► Have a quick look at the text.How long is it? What is the title? Are there any pictures?What type of text is it? Descriptive, Narrative, Poetic or Dialogue. How many paragraphs are there? What is the main topic?

 ► Use the Skimming and Scanning techniques. Take notes of the key words, those ones that you know and that are similar to the Italian words; for the difficult ones, try to understand first the meaning through the phrase, at last find them up in the dictionary.

►Read very carefully the FIRST and the LAST paragraph, because it is there that you can find the most important information. What is the message of the author?

► If there are some questions, first try to read all of them and understand the meaning, then start to answer to the first ones.

QUESTION TYPES:

There are two main types of questions: Closed questions and Open questions.

 ►Closed questions sometimes ask for TRUE/FALSE or YES/NO answers or they have multiple choice answers; EX:Are Jane and Kate American?.Yes, they are/No, they aren't.

Often you have to answer a closed question with a short answer. Check that the subject and auxiliary correspond to the ones in the question ! EX: Luke is a pizza fan. His favourite one is with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. Does Luke like pizza? The answer is :Yes, he does.

►Closed  questions require also a choice from a list:Do you you like  meat or vegetables?

►Open questions often begin with WH- words (WHERE, dove- WHEN, quando-WHO, chi-WHY, perchè- WHAT, cosa -WHICH, quale-HOW, come-HOW MUCH, quanta/quanto-or HOW MANY, quanti/quante).Here you need to give a long answer. EX: Jane and her brother live with their parents in Bath. How many people are there in Jane’s family? The correct answer is:There are four people in John’s family

►Open questions  require quite long answers. EX 1: Why do you think John likes football? Here you have to deduce the answer from what is implied in the text EX 2: What do you think of John? Here you are asked to give your opinion.