One exercise type accounts for more DELF A2 reading points than any other, and almost nobody practices it properly. You are given several short texts. Four course descriptions, four flat adverts, four holiday offers. Then you are given people with needs, and you have to work out which text suits which person.
Candidates read all four texts carefully. Then they read the people. Then they go back and forth until time runs out. There is a faster way. The whole exercise takes about four minutes.
These sample papers show the method, then give you an article exercise to practice the other half of the paper.
Reading is the paper most A2 candidates can push furthest, because you control the pace. DELF A2 reading classes build that speed under time pressure.
What Does the DELF A2 Reading Paper Contain?
Several short written documents from everyday life, with comprehension questions. The paper lasts 30 minutes and is worth 25 marks. Documents include adverts, notices, emails, short press articles, and practical information texts.
The mix usually breaks into two kinds of tasks. One asks you to match texts against needs or criteria. The others ask questions about a single short text, often a press article of 150-200 words.
Under the current format, the answers are multiple choice. Older papers used some open questions, and both versions have circulated during the transition. Official past papers with answer keys are available for download on the A2 sample subjects page at France Éducation International.
Reading sits between listening and writing in a collective session of one hour and forty minutes. You need 50 out of 100 overall, with a floor of 5 out of 25 in each paper.
How Do You Solve a Matching Exercise Quickly?
Read the people first, not the texts. Turn each person into two or three hard criteria, then scan the texts for the criteria rather than reading them. Most options are eliminated by the first criterion.
Hard criteria are things that cannot bend: a day, a time, a price ceiling, an age, a level, a location. Soft preferences rarely decide the answer.
The method:
- Read the people. Write two or three criteria beside each. Samedi. Under 40 euros. Child aged 11.
- Scan for the hardest criterion first. Usually, the day or the price, because both are easy to spot.
- Cross out as you go. A text failing one hard criterion is finished. Do not read the rest of it.
- Check the survivor against the second criterion. If it passes, move on.
Most matching exercises have exactly one text that fits each person completely. So elimination is not just faster. It is more reliable than judgment.
Watching students work through matching exercises is instructive. Almost everyone reads all four texts first, then the people, then starts again. Nobody arrives at criteria-and-elimination on their own, because it feels like cheating rather than reading. It is neither. It is what the exercise was designed to test, and one demonstration is usually enough for a group to adopt it permanently.
These are the practice papers. For more in-depth information on formats, question types, and vocabulary, see the DELF A2 reading guide.
Sample Paper 1: The Matching Exercise
Four weekend activities are advertised. Three people are looking for something to do. Match each person to one activity.
Document A. Atelier de cuisine italienne Samedi, 14h à 17h. Débutants acceptés, aucune expérience nécessaire. 45 € la séance, ingrédients compris. Centre-ville, près de la gare.
Document B. Cours de photographie Dimanche matin, 9h à 12h. Niveau intermédiaire, appareil photo personnel obligatoire. 60 € le cours. Rendez-vous au parc de la Tête d’Or.
Document C. Initiation à la poterie Samedi, 10h à 12h30. Tous niveaux, matériel fourni. 35 € par personne. Enfants acceptés à partir de 10 ans. Atelier, 12 rue Victor Hugo.
Document D. Randonnée guidée en montagne Dimanche, 8h à 17h. Bonne condition physique nécessaire. 25 €, repas non compris. Départ en bus depuis la place Bellecour.
Person 1. Marc travaille tous les dimanches. Il cherche une activité pour le samedi après-midi. Il n’a jamais cuisiné mais il aimerait apprendre.
Person 2. Sonia veut faire une activité avec son fils de 11 ans, le samedi matin. Elle ne veut pas dépenser plus de 40 € par personne.
Person 3. Julien est libre le dimanche. Il aime marcher toute la journée et cherche l’activité la moins chère.
