Épreuve
Compréhension des écrits
Level
B1
Time
45 min
Marks
/25
The reading paper game plan
Forty-five minutes, three exercises, 25 points. The order to work in, how each box is scored, and where your minutes should go.
By the end of this lesson
- Name the three reading exercises, what each one gives you and what each one is worth.
- Work in the order that saves time: the instruction, then the questions, then the document.
- Fill a grid of Oui and Non boxes row by row, and answer a Vrai or Faux item without writing a justification.
- Spend about a quarter of an hour per exercise and keep three minutes to check nothing is blank.
You can read French comfortably and still lose points on this paper. Forty-five minutes is plenty of time, but only if you spend it in the right order. The candidates who run out are usually the ones who read every document from the first line to the last. Then they go back and read it again, this time looking for what the questions wanted.
This lesson maps the whole reading paper. You'll see the three exercises and what each one is worth. Then the order to work in, the rules for filling the boxes, and where your minutes should go.
Three exercises, forty-five minutes
Compréhension des écrits (the reading paper) lasts 45 minutes and carries 25 points. It holds three exercises, and every question on it is a closed question. You tick boxes. You never write a sentence, not even a short one.
That last point matters if you're working from an old book. The paper used to ask you to copy a line from the text to justify a true-or-false answer. It also used to ask for short written answers. Neither of those is in the exam any more, so practice material that asks you to justify is out of date.
Exercise 1 is lire pour s'orienter, reading in order to find your way. You get a short situation with four criteria and four short documents to check against them. Think small ads, venue listings, course offers, around a hundred words each. For every document you answer on every criterion, which gives 16 boxes in total.
Exercises 2 and 3 are built the same way as each other. Each one gives you a single longer text, usually a press or web article, and seven closed items about it. Those items mix three-option QCM (multiple choice) with items where you tick Vrai or Faux.
| Exercise | What you get | What you answer | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Four short documents and four criteria | 16 boxes, Oui or Non, half a point each | 8 |
| 2 | One longer text | 7 items, QCM and Vrai or Faux | 8 |
| 3 | One article | 7 items, QCM and Vrai or Faux | 9 |
Two details in that table are worth keeping. Exercise 1 is the only place where a single tick is worth half a point, which is the smallest unit on the paper. And in exercises 2 and 3 the items are not all equal. Each one has its value printed beside it, usually somewhere between 1 and 1.5 points.
Point d'étape 1/4
0 / 3
Q1What does exercise 1 of the reading paper put in front of you?
Q2How are the 25 points of the reading paper split across its three exercises?
Q3What do you write out by hand anywhere on this reading paper?
Read in this order
The natural order is the expensive one. Read the document first and you read it blind, with nothing to look for. Then you read the questions, and then you go back into the text a second time. Two full readings of a long article do not fit inside a quarter of an hour.
So work in four steps and keep the document for last.
- The instruction. The consigne (the instruction line) tells you what kind of document is coming and what you do with it. In exercise 1 it also carries your four criteria, so it holds the whole task. Read it twice there.
- All the questions, with all their options. Take the seven items in before your eyes touch the article. Each item names something to look for, so your single reading turns into a search.
- The paratext. Before the body of the text, look at four things: the title, the chapeau, any subheadings and the source line. The chapeau is the short intro paragraph sitting under the title. Numbers in bold are worth a glance too, and half a minute here usually hands you the topic.
- The text, once, pen in hand. Underline the line that answers a question and write that question's number beside it in the margin. When you check at the end, you go straight to it.
One fact makes step 4 much faster. The questions follow the order of the text. Once you've found the answer to question 3, the answer to question 4 sits below it and never above.
Consigne type · exercices 2 et 3CE · 7 questions
Vous lisez cet article sur un site d'information francophone. Répondez aux questions en cochant la bonne réponse. 1. Cet article a pour but de : a) raconter l'histoire d'un quartier ; b) présenter une initiative de voisinage ; c) critiquer une décision de la mairie. 2. Vrai ou faux : l'atelier est ouvert à tous les habitants de la commune.
Read those two items before the article and you already know two of your seven targets. One is why the piece was written. The other is who may attend the workshop. You'll meet both answers while reading, instead of after.
