2.4 Reading Tarea 4: Long Narrative Text & Changes of Topic

Quick Focus: Reading Tarea 4 is the last and longest reading task. You read one narrative text of 375–425 words and answer 6 multiple-choice questions (items 20–25), each with three options (A, B, C). The official specification says the task measures your ability to identify the essential ideas and the changes of topic in a simple narrative text. Plan on about 15–18 minutes.

What the Official Specification Says

In the official model exam (Modelo 0), Tarea 4 is a blog entry. A young man describes his studies, his arrival in Madrid, how he started a blog about the city's history, and what he plans to do next. The six questions ask why he started the blog, what he did when he arrived, how the blog gets its content, what the blog has given him, what he wants to change, and a detail about his past. That pattern is typical: one question per stage of the story.

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How a Tarea 4 Text Is Built

Narrative texts at this level usually move through recognizable stages. Each stage is often a paragraph, and the questions tend to follow the text in order.

1. Presentation: who the person is, where they are from, what they studied or do.
2. Background or motive: why something started (Por eso, cuando llegué a…, pensé en…).
3. Development: what they did, how the project works, who helps.
4. Evaluation: advantages and disadvantages (tiene cosas buenas pero también malas).
5. Result or achievement: what came out of it (gracias a…, he podido…).
6. Present and future plans: ahora quiero…, el año que viene voy a….

Recognizing these stages is what "identifying changes of topic" means in practice. Before you read the text, skim the six question stems and label each one with its likely stage. For example, Según el texto, Manuel empezó el blog porque… is a motive question, and Según el texto, Manuel quiere… is a plans question.

Signals that the topic is changing

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The Three Distractor Patterns in Tarea 4

Because the text is long, the wrong options usually borrow real words from it. Expect three kinds of trap:

• Wrong time frame. The text says Antes escribía en un blog de fútbol con un amigo, and an option says Tiene otro blog con un amigo. The word blog and the friend appear, but the action is past, not present. The Modelo 0 uses exactly this trap: the correct answer is that he used to write about football.
• Wrong person. The text mentions several people (readers, a bookseller, a friend). An option gives one person's action to the main character: Hace preguntas a la gente que lo lee when in fact readers write to him.
• Exaggeration or unsupported conclusion. The text says the blog helped him visit special places sin gastar un euro. Options such as se ha hecho famoso or gana bastante dinero sound plausible, but the text never says so. At A2, the correct option is almost always a simple paraphrase of one sentence, not an inference.

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A Worked Example

Read this original practice passage (about 180 words, shorter than the real 375–425):

Me llamo Irene y soy de Valladolid. Durante diez años trabajé en un banco, pero no era feliz: pasaba el día delante del ordenador y casi no veía a la gente. En 2021 mi abuela me enseñó a hacer pan, y cada fin de semana horneaba para mi familia y mis vecinos.

Un día, una vecina me preguntó si podía comprarme dos barras cada semana. Así empezó todo. Al principio vendía solo en el barrio; después alquilé un local pequeño cerca de la plaza Mayor.

Lo más difícil fue levantarme a las cuatro de la mañana. Sin embargo, ahora hablo con los clientes todos los días y eso me encanta.

El año que viene quiero dar clases de panadería para niños los sábados, porque creo que es importante aprender a cocinar con las manos.

Question A. Irene dejó su trabajo en el banco porque…

• a) ganaba poco dinero.
• b) no tenía contacto con las personas.
• c) su abuela necesitaba ayuda.

The text says casi no veía a la gente, so the answer is b, a paraphrase of that sentence. Option a is invented; option c misuses the grandmother, who taught her but did not need help.

Question B. Según el texto, Irene…

• a) vende pan en la plaza Mayor desde el principio.
• b) tuvo la idea del negocio gracias a una vecina.
• c) da clases a niños los sábados.

The answer is b (Un día, una vecina me preguntó… Así empezó todo). Option a is a wrong time frame: she sold in the neighbourhood first and rented the shop later. Option c is a plan for next year, not a present fact.

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Step-by-Step Method (15–18 minutes)

1. Read the six stems, not the options (1 minute). Label each stem with a stage: motive, action, evaluation, plans.
2. Read the whole text once for the story line (4–5 minutes). Mark paragraph changes with a slash and note the time words (antes, después, ahora, el año que viene).
3. Answer in order (8–10 minutes). For each question, go back to the matching paragraph, find the sentence and compare it with the three options. Check tense (past/present/future), person (who did it) and polarity (no, nunca, tampoco).
4. Eliminate before choosing. Cross out the option that contradicts the text and the one the text never mentions. Choose the paraphrase that remains.
5. Transfer and check (1–2 minutes). Make sure items 20–25 are marked in the right row of the answer sheet.

Useful Vocabulary for Narrative Texts

• Biography: nacer, crecer, estudiar, terminar la carrera, trabajar de, mudarse a, casarse, jubilarse.
• Starting and changing: empezar a, dejar de, decidir, cambiar de trabajo, abrir un negocio.
• Results: conseguir, lograr, gracias a, por fin, tener éxito (success, not "exit").
• Time: hace dos años, desde entonces, al principio, al final, actualmente (currently, not "actually").