Sample Paper 2: A Short Article
Un supermarché sans emballages
À Nantes, un nouveau magasin propose des produits sans emballage. Les clients apportent leurs propres boîtes et bouteilles, puis se servent eux-mêmes. Les prix sont souvent un peu plus bas, parce que le magasin ne paie pas les emballages.
Ouvert depuis six mois, le magasin reçoit environ deux cents clients par jour. « Au début, les gens oublient leurs boîtes », explique Léa Morvan, la responsable. « Alors on en prête. Après deux ou trois visites, ça devient une habitude. »
Le magasin vend surtout des produits secs : riz, pâtes, farine, café. Les fruits et légumes viennent des fermes de la région. Le lait et les yaourts sont vendus dans des bouteilles en verre, que les clients rapportent après usage.
Deux autres magasins du même type ouvriront l’année prochaine, à Rennes et à Angers.
4. Dans ce magasin, les clients… a) achètent des emballages b) apportent leurs propres contenants c) reçoivent des sacs en plastique
5. Les prix sont… a) plus élevés qu’ailleurs b) souvent un peu plus bas c) exactement les mêmes
6. Au début, les clients… a) oublient leurs boîtes b) refusent de venir c) se plaignent des prix
7. Le magasin est ouvert depuis… a) deux ans b) six mois c) un mois
8. Les fruits et légumes viennent… a) de l’étranger b) de fermes proches c) d’un autre magasin
9. L’année prochaine… a) le magasin fermera b) deux nouveaux magasins ouvriront c) les prix augmenteront
Answer Key
Person 1: Document A. Marc works Sundays, so B and D go straight out on the day criterion. That leaves A and C, both on Saturday. C runs in the morning, and he wants the afternoon. A also matches “jamais cuisiné” against “débutants acceptés”.
Person 2: Document C. Saturday morning rules out A, B, and D at once. C then passes both remaining criteria. Children aged 10 and under, and 35 euros, under her 40-euro ceiling.
Person 3: Document D. Sunday leaves B and D. He wants to walk all day and wants the cheapest option, and D is 25 euros compared to B’s 60.
Notice how little reading that took. The day of the week decided each person, checked against one more criterion. Nobody needed the location of Document A or the meeting point of Document B.
4. b) apportent leurs propres contenants. “Les clients apportent leurs propres boîtes et bouteilles.” Contenant is the paraphrase of boîtes et bouteilles, and A2 papers do use one-step paraphrases like this.
5. b) Souvent un peu plus bas. The word souvent matters. An option saying “toujours plus bas” would be wrong for the same reason.
6. a) Oublient leurs boîtes. Direct quotation from Léa Morvan.
7. b) six mois. “Ouvert depuis six mois.” The distractor two answers catches anyone who skims and finds “l’année prochaine” instead.
8. b) de fermes proches. “Des fermes de la région” becomes “fermes proches”. The nearby region is where the reformulation is being tested.
9. b) Deux nouveaux magasins ouvriront. Stated in the last line. The future tense ouvriront is the marker.
These small words decide the answers in the other papers too. The DELF A2 written papers show how the same qualifiers change a corrector’s reading of your own sentences, and the DELF A2 oral papers put the same vocabulary into spoken tasks.
Which Words Decide A2 Reading Answers?
Small words do most of the work: souvent, toujours, sauf, seulement, à partir de, jusqu’à, sans, compris et non compris. Each one changes the meaning of a whole line.
Six that repay learning cold:
- À partir de. From, as a starting point. “Enfants à partir de 10 ans” includes a ten-year-old and excludes a nine-year-old.
- Jusqu’à. Up to and including. Common in offers and opening hours.
- Sauf. Except. It reverses whatever came before, and candidates miss it all the time.
- Compris and non compris. Included and not included. Prices in adverts hinge on these two, as in “charges comprises” and “repas non compris.”
- Seulement and uniquement. Only. Both narrow the statement sharply.
- Obligatoire and facultatif. Required and optional. Document B above requires your own camera, which is exactly the kind of detail a matching question tests.
