Épreuve
Compréhension des écrits
Level
A1
Time
30 min
Marks
/25
The reading paper game plan
Thirty minutes, four exercises, 25 points, and every answer is a tick. Here's the shape of the paper and the order of moves that fits the clock.
By the end of this lesson
- Name the four reading exercises, the document each one hands you, and what it's worth.
- Read the task line and all the questions before the document, and save yourself a second reading.
- Run the same five-step method on any A1 document, from the first keywords to the final check.
- Spot a document type from its shape and its title before you read a full sentence.
Here's some good news about the reading paper. You never write a word in it. Every answer is a box you tick, and quite a few of those boxes are pictures. Your spelling cannot cost you a single point here.
What can cost you points is the order you work in. Thirty minutes go fast when you read each document twice. So this lesson gives you the exact shape of the paper and the order of moves that fits the clock. It closes with a five-step method you can run on anything they hand you.
Four exercises, thirty minutes, twenty-five points
Compréhension des écrits is the name of the reading paper. You get 30 minutes and it's marked out of 25. Four exercises share those points, and the last one carries the most.
Exercise 1 is worth 6 points. It gives you one email of roughly 60 to 70 words, followed by five items. Four of them are ordinary multiple choice, called QCM in French. The fifth offers three small pictures, and you tick the one that matches.
Exercise 2 is worth 6 points too, and all five of its items use pictures. One of them shows a street map with three routes already drawn on it. You read the directions given in the document, then you tick the route that fits. You never draw anything yourself.
Exercise 3 is also worth 6 points, but here the reading is cut into pieces. Five small texts sit next to each other, each with a single question. That's five short documents instead of one longer one.
Exercise 4 carries 7 points, the heaviest block on the paper. You get a short article of roughly 70 to 80 words, then four multiple-choice items and one picture item.
| Exercise | What's in front of you | Items | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One email, about 60 to 70 words | 4 multiple choice, 1 with pictures | 6 |
| 2 | One document with a street map | 5 items with pictures | 6 |
| 3 | Five small texts | 1 question per text | 6 |
| 4 | One short article, about 70 to 80 words | 4 multiple choice, 1 with pictures | 7 |
Two more numbers change how you work. Items are not all worth the same, and each one prints its value beside it. At A1 those values run between 1 and 2 points, so one glance tells you where the weight sits.
The diploma also has a floor. You pass DELF A1 with 50 points out of 100 across the four papers. But a score under 5 out of 25 on any single paper fails you, whatever the total says. Reading is one of the kinder papers for clearing that floor. The text never disappears, so you can go back to it as often as you like.
The four documents are not picked at random either. They come from four areas of ordinary life, which the exam calls the situations de communication. Vie privée is your private life, so a note from a friend or a family message. Vie publique is the street and its services, so a poster, a menu, a notice. Vie professionnelle is work, so an email from an employer or a timetable. Éducation et formation is study, so a small ad or a course programme.
Treat those four as a pool of themes rather than a fixed order. Any exercise can draw from any of them, so don't expect exercise 3 to be the work one every single time.
Point d'étape 1/4
0 / 3
Q1How are the 25 points of the reading paper shared across the four exercises?
Q2Which exercise gives you five small texts with one question each?
Q3One item shows a street map with three routes drawn on it. What do you do?
Read the questions before the document
A single instruction sits at the very top of the paper and covers all four exercises. It tells you to tick the correct box. Read it once and you're done with it.
Each exercise then opens with two or three lines of its own. That short text is the consigne, the task line, and it drops you into a situation. A friend has written to you. You're looking for a course. You've just started a job.
Consigne type · exercice 1CE · 6 points
Vous recevez ce courriel de votre amie Nadia. Vous lisez le message, puis vous répondez aux questions. Cochez la bonne réponse.
ENYou get this email from your friend Nadia. You read the message, then you answer the questions. Tick the right answer.
Now the move that saves you a whole reading. Read the consigne, then read all five questions, and open the document only after that. It costs you about a minute. In exchange, the questions turn into a short list of things to look for.
It works because of one rule. The questions arrive in the document's own order, and so do their answers. So the answer to question 2 sits somewhere below the answer to question 1, and question 3's answer sits below that.
That gives a stuck question an address. If question 3 won't come, don't restart at the top of the text. Go back to the line where question 2 was answered and read forward from there.
One last habit. Read the whole document before you tick anything, because a detail near the end often settles a question from the beginning.
