Doelvraag
A question asking why the writer wrote this — or why one paragraph is in the text at all.
19 of our 291 B1 reading items. It comes in two shapes and they are not the same question: the purpose of the whole text, and the function of one paragraph inside it. The second is the harder one and the more common at B1, because a paragraph can be there to give an example, to raise an objection, or to soften what came before — and none of those is stated anywhere on the page.
How the exam tests this
About 35–36 multiple-choice questions over roughly 6 texts in 110 minutes, computer-marked. Phrased "Met welk doel schrijft de auteur alinea 3?" or "Wat is het doel van de tekst?". The options describe functions — een voorbeeld geven, een tegenwerping bespreken, een oorzaak noemen, de lezer waarschuwen — and every one of them is something the text does somewhere. The trap is an option describing a function the text performs in a different paragraph, so the option is true of the text and false of the paragraph named.
What is wrong with this sentence?
Om te laten zien hoe lang de wachtlijsten zijn.
Most candidates write it exactly like this and lose the mark without knowing why.
The rest of this lesson
The rule, the worked examples, the exceptions and what to do in the exam room open with Mastery, together with every other lesson for this exam.
See plans