Point d'étape 2/4
0 / 3
Q1What do you read before the document itself?
Q2In what order do the answers turn up inside the text?
Q3How many answers does the whole reading paper ask you for?
How the boxes are scored
Start with exercise 1, because its grid is marked in a way that surprises people. The 16 boxes are scored one by one, half a point each. A document that fails one criterion is the wrong answer for the situation, and yet its other three rows still carry points.
So keep judging every row, even once you know a document is out. Three correct rows on a rejected document are worth a point and a half, as much as the dearest items in exercise 2.
Two habits make the grid quicker. Match ideas rather than words, because a document rarely repeats the exact word your criterion used. And check every number against the small block of practical details. The price, the dates and the opening hours live there, not in the descriptive paragraph.
Here's one document from a housing situation. The four criteria are a private room, under 400 euros, a three-month stay and somewhere close to work.
Modèle · quatre lignes d'une grille4 cases · 2 points
Chambre individuelle avec bureau, dans un couloir de six logements.
Critère chambre individuelle, Oui. The criterion asked for a private room and the document uses the word individuelle. One line settles the box, so tick it and move to the next row.
380 euros par mois, charges et internet compris.
Critère prix, Oui. The figure sits under the 400-euro ceiling, so this row is a yes. Prices live in the practical block at the foot of the ad, which is where you check them.
Séjour de six mois minimum, de septembre à février.
Critère durée, Non. A three-month stay is impossible here, so this document is out for the reader. The three other boxes are still marked, so you go on filling them.
À dix minutes à pied de la zone d'activités et des bureaux du centre.
Critère proximité du travail, Oui. The ad never uses the word travail. It gives offices and a business park within a ten-minute walk, and matching the idea is what the box asks for.
Exercises 2 and 3 have simpler rules. A QCM item offers three options and exactly one box gets a tick. An item asking Vrai or Faux offers two boxes and, again, one tick. Nothing is copied out and nothing is explained.
Nothing is taken away for a wrong answer either. A wrong tick and an empty box both score zero, so the empty box is pure loss. Add them up: 16 boxes in exercise 1, then 14 items across exercises 2 and 3. That's 30 answers, and every one of them should be filled.
Point d'étape 3/4
0 / 3
Q1A document in exercise 1 fails one of the four criteria. What do you do with its three other rows?
Q2How many boxes do you tick on a three-option multiple-choice item?
Q3Why answer even the items you are unsure about?
Where the 45 minutes go
The simple version of the advice is a quarter of an hour per exercise. That comes to exactly 45 minutes and leaves nothing for a final check, so trim a little off the first two.
| What you're working on | Minutes |
|---|---|
| Exercise 1, the grid | 13 |
| Exercise 2, first article | 14 |
| Exercise 3, second article | 15 |
| Final check | 3 |
Exercise 1 gets the least because there's no argument to follow, only facts to match. Exercise 3 gets the most because it carries 9 points, one more than each of the others.
Inside an exercise, give a single item two minutes at most. An item you can't settle is costing you the time of an item you could have settled. Put your best guess in the box, mark the number, and go on.
Come back at the end with the whole text in your head. Items that felt impossible on the first pass often take twenty seconds on the second one.
Then spend the last three minutes on two checks and nothing else. Is every box filled, including all 16 in the grid? And on the items you marked, can you still point to the line that supports your answer?
There's a hard reason for that first check. Anything below 5 out of 25 on a single paper eliminates you, however strong your other three papers are. On a text you barely followed, ticking every box is what keeps you clear of that floor.
Point d'étape 4/4
0 / 3
Q1Roughly how long should each of the three exercises take?
Q2One item has been blocking you for two minutes. What do you do?
Q3What are the last three minutes for?
Key takeaways
- Reading lasts 45 minutes and carries 25 points, split 8, 8 and 9 across three exercises.
- Exercise 1 checks four short documents against four criteria. That makes 16 boxes, half a point each.
- Exercises 2 and 3 each carry seven closed items on one article, mixing three-option QCM with Vrai or Faux boxes. Nothing is written out.
- Read the instruction and all the questions before the document. The answers then arrive in the same order as the questions.
- A wrong tick costs nothing, so all 30 answers on the paper get filled in before you hand it back.