Preparacion Dele Intermedio B2 Claves Edelsa

What the Book Actually Is

Preparacion Dele Intermedio B2 Claves Edelsa is a Spanish-language exam preparation manual published by Editorial Edelsa, aimed at candidates preparing for the DELE B2 certification. The "Claves" in the title refers to the answer key volume that accompanies the main workbook. It is not a standalone textbook. It is a practice-resource book with accompanying solutions, designed to mirror the format and difficulty level of the official Instituto Cervantes exam. I bought my copy around 2019, just before attempting the B2 exam. The main book contains reading comprehension exercises, listening tracks (accessible via audio files), writing prompts, and grammar-in-context tasks. The Claves booklet sits alongside it and provides detailed answer keys. That is the entire product. There are no elaborate pedagogical frameworks or hidden features. You open a section, do the exercises, check your answers, and move on. Here is where people tend to waste time. They treat the book like a course. It is not. It is a collection of mock exercises. If you go through it cover to cover without actively studying grammar and vocabulary alongside it, you will finish in a week and still not be ready for the exam. I learned that the hard way. I completed three modules straight through, scored around 68 percent on the reading section, and then had to go back and actually study the grammar gaps I kept missing. That cost me an extra month of revision.

How to Use the Materials Effectively

The reading comprehension sections follow the same structure as the real DELE B2 exam. You get authentic texts — newspaper articles, opinion pieces, excerpts from literature — and then multiple-choice or matching questions. The listening sections are where most candidates struggle. The audio plays once. You cannot pause it. The questions appear on the screen or in print before the audio starts, so you have time to skim the questions. This is the same format as the actual exam. For the writing section, you get two prompts: one informal letter or email, and one more formal text such as an essay or opinion piece. The Claves book does not give model answers for writing. It gives you a scoring rubric and a few sample responses, but those samples are brief. I found that the most useful thing was comparing my own writing against the rubric criteria — coherence, cohesion, lexical range, grammatical accuracy — rather than trying to copy the style of the sample answers. The rubric is explicit about what gets points. Work from there. The grammar exercises are embedded within the reading and listening tasks rather than presented as isolated drills. This means you see the target structures in context, which is actually closer to how you will encounter them on the real exam. But if your grammar foundation is weak, this approach can feel frustrating. You will know something is wrong without always being able to explain why. In those cases, I recommended pairing this book with a separate grammar reference like the Oxford Practice Grammar Intermediate or a dedicated DELE grammar guide. The Edelsa book alone will not fill structural gaps.

Specific Problem I Ran Into and the Workaround

During the listening exercises, I kept failing the same type of question — the one where you had to match speakers to statements. The audio contained native-speed Spanish with regional accents, and sometimes the correct answer was phrased differently from what you heard. Paraphrasing was the issue. The answer on the page would say something like "El profesor considera que la tarea es demasiado larga" while the speaker said "creo que sobra tiempo para hacerla," meaning the same thing in different words. My workaround was simple and tedious. I stopped checking my answers immediately after each exercise. Instead, I transcribed the entire listening track word by word, then compared my transcription against the questions and answers. This took roughly 45 minutes per listening section, but it revealed the patterns of paraphrasing that the exam uses. After doing this for five listening sections, my accuracy on that question type went from about 40 percent to roughly 72 percent. It was slow, but it worked.

Common Pitfalls Candidates Miss

Most people focus too heavily on reading and ignore the writing and speaking sections until the last two weeks before the exam. The DELE B2 includes an oral component where you respond to a prompt and then engage in a brief conversation with an examiner. The Claves book does not cover speaking at all. You need to practice that separately, ideally with a tutor or a language exchange partner. Reading and listening are passive skills in the context of this book. Speaking and writing require active production, and that is where many candidates lose points. Another frequent mistake is using the Claves booklet too early. Students check their answers immediately after finishing a section, which prevents them from engaging with the material deeply. I suggest doing the exercise, waiting at least a day, then checking. This gives your brain time to process what you got wrong and reinforces the learning.

When This Book Is Not Enough

If your Spanish is below an intermediate level, this book will not bring you up to B2 on its own. The exercises assume a working knowledge of past tenses, subjunctive moods, and relative clauses. If you are unsure about those, study them first. Also, if you are taking the exam soon — within four to six weeks — the material in this book may not be sufficient to cover all the exam format requirements. In that case, I recommend supplementing it with official Instituto Cervantes practice tests and timed full-length mocks. The book is solid for its purpose, but it is not a comprehensive course. It is a practice resource with an answer key. Use it that way. Do the exercises honestly, check your work thoughtfully, identify your weaknesses, and then address them with additional study materials tailored to those specific gaps.

Where to Find It

The Preparacion Dele Intermedio B2 Claves Edelsa can be purchased through major online retailers including Amazon, Casa del Libro, and directly from Editorial Edelsa's website. It is also available in some university bookstores in Spain and through language schools that prepare students for DELE exams. Be sure you are getting the correct edition. Older versions may contain listening tracks that no longer match the current exam format, and the Institute Cervantes does adjust the test structure occasionally. Check the publication date before buying used copies. If you are preparing seriously for the B2 level, this book is a reasonable addition to your study plan. It will not carry you through alone, but it will give you practice that is close enough to the real exam to be useful. Just don't treat it as a complete solution. It is one tool among several, and knowing where it fits in your preparation is the difference between wasting time and using it effectively.