Spanish reading practice

Reading practice that ends with questions

Reading practice works best with texts that are short, about something you care about and a little above your level. The articles on this page were written for learners of Spanish at four CEFR levels, from texts of 150 words at A1 to essays of about 1,000 words at B2, on what adults read about anyway: food, travel, films, health, science and work.

Almost every article ends with a few comprehension questions, like the ones in the reading part of the DELE. Answer them in Lingard when you finish: they show at once whether you understood the text or only recognised its words. Tap a Spanish word you do not know to see its translation and save it for review.

How to practise reading in Spanish

Choose a level where you tap fewer than one word in ten. If you tap more, go down a shelf; if you tap almost none, go up. Many of the words you tap in Spanish will be forms of verbs you already know, such as fue or hizo, so learn the irregular past forms early: they come up in almost every article.

Read the article once without stopping, then answer the questions. Spanish leaves out the subject pronoun, so when an answer depends on who did something, look at the verb ending: habló and hablé are different people.

Save the words you expect to meet again, not every new one. Watch for false friends: embarazada means pregnant and actual means current, and a whole answer can turn on a word like that.

Questions beginners ask

How long does one article take?

Most A1 texts are 150 to 300 words, two or three minutes of reading. A B2 article runs to about 1,000 words, ten minutes or a little more. Every card shows its reading time.

Is this good practice for an exam?

Yes, for the reading part of DELE or SIELE at the same level: a text of a few hundred words and questions about it. The questions here do not follow any exam's format, so practise the format itself with an official sample paper.

What if an article is too hard?

Go down a level for a week, then try again. If one sentence blocks you, tap it to see it translated, then read it once more in Spanish.