Aptis Reading Test Part 3: Opinion Matching

Aptis Reading Test Part 3: Opinion Matching

The third part of the Aptis General Reading Test is Opinion Matching. It tests your ability to read and understand short texts. In this part you will read four short texts, each of which expresses an opinion on the same topic. You then have to match these four different people’s opinions to seven statements.

In the exam, these people are called Person A, Person B, Person C and Person D (not exactly imaginative names!). For each of the seven statements you have to select the correct person from the drop-down list. This means that there will be more than one statement per person.

(NOTE: Although the British Council refers to seven statements, from the very few examples they’ve given, they actually seem to be seven questions of this type: ‘Who thinks …? Who says …? Who feels …?’)

We’ve already given you some advice in Top Tips to Help you Pass the Aptis Reading Test, but we’ll repeat the most important aspect here – it’s preparation! Reading as much as possible and as many different types of texts as possible will help you tremendously. The British Council recommends these graded readers:

This is how we suggest you approach the opinion matching task

Quickly read each paragraph to get a general idea of what the text is about. This type of reading is called skimming.

Then look at the questions and read the people’s opinions again, more slowly this time, with the questions in mind. See if anyone ‘jumps out’ at you.

Be careful – sometimes the statements/questions contain the same words as one of the opinions, but that doesn’t always mean it’s the correct answer.

Read everything again once you’ve finished. You can always go back and change your answers.

Even if you’re not sure about the answer, never leave anything blank. Just have a guess – after all, you’ve got a one in four chance of getting it right!

Reading Practice Test Part 3:  Opinion Matching

We advise you to do our practice tests in exam conditions so that you get used to reading under pressure. This means keeping an eye on the time.

No examples are done for you in this part of the test. We considered giving our people more imaginative names, like Ana, Babor, Chinara and Dana, but in the end we’ve done it like in the exam! (Person A, Person B etc.)

Press ‘Check’ when you’ve finished. If you’ve made a mistake, press ‘Retry‘.  If you still haven’t got it right, you can look at the solution. Good luck!