely changes the answer; it just uses the time. The last two minutes of the paper should go on checking that answers are written in the right boxes, not on re-solving one item.
3. Marco does not know the word 'repairs' in text A. What should he do about it?
Read the worked answer
'Repairs' is not needed to answer the question.
The text reads 'POOL CLOSED - repairs until 3 June'. The words that carry the decision are:
- CLOSED (in capitals, so it is the key word)
- until 3 June (tells you how long for)
A2 reading texts are written so that the important information is repeated in simple, frequent words, and one or two words per text can safely be unknown. Marco's real problem was not vocabulary - it was the habit of decoding every word before answering.
The question to ask: 'Do I need this word to choose between A, B, C and D?' If the answer is no, keep reading. If it is yes, use the words around it: here, anything next to CLOSED is bad news for a swimmer.