Reading - Breakthrough (A1)
What Breakthrough Reading tests
The reading paper at this level works with short real-world texts: signs, notices, labels, menus, timetables, postcards, simple emails and three-to-five-sentence descriptions. Topics stay concrete - a school trip, a birthday party, a pet, a shop. The paper checks whether you can find one piece of information, match a word to a picture, decide whether a sentence is true or false, and choose the word that completes a gap. You are not expected to understand every word; you are expected to locate the part of the text that answers the question.
Core rules
- Read the question first, then hunt for the answer in the text. Do not read the whole text word by word before you know what you are looking for.
- The answer is usually a paraphrase, not a copy: the text says "not open at the weekend", the question says "closed on Saturday and Sunday".
- For true/false items, a statement the text never mentions is false - at A1 there is no separate "not given" category.
- For gap sentences, read the whole sentence again after inserting your word and check the grammar still works.
- Sign and notice questions turn on one word: closed, free, only, no entry, half price.
Worked example
Text on a library door: "City Library. Closed Mondays. Tuesday–Saturday 9–5. Sunday 10–1." Question: When is the library closed? Options: A Sunday morning, B Monday, C Saturday afternoon. Answer: B. Reasoning: Sunday has opening hours (10–1), so it is open then; Saturday 9–5 covers the afternoon; only Monday carries the word closed. Option C is the trap - Saturday afternoon falls inside opening hours.
Traps that cost marks
- Picking an option because it repeats a word from the text.
- Choosing a long, detailed option that answers a different question.
- Reading library as bookshop, or cheap as free.
- Stopping at the first sentence that looks relevant instead of checking all three options.