Aptis for Teachers: Reading Test Part 3: Short Text Comprehension
Reading Test Part 3 tests your ability to read and understand short texts. You have to read a text of about 150 words, but seven of the words are missing. Your task is to complete the text by selecting the appropriate words to fill in the gaps. In order to do this you need to understand the text as a whole, not just on sentence-level. (If you remember, Part 1 of the Reading Test is exactly that; sentence comprehension.)
There’s a list of ten words to choose from, which means there will be three you won’t use. (These extra words are known as distractors.) You have to fill the gaps by dragging the words from the bottom of the screen into the empty boxes. It’s not a problem if you change your mind, as you can move the words around until you make you final decision.
Before we start, let’s have a quick look at the timing of the Reading Test. You have a total of 35 minutes. In order to have a minute or two for a final check at the end, we suggest that you divide your time among the parts as follows:
- Sentence Comprehension (gap-fill on word-level)): maximum 3 minutes
- Text Cohesion (reordering the sentences): maximum 7 minutes
- Short Text Comprehension (gap-fill on text level): maximum 10 minutes
- Long Text Comprehension (matching headings to paragraphs): maximum 13-14 minutes
Our practice tests
As you’ll have seen, our tests for Parts 1 and 2 are in exactly the same format as the official Aptis Test. The tasks are identical too. For Reading Test Part 3, the format is the same – you click and drag the words from the list. However, there is one difference in the task. We haven’t been able to include the three distractors, so you just have the seven words you need to fill the gaps. We’re working on how we can include the distractors within the same format in future. Meanwhile, these practice tests will still give you good exam practice.
In the exam you only have to do one of these tasks, but we’ve got two for you to practise with here.
Reading Test Part 3: Short Text Comprehension 1
We got the idea for this text after reading about Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a non-profit organisation in Bangladesh. As teachers, we find it extremely interesting, and we think you will too. So after you’ve done the test, you can read all about it at https://www.shidhulai.org/. We’d be interested to hear what you think.
As well as finding out about fantastic initiatives like this one, reading these kinds of texts will really help you to expand your teaching vocabulary. You’ll read words in context and learn a lot too. We’ll give you more recommendations for stimulating reading material for teachers in the next post.
Reading Test Part 3: Short Text Comprehension 2
Next steps
The best way to improve your skills in this area is to read as much as you can. Look at our Top Tips to help you pass the Reading Test, where we talk about Graded Readers and other materials.
Remember to do Aptis for Teachers Reading Part 1: Sentence Comprehension , Aptis for Teachers Reading Test Part 2: Text Cohesion and Aptis for Teachers Reading Test Part 4: Long Text Comprehension.
For further practice, we recommend you also try the Aptis General Reading Tests. Part 1 and Part 2 are basically the same as Aptis for Teachers – only the content matter is different. Part 3 is a different kind of test, but all practice is good practice!
Make sure you also read the Overview of the Reading Test to familiarise yourself with all four parts.