B1 Preliminary Reading Part 3 gives you one longer text — an article, an interview, a personal account — with multiple-choice questions that follow the order of the text. Most of the questions ask for a detail, but at least one asks what the writer thinks or feels, and one usually asks what a word like ‘it’ or ‘this’ refers to.
Two minutes of unhurried reading gives you the shape of the text — who, where, what changed. Without it you will answer detail questions in the wrong paragraph.
Question 2 is answered after question 1’s information and before question 3’s. If you find yourself hunting at the top of the text for a late question, you have probably misread it.
Locate the part of the text the question covers, then read the sentence before and after as well. The answer is very often in the neighbouring sentence, not the obvious one.
Say the answer before you look at the options. Then find the option that says the same thing. This stops the well-written distractor from leading you.
Put each option into the sentence in place of the word. Only one produces a sentence that makes sense and matches what has already been said.
‘What is the writer trying to do?’ is easiest once you have worked through the detail questions, because by then you have read the text three times.
When the text quotes someone — a friend, a guide, a parent — check whose opinion the question asks for. Attributing the friend’s view to the writer is a standard trap.
Stop at the full stop, not at the comma. ‘I was nervous, but by the second day I loved it’ answers a feelings question completely differently from its first half.
For each question, be able to point at the words that make your option right. If you cannot find them, you have chosen on impression, and impression is what the distractors are built for.
If two options survive, pick one, put a small mark by the number, and come back only if time allows. Leaving it open costs you the question twice.
Not thisThe answer is A because A is true about cycling in general.
ThisThe answer is the one the text states, even if another option is true in real life.
Part 3 rewards what is on the page. World knowledge is the most reliable way to pick a wrong option.
Not thisThe writer says he was disappointed, so he didn’t enjoy the trip.
ThisThe writer says he was disappointed by the weather but enjoyed the trip overall.
Attitude questions usually need the whole sentence, including the contrast word: but, although, even so.
Not this‘It’ refers to the journey, because the journey is the topic.
This‘It’ refers to the nearest suitable noun that makes the sentence work.
Reference is grammatical before it is thematic. Substitution settles it in seconds.
Not thisI didn’t understand paragraph three, so I left all those questions.
ThisI answered the detail questions I could locate and guessed the rest.
There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so an unanswered question is a guaranteed zero.
Not thisThe writer thinks the tour was too expensive, because her friend said so.
ThisHer friend thought it was too expensive; the writer says it was worth the money.
Reported opinions belong to the person who held them. Questions often ask about the writer precisely where someone else disagrees.
Not thisWhen I was a child I am living in Leeds.
ThisWhen I was a child I lived in Leeds.
Narrative texts stay in the past simple for finished states. Mixing in a present tense makes your own answer-checking harder to trust.
Not thisThe text says the museum is free, so the answer is ‘it costs nothing’.
ThisThe text says entry is free but the exhibition costs £8, so the answer is the exhibition charge.
Detail questions often turn on the second half of a sentence, where a limit or an exception is added.
Not thisI read the questions first and then searched for words.
ThisI read the text first, then used the questions in order.
Word-searching finds the paragraph but not the meaning, and the paragraph usually contains a distractor built from the same words.
40 original questions. The first 10 are open to everyone. Answers are checked in your browser and never sent to us, so you can share this page with a class as it is.
2Complete with one word.
3Explain in one sentence why you should read a Part 3 text once before looking at the questions.
One good answer
Reading it once gives you the shape of the text — who it is about and what changes — so you can go straight to the right paragraph instead of searching the whole page for each question.
4Complete with the past simple of one verb.
7Complete with the past participle of one verb.
9Complete with the past simple of one verb.
12Complete with one word.
14Complete with one word.
15A question asks: ‘What does the writer regret?’ Explain in one sentence how you would find the answer in the text.
One good answer
I would look for a sentence where the writer says what they wish they had done differently — often with ‘should have’, ‘if only’ or ‘I wish’ — and read the sentence before and after it as well.
17Complete with one word.
19Complete with one verb in the present simple, third person.
22Complete with the past simple of one verb.
23Complete with the past simple of one verb.
26Complete with one verb.
28A question asks: ‘What surprised the writer about the village?’ Explain in one sentence where you would look in the text.
One good answer
I would look for a sentence containing a word like ‘surprised’, ‘expected’, ‘I had thought’ or ‘to my astonishment’, and read the sentence after it too, because that is usually where the actual surprise is described.
29Complete with one word beginning the linker.
31Complete with one verb in the present simple.
34Complete with one word.
35Explain in one sentence why the sentence after the one you find is often worth reading as well.
One good answer
Writers often state a fact in one sentence and their reaction to it in the next, so the answer to an opinion question frequently sits just after the line that seems to contain the information.
36Complete with the past simple of one verb.
39Complete with one word.
Note
Pick Two Activity is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Cambridge University Press & Assessment, the British Council, IDP, ETS, Duolingo or any other exam board. Exam names are trademarks of their owners and are used here only to describe the exam you are preparing for. Every question on this page is original practice written by us: we do not provide, copy or reproduce official exam papers.
Around twelve minutes, including the first read. If you are running short, answer the detail questions first — they are faster to locate than the opinion ones.
That is fine, and it may even help: every answer is on the page, so a candidate with no prior knowledge is less tempted by options that are true in general but not stated.
Look for verbs like feel, think, find and decide in the question stem: ‘How did the writer feel about…’, ‘What did the writer think when…’. These need the whole sentence, including any contrast word.
Lightly. Mark the names, the times and any word that signals a change of feeling — suddenly, however, at first, in the end. Underlining half the text is the same as underlining none of it.
Find the difference between them and take that difference back to the text. Usually one option adds a word — ‘always’, ‘only’, ‘never’ — that the text does not support.
You can answer some detail questions that way, but not the opinion or purpose questions, which are where the marks are lost. One quick full read costs two minutes and pays for itself.