Writing is the part where small habits can unnecessarily cost you points. If you know how the assessment works exactly, you avoid the biggest pitfalls.
How is the writing exam structured?
Writing I consists of 12 tasks: 8 sentence tasks of 2 points, 2 form-writing tasks and 2 short writing tasks of 8 points each, totalling 47 points, with a pass mark of 25.
The sentence tasks
A sentence task consists of an opening, a lead-in sentence, a follow-up sentence and a closing, where you yourself apply a grammatical construction, such as a main clause, a subordinate clause, a main clause with inversion, or a to + infinitive construction.
The form-writing task (completing a form)
In a form-writing task you are given a form with fields you must fill in, for example personal details or a short explanation for an application.
The short writing task
In a short writing task you write a brief message or note with a clear purpose, often based on a source text such as an advertisement or an email you need to respond to.
What the assessor really focuses on
The biggest pitfall is copying text verbatim from the source text: this scores 0 points for appropriateness, even if the rest of your answer is otherwise correct. Gender agreement errors (de/het) do count, but much less heavily than people often think. Appropriateness weighs more heavily, and if you score 0 on that, the rest of that answer will not be assessed.
Practice with real writing tasks
Inburgerify lets you practise sentence tasks, forms and short writing tasks and gives AI feedback on appropriateness and language use.
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