Two more earn their place once these are secure. Sur réservation means booking is required, and it quietly disqualifies an option for someone who wants to turn up on the day. Dans la limite des places disponibles means “subject to availability,” which is softer than it sounds and rarely decides the answer on its own.
Watch the frequency adverbs too. Souvent, parfois, toujours and jamais separate a correct option from a plausible one, as question 5 shows.
Students in our A2 exam prep batches drill these as a checklist because they appear in every paper, regardless of topic.
Which Topics Appear in A2 Reading Texts?
Everyday and local life: shops and consumption, leisure activities, transport, housing, work, health, food, travel, and community initiatives.
The press articles stay light. A new shop opening, a local festival, a change in bus routes, a study about sleep or screen time. Nothing political, nothing technical.
Match the topics to your listening preparation, and you halve the work. The vocabulary sets overlap almost completely. DELF A2 audio papers use the same families in audio form.
How Should You Manage the 30 Minutes?
Give the matching exercise four to five minutes, the article exercises around fifteen, and keep the rest for checking. Reading is the paper that a prepared A2 candidate should finish early.
A workable routine:
- One minute. Look at what you have been given. How many exercises, how many texts, what type?
- Four minutes. Matching exercise, using criteria and elimination.
- Fifteen minutes. Article exercises. Question first, then scan, then read the relevant sentence properly.
- Ten minutes. Check, prioritizing any question where two options both looked possible.
Do not read texts you have already eliminated. That habit alone saves several minutes.
Answer everything. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so a blank is a wasted mark.
If you finish with ten minutes left, spend them on the article questions rather than the matching. Matching answers are either right or wrong on a criterion you can verify in seconds. Article questions are where a second look genuinely changes an answer.
What Goes Wrong at A2?
Reading matching texts in full, missing a small qualifying word, choosing an option because it repeats a phrase from the text, and running out of time on the article after over-investing in the matching.
Two more patterns show up in mock papers.
Deciding from the picture or the title alone. A2 documents often have headings that suggest more than the text delivers. The heading narrows the topic. It does not answer the question.
Answering from what seems sensible. If a text says a shop is open on Sundays, it is, even if that feels unusual. Everything comes from the page.
You can build your own matching practice cheaply. Take four real French adverts from a council website or an events listing. Write three imaginary people with two or three hard criteria each. Then solve it the next day, when you have forgotten which text you meant to match.
That exercise teaches something a textbook cannot. Real adverts bury their conditions in odd places, exactly as exam documents do, and you learn to hunt for the price line and the date line before anything else.
Reading is also where a strong A2 candidate banks marks to offset a weaker paper. You control the pace here, which makes it the most improvable of the four. The DELF level comparison shows how each paper contributes to your final score.
Where Does A2 Reading Fit?
A2 is the level required for a multi-year French residence permit, and it is the point where French adverts, notices, and simple press articles become usable rather than decorative.
France raised its thresholds on 1 January 2026 under decree 2025-648. Long-term residence cards now need B1, and naturalization needs B2 in all four skills.
For learners in India, A2 reading is the level at which French websites, product labels, and workplace notices no longer require translation tools. That is a practical daily gain.
For Canada, remember the distinction. Immigration points are based on TEF Canada or TCF Canada, not DELF, and those results expire after two years.
If you are still deciding which certification to sit for, which French test to take, compare DELF, DALF, TCF, and TEF side by side.
Questions About the DELF A2 Reading Paper Format
Sit a Timed Reading Paper Before You Book Your Exam
Matching exercises are quick once you have the method and slow if you don’t. The difference is worth about ten minutes on exam day. That is the gap between finishing the paper and guessing the last three questions.
Our LanguageNext DELF classes run complete reading papers weekly under exam conditions, then work through every distractor. Batches stay at six to ten students in Noida. Our live-taught French modules run the same papers across India.
You can also work from official past papers, published on the A2 sample exam page of the FEF.
Call or WhatsApp 7011164582 to book a free demo and a timed reading diagnostic.