Goethe A1 Reading (Lesen): How to Answer All Fifteen Questions

You are not asked to understand the texts — only to find one fact in each. The writer-receiver rule, the negation words that flip an answer, and the trap that decides half of part three.

The reading section is where candidates lose marks they did not need to lose, because they try to read. At A1 the texts contain words you have never seen, and that is deliberate — you are not being asked whether you understood an email. You are being asked whether you can find one fact in it.

Once you read it that way, the whole section becomes a search task, and the same five habits answer nearly every question.

What the Lesen section is

About twenty-five minutes, fifteen questions, in three parts:

Fifteen questions in twenty-five minutes is ninety seconds each — enough to find one fact, not enough to translate a paragraph. (Formats are revised from time to time; check the current one on the Goethe-Institut's site before your exam.)

Teil 1: emails and letters

Before you read anything: mark who is who

Write W next to the writer and R next to the receiver before you look at the questions. The questions name people, and swapping them is the most common wrong answer in the whole section.

In an A1 email this is simple and it never varies:

• ich, mir, mich, mein → the writer
• Sie, Ihnen, Ihr, Ihre → the receiver

So a sentence containing ich and Ihnen is the writer doing something for the receiver — and you can often answer a question from those two words alone, without understanding the verb between them.

Worked example

Sehr geehrte Frau Schneider,

vielen Dank für die Einladung zu Ihrer Theateraufführung. Ich komme gern. Ich muss kein
Hotel suchen, weil ich in Ihrem Gästezimmer schlafen kann. Kann ich Ihnen am Nachmittag bei
etwas helfen? Mein Bus kommt gegen 15:30 Uhr an.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Michael Braun

1. Herr Braun schläft im Hotel. The question's key words are schlafen and Hotel. Find Hotel in the text: Ich muss kein Hotel suchen. One word decides it — kein. → falsch

2. Herr Braun bietet Frau Schneider seine Hilfe an. Key word: Hilfe. Find helfen: Kann ich Ihnen … helfen? — ich is Herr Braun, Ihnen is Frau Schneider. You never need to know what bei etwas means. → richtig

Negation words flip the answer

Circle every kein, keine and nicht as you read. In a true/false exam, one small word is the whole question, and it is the word candidates skim over.

Watch the day arithmetic

A second worked email, this one written on a Tuesday:

Liebe Frau Weber,

ich komme heute nicht aus München zurück. Morgen habe ich ein Gespräch mit der Kundin
Frau Lindt. Am Donnerstag sind noch zwei Termine. Am Freitag bin ich ab 9 Uhr im Büro.
Können Sie mir bitte einen Termin mit Dr. Hahn vereinbaren?

Viele Grüße
Katja Meier

3. Frau Meier ist in München. Ich komme heute nicht aus München zurück — she is not coming back, so she is still there. The negation proves the opposite of what it looks like. → richtig

4. Am Mittwoch hat Frau Meier frei. The text never says Mittwoch. It says morgen — and the email was written on Tuesday, so tomorrow is Wednesday, and tomorrow she has a Gespräch. → falsch

5. Am Freitag will Frau Meier Dr. Hahn treffen. Am Freitag … im Büro, and she asks for an appointment with Dr. Hahn. → richtig

Always convert heute, morgen and übermorgen into real weekdays before you answer. Questions name the weekday; texts name the relative day. That gap is the trap.

What frei means in these texts

Frei comes up constantly, and it is decided by what else is in the sentence:

• Free: essen gehen, ins Restaurant gehen, Zeit haben, nichts vorhaben
• Not free: ein Termin, ein Gespräch, eine Besprechung, ein Kurs, arbeiten

If a diary entry exists for that day, the person is not free — no matter how pleasant the entry sounds.

Teil 2: choosing between two adverts

The question describes something you want. Two small adverts follow. One fits.

Read both adverts before you answer

The first advert almost always looks plausible — it contains the obvious keyword. The second is where the exam hides the deciding detail. Choosing after reading only advert a is how candidates lose these marks.

Look for the disqualifier, not the match

Both adverts usually match your keyword. Only one of them is possible. The fastest method is to find the reason one advert cannot work:

Two habits do all of that work: mark the days and times in the question, then hunt for days and times in the adverts; and mark the key noun — a name, a place, a thing.

Teil 3: notices and signs

Short public texts: a sign on a bakery door, a note in a restaurant, an announcement at a station. Then one richtig / falsch statement each. Same tools as Teil 1 — dates, times, negation — plus one idea that decides most of these items.

The partial-restriction trap

A notice almost never removes something completely. It removes one way of doing it, or one period, and leaves another open. The statement then claims the thing is impossible — and is therefore falsch.

Once you see this pattern you will spot it every time:

Ab 21 Uhr ist unser Büro geschlossen. Fahrkarten bekommen Sie am Automaten.

Ab 21 Uhr kann man keine Fahrkarten kaufen. → falsch — you can, just not at the office.

**Vom 1. bis 8. Juni fährt die U2 nur bis Hauptbahnhof. Zur Messe nehmen Sie die U1 oder den
Bus 114.**

Am 2. Juni kann man nicht zum Hauptbahnhof fahren. → falsch — the Hauptbahnhof is exactly
as far as it does go. What you cannot reach is the Messe.

Two more, showing the other two shapes:

Ab nächstem Monat kocht bei uns ein Koch aus Mexiko.

Jeden Dienstag bietet das Restaurant mexikanisches Essen an. → falsch — *ab nächstem
Monat is not jeden Dienstag*. Watch for a statement that invents a frequency the notice never
gave.

Die Zwei-Zimmer-Wohnung ist schon vermietet. Besichtigungen sind nicht mehr möglich.

Man kann die Wohnung nicht mehr mieten. → richtig — here the notice really does close the
door, and schon vermietet says so.

And the simplest kind, where the answer is just a matching time:

Ab sofort sonntags von 8 bis 12 Uhr geöffnet.

Am Sonntag kann man hier vormittags Brot kaufen. → richtig — 8 to 12 is the Vormittag.

The five habits, in order

1. Mark the writer and the receiver before you read the questions. ich = writer, Sie/Ihnen/Ihr = receiver.
2. **Circle every kein, keine, nicht.** One of them is usually the entire answer.
3. Turn relative days into weekdays. Heute, morgen, übermorgen — work out what the question's weekday actually refers to.
4. Mark days, times and dates in the question first, then look for them in the text. Most Teil 2 and Teil 3 items are decided by a number.
5. Ask what is still possible. Before marking richtig on a statement that says something cannot be done, check whether the notice left another way open.

And do not try to understand everything

You will meet unknown words in every text. That is by design, and it costs you nothing. Take the key word from the question, find it in the text, read the sentence around it, and answer. If ninety seconds pass, mark your best guess and move on — there is no penalty for a wrong answer, and a minute spent on one item is a minute stolen from two others.

The rest of the exam is covered in the same series: the email you have to write, and the questions and requests in the speaking test.