True / False + Justification
If this task is on your paper, it carries 10 points of the twenty the reading part is worth. It is not certain to be there: the sample reading paper is a catalogue of four tasks worth 34 points together, and a live paper takes whole tasks adding up to exactly 20. Every item asks you to answer twice. Here is one row of the answer sheet, before you have touched it.
The lighthouse warned ships for more than a century.
The cross in the box is your decision. The four words on the ruled line are the sentence from the text that decision stands on. The sheet asks for both, and the second is where a right decision most easily goes to waste.
From here on you just work. I am explaining nothing in advance: after each item I will say what it turned on, and the next item will already know about it.
The text, and one item done for you
One text carries almost the whole article. Read it through before you go on, because you will be searching it eight times.
This is a training text, not an exam text. On the exam, the text for this task is a full article, several times as long as the one below. It is short here on purpose: while you are still working out the task itself, a long text is only in the way. What it does not train is holding on to what the text was about while you hunt down the eighth sentence out of thirty, and for that you go to the trainer.
From 1904 until 2011 the lighthouse at Kaltbach warned ships away from the rocks. It went dark when the shipping lane was moved two kilometres north. Most of the equipment was sold at auction, but the lamp itself stayed. The building was sold by the town to a retired teacher, Anna Ferl, who turned the top three floors into a hotel. Guests may climb the tower only in daylight, because the stairs have no railing. "We lost one guest for an hour last winter," Ferl admitted. The ground-floor room is still full of the old logbooks, and nobody has read them. Since 2019 the lamp has been switched on once a year, and half the village comes to watch. The fog siren from the roof now stands in the village museum. The old furniture was given away, not sold at auction. A retired teacher from the next village had bid for the building a year before Ferl did. The tower was painted white in 1970, and nobody has repainted it since.
On the real sheet, the item numbered 0 comes filled in for you. That is not our kindness, it is the exam page: it prints a specimen and does not count it.
The lighthouse no longer guides ships.
Decision: the text says the lighthouse went dark, so it is true. Justification: that same sentence, its first four words, exactly as printed. Not 'went dark when', not 'It went dark when the lane', but the first four.
Your turn now. Eight items on this text, and two more at the end on another one.
Items 1–4
Two steps. Click the sentence in the text that your answer rests on, then mark the statement true or false.
Below exam levelFrom 1904 until 2011 the lighthouse at Kaltbach warned ships away from the rocks. It went dark when the shipping lane was moved two kilometres north. Most of the equipment was sold at auction, but the lamp itself stayed. The building was sold by the town to a retired teacher, Anna Ferl, who turned the top three floors into a hotel. Guests may climb the tower only in daylight, because the stairs have no railing. "We lost one guest for an hour last winter," Ferl admitted. The ground-floor room is still full of the old logbooks, and nobody has read them. Since 2019 the lamp has been switched on once a year, and half the village comes to watch. The fog siren from the roof now stands in the village museum. The old furniture was given away, not sold at auction. A retired teacher from the next village had bid for the building a year before Ferl did. The tower was painted white in 1970, and nobody has repainted it since.
Statement
The tower has had no fresh paint since 1970.
That item was easy on purpose. It is here so you notice where the work begins: with finding a sentence, not with the feeling that something sounds about right.
Click the first word, then the last one, to mark the four words you would write on the sheet.
Below exam levelFour words. Nothing marked yet.
Statement
The lighthouse protected ships from the rocks for more than a hundred years.
You count from the start of the sentence, not from the place where the meaning is hiding. Your four words do not tell the marker what you thought, they let him find the line. It is an identifying mark, not a summary.
Two steps. Click the sentence in the text that your answer rests on, then mark the statement true or false.
Exam levelFrom 1904 until 2011 the lighthouse at Kaltbach warned ships away from the rocks. It went dark when the shipping lane was moved two kilometres north. Most of the equipment was sold at auction, but the lamp itself stayed. The building was sold by the town to a retired teacher, Anna Ferl, who turned the top three floors into a hotel. Guests may climb the tower only in daylight, because the stairs have no railing. "We lost one guest for an hour last winter," Ferl admitted. The ground-floor room is still full of the old logbooks, and nobody has read them. Since 2019 the lamp has been switched on once a year, and half the village comes to watch. The fog siren from the roof now stands in the village museum. The old furniture was given away, not sold at auction. A retired teacher from the next village had bid for the building a year before Ferl did. The tower was painted white in 1970, and nobody has repainted it since.
Statement
Everything inside the lighthouse was sold at auction.
The swapped word sat in the statement. The next item is not settled in the statement at all, but in where you start counting inside the sentence.
Click the first word, then the last one, to mark the four words you would write on the sheet.
Exam levelFour words. Nothing marked yet.
