DELF B2 reading, from the first text to the last answer

Sixty minutes and five documents

The reading a B2 candidate is asked to do

The CEFR describes a B2 reader as someone who can read articles and reports concerned with contemporary problems in which the writers adopt particular attitudes or viewpoints. That descriptor is this paper in one sentence. Both long texts are press writing, both have an author with a position, and the questions are built on that position rather than on the facts around it.

So the items are not vocabulary questions in disguise. They ask what the author is doing with an idea: reporting it, defending it, or conceding a point before answering it. In the material we write, the correct option restates the passage in different words, and a wrong option is often the one that borrows the words themselves. Reading for the wording is how a good reader loses marks here.

Nothing on this paper asks you to produce anything. You tick, and you match. There is no literary extract, no grammar exercise and no vocabulary list. Our free sample paper adds a vocabulary exercise on connectors, which is extra practice rather than part of the official format. On what the step up from B1 really costs, an honest difficulty breakdown goes through it paper by paper. The B2 overview puts this hour beside the other three.

Exercise 3 is not a comprehension exercise

The third exercise asks no questions about a text. It gives you three short opinion pieces, each signed by a named person, and a set of statements to hand back to their author. Understanding each piece is only half the work. The three people write about the same subject, so the exercise turns on what separates them, not on what they share.

The table below prints what every question is worth, and the weights are not flat. In each of the two long texts, two questions are worth five times the lightest one, and those two together carry more than half of the exercise. The matching exercise is built the same way: its opening item is worth as much as its last two put together.

Nothing on the paper marks those items out. That is the strongest argument for keeping the clock: a question you never reach can be worth five times the one you laboured over. The section floor applies to this paper as it does to the other three. A strong total does not rescue a paper that falls under it.

Two questions from a real practice text, worked through

Spending the hour: a split that holds

Reading practice that transfers to the paper

Reading a lot of French improves your French. On its own it does not train the thing this paper measures, which is choosing between three close statements against a clock. The transfer comes from working on the question, not on the text. A longer guide to the question types and their traps covers the method, and the routine below is what to do with it. For what to read alongside, an honest guide to B2 books and resources is a starting point.

1. 1Sit one timed exercise before you revise anything: practise B2 reading and stop when the time is up, finished or not.
2. 2For every wrong answer, find the line in the text that makes the key right. If you cannot find it, that is where the work is.
3. 3Rewrite the correct option in your own words. If your sentence and the text say the same thing, you have done what the item asks.
4. 4Take one opinion piece a week and list the arguments the author is answering, not the ones they are making.
5. 5Drill the matching exercise on its own: three opinions side by side, one sentence each on what separates them.
6. 6Every fortnight, work through one full-length reading exercise with its answer key under the clock, then read every explanation, including those you got right.

A free lesson on sizing up a text in sixty seconds

What candidates ask about the reading paper