The four tasks of the DELE B2 reading paper
| Task | Text | What you do | Items | Skill tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One long informative or argumentative text (~400–450 words) | Multiple choice, 3 options | 6 | General and detailed comprehension, author's opinion |
| 2 | Four short texts by different people on the same topic (~150 words each) | Match 10 statements to the person (A, B, C, D) | 10 | Locating specific information, paraphrase |
| 3 | A text from which 6 fragments have been removed | Choose the right fragment from 8 options | 6 | Text structure, cohesion, connectors, pronouns |
| 4 | A text with 14 gaps | Choose the right word or form, 3 options | 14 | Grammar and vocabulary in context |
The format above reflects the current exam as described in the Instituto Cervantes' published specifications; always check the latest Guía del examen on the official DELE website before your exam, as minor details are updated from time to time.
Strategies
Read the questions before the text. In task 1, underline the key words of each question; in task 2, read the ten statements first and look for their paraphrase in the texts — the exam almost never uses the same words as the text.
- Skim first (1–2 minutes): title, first and last paragraph, first sentence of each paragraph. Ask: What is the topic? What is the author's position?
- Paraphrase detection: the right answer usually says the same thing with different words (no es imprescindible = no hace falta; ha disminuido = es menor que antes). Wrong options often repeat words of the text but change the meaning.
- Watch the small words that change everything: no, solo, siempre, nunca, todos, algunos, aún, ya, ni siquiera, más que, menos que, salvo, sin embargo.
- In task 3, look at what comes before and after each gap: pronouns (este, ello, dichos), connectors (sin embargo, además, por eso), repeated words, verb tenses. One fragment is never used — beware of distractors that "sound" right but break the logic.
- In task 4, read the whole sentence before choosing: the gap often depends on a word that comes later (para que → subjunctive; de lo que; preposition required by the verb).
- Time management: about 20 min for task 1, 20 for task 2, 15 for task 3, 12 for task 4, and 3 minutes to transfer answers. Never leave a gap: wrong answers are not penalised.
Unknown words
You will never know every word. Deduce the meaning from:
- the word family: desempleo (des- + empleo), encarecimiento (caro → encarecer → encarecimiento);
- French and English cognates: escaso ≈ scarce, la escasez ≈ scarcity; el beneficio ≈ bénéfice; but beware of false friends (Part III, L4);
- the context: the sentence before and after, and the connector (pero signals contrast, es decir a reformulation).
Extensive reading plan
Alongside the exam tasks, read for pleasure at least 20 minutes a day. Research on vocabulary coverage suggests that comfortable, unassisted reading requires knowing around 98 % of the running words of a text (Hu & Nation, 2000), so choose texts slightly below your level at first:
| Weeks | Type of reading |
|---|---|
| 1–8 | Graded readers (A2–B1 level), children's news sites, short articles |
| 9–16 | Graded readers B1–B2, opinion columns, popular-science articles, Wikipedia in Spanish on topics you know |
| 17–26 | Short novels and story collections in Spanish, daily newspaper articles, reports from international organisations in Spanish |
Keep a reading log: date, title, minutes, 5 new words. In six months you will have collected over 600 words in context.