Statement
Nobody has read the old logbooks kept on the ground floor.
Items 5–8
Four items done, and the work has so far split in two: find the sentence, then count off four words inside it. From here on both halves get contested.
Two steps. Click the sentence in the text that your answer rests on, then mark the statement true or false.
Exam levelFrom 1904 until 2011 the lighthouse at Kaltbach warned ships away from the rocks. It went dark when the shipping lane was moved two kilometres north. Most of the equipment was sold at auction, but the lamp itself stayed. The building was sold by the town to a retired teacher, Anna Ferl, who turned the top three floors into a hotel. Guests may climb the tower only in daylight, because the stairs have no railing. "We lost one guest for an hour last winter," Ferl admitted. The ground-floor room is still full of the old logbooks, and nobody has read them. Since 2019 the lamp has been switched on once a year, and half the village comes to watch. The fog siren from the roof now stands in the village museum. The old furniture was given away, not sold at auction. A retired teacher from the next village had bid for the building a year before Ferl did. The tower was painted white in 1970, and nobody has repainted it since.
Statement
A retired teacher sold the building.
So much for the direction of the action. In the next item what is in dispute is not the meaning of the sentence but what counts as its first word at all.
Click the first word, then the last one, to mark the four words you would write on the sheet.
Above exam levelFour words. Nothing marked yet.
Statement
A guest once went missing inside the lighthouse for a while.
A mark stuck to a word, and you copied it across along with the word. In the next item two sentences in the text look like the statement, and only one of them carries it.
Two steps. Click the sentence in the text that your answer rests on, then mark the statement true or false.
Exam levelFrom 1904 until 2011 the lighthouse at Kaltbach warned ships away from the rocks. It went dark when the shipping lane was moved two kilometres north. Most of the equipment was sold at auction, but the lamp itself stayed. The building was sold by the town to a retired teacher, Anna Ferl, who turned the top three floors into a hotel. Guests may climb the tower only in daylight, because the stairs have no railing. "We lost one guest for an hour last winter," Ferl admitted. The ground-floor room is still full of the old logbooks, and nobody has read them. Since 2019 the lamp has been switched on once a year, and half the village comes to watch. The fog siren from the roof now stands in the village museum. The old furniture was given away, not sold at auction. A retired teacher from the next village had bid for the building a year before Ferl did. The tower was painted white in 1970, and nobody has repainted it since.
Statement
Someone had offered to buy the lighthouse before Anna Ferl did.
Up to now you have hunted for the whole sentence every time. This time there is nothing to hunt for, there is only one sentence, and the work moves inside the statement instead.
Click the one word of the statement that the passage contradicts.
Above exam levelOne word. Nothing marked yet.
From 1904 until 2011 the lighthouse at Kaltbach warned ships away from the rocks.
Statement
The last two items, on a different text
Same format, a text you have not seen. On the exam it is new to you too, so there is nothing to be gained from testing your memory of the lighthouse.
The bakery moved to the harbour in 2004. Its ovens, installed by the founder in 1951, were carried across the town on a truck. Only the sourdough starter was left behind, and a neighbour kept it alive for the eleven days the move took.
Two steps. Click the sentence in the text that your answer rests on, then mark the statement true or false.
Exam levelThe bakery moved to the harbour in 2004. Its ovens, installed by the founder in 1951, were carried across the town on a truck. Only the sourdough starter was left behind, and a neighbour kept it alive for the eleven days the move took.
Statement
Someone outside the bakery looked after the starter.
You found that sentence by a word that appears nowhere else in the text. The last item leaves you nothing to find: all of the work is in where the fourth word of this sentence ends.
Click the first word, then the last one, to mark the four words you would write on the sheet.
Above exam levelFour words. Nothing marked yet.
Statement
The bakery's ovens were driven across town on a truck.
What to take with you
| Points for the task | 10, if the task is on your paper |
| Statements in the exam | 10, plus the unscored example 0 |
| What you write | a cross and four words |
| Length of the justification | exactly four words, from the sentence start |
| Penalty for a wrong answer | none printed in the sample paper or key |
Three things the table does not hold, and you have just been through all three by hand. The order: sentence first, decision second, or else you go looking for confirmation and you find it. The one official sample split its ten verdicts five true and five false, but that is one paper and not a rule: a doubtful item is settled by the text, never by counting your crosses. And an empty box is a guaranteed zero, and the official sample paper and its key print no deduction for a wrong answer: the only deduction table in the paper is for the length of the blog comment.
One more thing, for your peace of mind. More than one sentence in the text can fit, and the exam instructions say so outright: "there may be more than one correct answer, write down only one". Differing from the key is not a mistake in itself. The mistake is a sentence that does not carry your decision.
Multiple Matching: the other ten-point task in the reading partWas this article helpful?