Point d'étape 2/4
0 / 3
Q1In a reading exercise, what do you read first?
Q2You can't find the answer to question 3. Where should you look?
Q3What does the single instruction at the top of the paper ask you to do?
Five steps for any document
The same five steps work on an email, on a poster and on a small ad. They take about four minutes on one exercise, and step 5 is the one people drop when the clock scares them.
- Catch the keywords. On your first pass, pick up the words you already know and build a rough idea of the topic. You're not translating, you're locating.
- Name the document's job. Every text is doing something. It informs, it invites, it proposes, it asks you for something, or it forbids. Once you can name that job, half the questions get easier.
- Ask the seven question words. Qui, à qui, quoi, où, quand, comment and pourquoi. Each one announces a different shape of answer.
- Work out who wrote to whom. A friend and an employer don't write the same way, and several items usually turn on that difference.
- Read it again and check. The second reading is quick, because by then you know where everything sits.
Step 3 deserves a closer look, since two of those words get mixed up constantly. Qui wants the person doing something, while à qui wants the person being written to. Then quoi wants a thing, où wants a place and quand wants a moment. Comment wants a manner, which at A1 is often a means of transport. And pourquoi wants a reason, which almost always sits right after the words parce que.
Step 4 has a shortcut worth learning by heart. The greeting and the sign-off give you the relationship in two seconds. Salut, Coucou and Bises mean a friend wrote this. Madame, Monsieur and Cordialement mean a company, a school or an office did.
Point d'étape 3/4
0 / 4
Q1Step 2 of the method asks you to name what, exactly?
Q2Step 4 asks you to identify a relationship. Between whom?
Q3A question starts with the words à qui. What are you looking for?
Q4A question is built on the word pourquoi. Which words in the text usually carry the answer?
One idea, several words
A question rarely reuses the document's own word. It picks another word for the same idea, and your job is to make the link.
Money is the clearest case. A question about the prix gets answered by a line that says tarif. A figure with a euro sign beside it says the same thing. Three different forms carry one idea. Time behaves the same way. The word horaires, a line reading ouvert de 9h à 18h and a little clock drawing all tell you when.
Modèle · un mot dans la question, un autre dans le texte
Question : Combien coûte l'inscription ? Document : Tarif 45 € par mois.
L'argent. The question uses one word for money and the document uses another. Learn the words prix and tarif together with the euro sign, and this item takes five seconds.
Question : Quand la bibliothèque est-elle ouverte ? Document : Horaires, du mardi au samedi, de 10h à 18h.
Le temps. A question about opening times is answered by the heading horaires and by the line under it. Days and figures are easy to see, so let your eye land on them first.
Question : Comment allez-vous au musée ? Document : Prenez le bus 21, arrêt Place du Marché.
Le moyen de transport. At A1 the word comment usually asks how you travel. The answer is a bus, a metro line, a bike or the verb for walking.
Question : Où se trouve le club ? Document : 12, bd des Fleurs, en face de la poste.
L'adresse. Three short forms save you here, and they show up on the map item too. The letters r. mean rue, bd means boulevard and av. means avenue.
Now the move for exam day. Before you read a difficult document sentence by sentence, look at its shape. An email, a postcard, a poster and a small ad don't look alike on the page. Boxes, a logo, a date in the top corner, a signature at the bottom. Those details name the document type before you read it.
Then read the title and scan for the words you already know. Plenty of French words look like words from other languages you speak. Three of them are usually enough to give you the topic.
Two small habits finish the job. Underline the numbers, the dates and the words the questions handed you. And fill every box before you give the paper back, because a wrong tick and an empty box are both worth zero.
Point d'étape 4/4
0 / 4
Q1Which group of three clues all point at the same idea, the price?
Q2On exam day, a document looks hard. What do you do before reading it word by word?
Q3On a French address, what does the short form bd stand for?
Q4Two minutes are left and one box is still empty. What's the right move?
Key takeaways
- Reading lasts 30 minutes and is marked out of 25, in four exercises worth 6, 6, 6 and 7.
- Everything is ticked. Several answers are pictures, and the map item gives you three routes to choose from.
- Read the task line, called the consigne, and all the questions first. Questions and answers follow the order of the document.
- Five steps: keywords, the document's job, the seven question words, who writes to whom, then a check.
- One idea wears several words. A question about price can be answered by the word tarif or by a euro sign.