Everyday texts
Appointments, flats, shopping and messages — reading for the point and for the detail.
Up to now almost everything has been one sentence at a time. Real German arrives in paragraphs, and reading it is a different skill from building it.
Read the whole text once before looking at the questions. Do not stop at the first word you do not know.
That second half is the important habit. A text at your level always contains words you have not met — every passage here comes with a short glossary for exactly that reason. Guess from context first, check afterwards.
Three things to look for as you read, because German marks them clearly:
… weil / deshalb / wegen …
the reason something happened
reasons are almost always signposted
zuerst / dann / danach / am Ende
the order of events
the sequence words tell you the story order even if you miss a verb
Als … / Wenn … / Letztes Wochenende …
when something happened, and whether it happened once
you already know what als implies
A question about a text is not a vocabulary test. If you are asked why somebody did something, the answer is a sentence in the text — find it rather than translating everything.
Reading word by word and stopping at every unknown noun.Reading the paragraph to the end, then deciding what you actually missed.
Most unknown words at A2 turn out not to matter for the question being asked.
Words from this topic
- der Textthe text
- der Abschnittthe paragraph, the section
- zuerstfirst
- am Endein the end
- trotzdemanyway, nevertheless