Bestå
The official description of Delprøve 1 does not describe a comprehension task. It describes a search: "færdighed i at læse hurtigt for at finde og uddrage specifikke, faktuelle informationer i større tekstmængder" — the skill of reading fast to locate and extract specific factual information from large amounts of text. That single line is the whole exam task, and most people ignore it. They open the collection at page one and start reading, because that is what reading exams have always meant. Twenty-five minutes later the paper is collected and they are on question nine.
Delprøve 1 is not testing whether you understand the texts. It is testing whether you can find one fact and leave. Everything below follows from that.
The setup, and the clock that decides everything
Læseforståelse in the PD3 exam runs 90 minutes in two blocks, and the blocks are sealed:
- Delprøve 1 — 25 minutes, then the paper is collected.
- Delprøve 2A, 2B and 3 — 65 minutes, which you manage yourself.
You cannot borrow from one to pay the other. That matters more than it sounds, because the temptation is always to spend "just two more minutes" on a stubborn question in Delprøve 1 — minutes that in your head come out of the 65. They do not. They come out of the other fourteen questions sitting in front of you.
The material: a collection of informative texts of about 10 normalsider in total, with 15 questions on the collection. The answer format is kort-svar — short answer. No aids of any kind are permitted, so there is no dictionary to fall back on and no time to want one.
Twenty-five minutes across fifteen questions is 100 seconds per question — and that 100 seconds has to cover reading the question, working out which of the texts holds the answer, finding the line, and writing it down. It is not a lot. It is completely enough, if you stop reading for meaning.
1. Reduce the question to one search key before you touch the text
Read the question and decide, in words, what single thing you are hunting for: a price, a day, a name, a number, a yes or a no. Then hold that one thing in your head and go looking for it. Do not go to the text carrying the whole question.
Question: Hvor mange dage om ugen har genbrugsstationen åbent?
The search key is not "genbrugsstationen" and it is not the sentence. It is a number of days. You are now scanning for a numeral or a weekday range, and everything else on the page is invisible to you.
This sounds trivial and it is the whole technique. A reader carrying the full question re-reads it against every paragraph. A reader carrying one search key skips paragraphs at a glance.
2. Find the right text first — that is a separate step, and it is faster
The material is a collection, not one continuous article. So there are two searches, not one: which text, then where in it. Doing them at once is what makes people slow.
Spend the first minute of the 25 building a map: run down the collection and note what each text is about — one word each, in the margin. Council services. Job ads. Library opening hours. Course descriptions. If the collection opens with an overview or a contents list, that map is already made for you and you should use it rather than building your own.
Then every question starts with a routing decision that takes two seconds — that is a library question — instead of a hunt through ten normalsider.
3. Read one sentence, not one page
Once you are in the right text, scan for the form of the answer, not for meaning. Prices look like prices. Dates look like dates. Names are capitalised. Your eye finds a shape far faster than it reads a paragraph.
When you hit the shape, read the one sentence around it and nothing else. Then leave. The paragraph above it may be interesting; it is not on the paper.
Sprogcaféen holder til på hovedbiblioteket hver torsdag kl. 16–18. Der kræves ingen tilmelding, og det er gratis.
Question: Hvad koster det at deltage i sprogcaféen?
The shape you want is a price. You find gratis, read that clause, and you are done. Answer: Det er gratis. The opening hours and the location are in the same sentence and are not your business.
4. Kort-svar means short — write the least that answers it
The task type is short answer, so answer in a word, a number, or a short phrase. Torsdag. Gratis. Nej. To gange om ugen.
Writing a full sentence costs you time on all fifteen questions, and it adds error surface: a sentence has grammar in it, and grammar can be wrong in a way that a single word cannot. If the question asks hvor mange, the best answer is a number.
One exception worth the extra word: if a bare number could be read as answering a different question — "3" when the text has both a price and a quantity nearby — add the unit. 3 gange. That is one word buying you certainty.
5. The 25-second rule — leave, mark it, come back
Set a hard personal limit: if you have not located the answer in about 25 seconds of scanning, mark the question and move on. Come back at the end with whatever time remains.
This is uncomfortable and it is the single highest-value habit in Delprøve 1. The arithmetic is not close. A question you abandon costs you one mark and you may well recover it in the last two minutes. A question you refuse to abandon can eat three or four minutes and cost you the last four questions — questions that were probably easier than the one that trapped you.
Practise it before the exam, or you will not do it on the day.
6. Two traps that cost marks even when you found the right line
Negation. Yes/no questions turn on one small word — ingen, ikke, aldrig, uden, kun. Miss it and you write the exact opposite of the right answer, with full confidence, having found precisely the correct sentence. Before you write ja or nej, find the word your answer depends on and look at it.
The near-miss fact. Informative texts are full of numbers, and the collection will happily contain a price that is not the price you were asked for, or opening hours for a different day. Check that the fact you found is attached to the thing in the question — the right service, the right group, the right day. If the question says for pensionister and your line does not, keep scanning.
Common mistakes
- Reading the collection before reading the questions. The questions are the search terms. Reading first is doing the work twice.
- Treating the 25 as elastic. It is not, and the paper leaves the room.
- Answering in full sentences. Fifteen times, at a few seconds each, this is minutes you did not have.
- Fighting one question. See section 5. This is the one that fails people.
- Translating in your head. You are matching a shape and a word, not producing English.
- Leaving blanks. There is no penalty for a wrong short answer. In the last minute, put something plausible in every empty box.
Danish phrase bank — the question stems, and what each one wants
Delprøve 1 questions are built from a small set of stems. Learn to read the stem and know the shape of the answer instantly — that is half the speed.
Asking for a number or an amount Hvor mange…? — a number · Hvor meget koster…? — a price · Hvor lang tid…? — a duration · Hvor gammel skal man være…? — an age
Asking for a time or a day Hvornår…? — a date or clock time · Hvilken dag…? — a weekday · Hvor ofte…? — a frequency · Hvor længe er der åbent…? — an opening span
Asking for a person, place or thing Hvem…? — a name or a role · Hvor ligger…? — a place · Hvad hedder…? — a name · Hvilken…? — one item picked from several
Asking yes or no — watch for the negation Skal man…? · Kan man…? · Er det nødvendigt at…? · Må man…? Answer Ja or Nej. The deciding word is usually ingen, ikke, kun or uden.
Words in the texts that mark the answer — these are what your eye is scanning for gratis · tilmelding · pris · åbningstider · frist · kræves · senest · pr. måned · hver · undtagen
That last group is worth drilling on its own. Undtagen and senest in particular decide answers quietly.
Related guides
- PD3 Reading: How to Approach Every Task and Score Full Marks — the other three tasks, and how to spend the 65 minutes.
- 7 Mistakes That Make Expats Fail Prøve i Dansk 3 — the preparation habits that cost marks across the whole exam.
- How to Pass Prøve i Dansk 3 (PD3) Fast — the whole exam: reading, writing and speaking.
- PD3 exam overview — format, sections, timing and marking.
Practise the scan, not the reading
Speed here is a habit, and habits need repetitions rather than study. The Bestå app has PD3-format factual reading sets with instant answer checking and a built-in translator, so you can look a word up without leaving the exercise. Do them on the clock — the point is not to get them right slowly, it is to stop reading for meaning. Download free on iOS and Android.