B1 Writing exam

The split is fixed: opgaven 1 to 8 are zinstaken, single-sentence answers worth 2 points each; opgaven 9 and 10 are deelschrijftaken; opgaven 11 and 12 are korte schrijftaken. In the published papers opgave 9 is a form and opgaven 10 to 12 are e-mails. The whole paper is worth 47 or 48 points, and you choose the order you work in.

Everything is typed, in one opgavenboekje, which has one consequence people underestimate: spelling is genuinely testable in a way it is not on a handwritten paper. It carries its own small budget, four of the points, and it is assessed separately from grammar rather than rolled into a general impression.

Marking is done by two trained human assessors against a per-task criterion model. The content side is worth 27 points, dominated by adequaatheid en begrijpelijkheid at 20, with samenhang and woordgebruik making up the rest. The form side is worth 20: grammaticale correctheid 16 and spelling 4. Content is where the marks are.

A zinstaak is a short e-mail with a gap in it, and you write the sentence that fills the gap. It is scored on exactly two criteria, one point each. The design rule worth knowing is that the word immediately before the gap forces the grammar you have to produce. Ik kan dan helaas niet, want… forces a main clause. Ik wil graag een keer met je afspreken, zodat… forces a subordinate clause with the verb at the end. Vandaag is de koffiemachine kapot gegaan. Daarom… forces inversion. Wie heeft er zin om… forces te plus infinitive.

Exactly four of the eight zinstaken carry an explicit grammar target, and across published papers the set is always those same four constructions: hoofdzin, bijzin, hoofdzin met inversie, and te plus infinitief. Only the order and which task gets which change. The other four have a gap in the middle of a message and no forcing word, so you are judged on content and general correctness alone.

The scaffold constrains the meaning from below as well as the grammar from above. The sentence printed after the gap (something like Ik hoop dat dit geen probleem geeft) fixes what your sentence has to have said. Read what comes after the gap before you write, not only what comes before it.

Our tip, not a DUO ruleReading the line after the gap first is our technique, not a published rule. The assessment model states the content requirement per task; it does not tell candidates how to find it.

Opgaven 10 to 12 are e-mails, and each states its communicative purpose and then enumerates what has to be in it, often with a quantity attached: propose a solution and name at least two; give at least two reasons for your preference; give at least one reason per alternative. Those numbers are the scoring criteria, not stylistic advice. Completeness is defined by that element list.

Two of the three are usually driven by a stimulus that is not text, such as a set of pictures or a table of options, and the task states whether the stimulus travels with your message. In the published papers it does not: De plaatjes komen niet bij de e-mail, De tabel komt niet bij uw tekst. That is the defining B1 writing move and it does not exist at A2. You have to turn pictures or a table into standalone prose that makes sense to someone who cannot see them.

Invented detail is explicitly allowed. The models say so, in the form Deze informatie mag hij zelf verzinnen. You are not being tested on whether your Tuesday really was busy. In fact the assessment rules state outright that the truth of what you write is not judged, so if a required element needs a detail you do not have, make one up and move on.

Several published rules change what is worth doing. The scales are independent and do not compensate for each other. Word-gender errors (de against het) and everything that follows from them are tolerated under grammar, but a missing article is counted as an error. Redundant additions are ignored if they are error-free and count against you if they are not, so padding an e-mail with extra sentences is a pure downside.

There are two gates. If adequaatheid en begrijpelijkheid scores zero on a task, nothing else on that task is assessed at all. And copying sentences straight out of the prompt earns nothing: Als de schrijver zinnen uit de opdracht letterlijk heeft overgeschreven, krijgt hij of zij voor deze zinnen geen punten. Doing only part of what a task asked caps adequaatheid at 2 rather than 3.

On the zinstaken, producing the named construction does not automatically earn the grammar point. Word order or agreement errors inside it can still zero it. The reverse also holds: if your own phrasing commits you to a particular tense, you have to get that tense right even though the task never asked for it.

There is no official answer, and that is the point. The CvTE assessment model gives no target length for any task. Completeness is defined by the enumerated content elements, not by words. The 60-to-80-words figure that circulates on preparation sites is not in the official model, and writing to it will make you pad a task that needed four elements or cut one that needed six.

The useful substitute is a checklist. Before you submit a task, count the required elements against what you wrote: did I state my preference, did I give two reasons for it, did I give one reason against each alternative. That is exactly what the assessor is doing, and it is a more reliable stopping rule than a word count.

That also explains the low cesuur. Schrijven passes at around 53 percent, the lowest of the four parts, because the marks are concentrated in whether the message does its job. A candidate whose Dutch is ordinary but who covers every element reliably scores better than a stylish writer who left one bullet out of three e-mails.

Opgave: Koffiemachine kapot. U werkt op een kantoor. De koffiemachine is vanochtend kapot gegaan. U stuurt een e-mail aan uw collega’s. “Beste collega’s, Vandaag is de koffiemachine kapot gegaan. Daarom ______________________________. De monteur komt morgenochtend langs. Sorry voor het ongemak.” Schrijf de zin af. Beschrijf een gevolg van de kapotte koffiemachine.

Task: Coffee machine broken. You work in an office. The coffee machine broke this morning. You send an e-mail to your colleagues. “Dear colleagues, Today the coffee machine broke. That is why ______________________________. The engineer is coming tomorrow morning. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Finish the sentence. Describe a consequence of the broken coffee machine.