Aptis Advanced Reading Test: Overview
Here’s an overview of the Aptis ESOL Advanced Reading Test. If you’ve done Aptis General or Aptis for Teachers, some parts of the test will already be familiar to you. However, the format isn’t the same throughout, and the timing is different too. The tasks starts at B1 level and get more and more difficult as the test continues.
There are four parts to the Advanced Reading Test, and four question-types: opinion matching, long text comprehension, reading for global understanding, and reading across two texts.
So let’s have a look at the four question-types. We’ve included screenshots of the British Council’s examples here to give you an idea of what the test looks like. We’ll be preparing our own Advanced Reading test practice material shortly.
It takes 60 mins to complete this component of the test.
Part 1: Opinion Matching
This part tests your ability to read and understand short texts. You will read four people’s opinions on the same topic. Then you have to read seven statements and decide which person’s opinion matches each statement. You complete the task by selecting the correct person from the drop-down list.
Tips: Read all four opinions before trying to answer the questions. We suggest that you quickly read through the texts, then look at the questions and read the texts again, this time with the questions in mind. You should look for synonyms to help you. Remember that the same person can be used for more than one answer. To prepare, read the comments section in online media and try to summarize the main opinions.
Part 2: Long Text Comprehension
In the second part, you match an appropriate heading to each paragraph of a long text (about 750 words). There are eight headings, and you have to match seven of them to the paragraphs in the text. (This means there’s always an extra heading that does not fit with any paragraph.)
Tips: Before starting the task, read the whole text quickly, and then read the headings carefully. Look for clues to connect the headings to the paragraphs, such as similar words, ideas or topics. To prepare, read magazine and newspaper articles and try to find the main idea for each paragraph.
Part 3: Reading for Global Understanding
In the third part, you will read a short gapped text (about 300 words). You have to choose the right word or phrase to complete each of the five gaps. There are always three options per gap in the drop-down list.
Tip: Make sure you read the whole text before trying to answer. This is because all of the options are grammatically possible, so you need to understand the whole text in order to choose the correct one.
Part 4: Reading across Two Texts
For the final part, you will read two short gapped texts on the same topic. There are six gaps, and you have to fill them in with the appropriate phrase. Again, there are always three options per gap in the drop-down list.
Tip: You need to read both texts before answering, because – again– all of the options are grammatically possible. Therefore you can only choose the correct one if you have understood both texts.
Next Steps
Check out our other Advanced materials: