PET Reading – Part1: 5 Short Texts

Questions and Answers
What do I have to read?
5 very short texts.

What types of text are they?
The texts are things like signs and messages, postcards, notes, emails, and labels.
Here's an example:

What do I have to do?
You have to read the text and decide which of three sentences 'A, B, or C' best describes the information in the text.
Here are three sentences for the short message above:

A) Students must return the books to the bookcases.

B) Library staff should tell the students to shut the windows and doors before leaving.

C) Library staff have to put the books back and close all the windows and doors.
How do I do it?
1. First, decide what type of text it is, and who the information is for.
Read the text carefully, looking for the importat words that communicate the message.

2. Next, read sentences A, B and C and decide which sentences are NOT the correct answer.
There is usually 1 sentence which is cleary incorrect.

3. Now you need to choose between 2 sentences, which is easier.

4. When you have decided, read the text again to make sure the information is the same.

So, which option above is correct?
1. The text is a message to library staff in an education centre.

Important words: 'remind', 'students' 'put back', 'shelves', 'before', 'make sure', 'closed', 'bookcases', 'shut'

2. We can see that sentence A) looks good. 'return' means 'put back' and 'bookcases' have 'shelves'. What about sentences B) and C)?
In B), We can see that 'should tell' is similar to 'remind', but who has to 'close all windows and doors'? The students or the library staff?
Let's look at C) for a moment. 'Library staff have to put the books back'. Well no, it's clear here that the students have to do this.

3. So it's between A) and B).

A) is clearly the best option and if we look at B) again, we can see that it's the library staff who have to close the windows and doors, not the students.

4. Sentence A) looks like the best option. Let's look at the text again to check.

'Please remind students to put books back on the shelves'
A) Students must return the books to the bookcases.

The message in both the text and sentence A) is the same.

So, option A) is the correct answer.

Now let's do Reading part 1 with the 5 different texts.