Writing exam skills: email and article/letter

Precise spelling is marked, not cosmetic: wann ("when?") is routinely written for wenn ("when/if"), and dass (conjunction "that") for das (article) — across three sittings. Mann is also written for man, Küche ("kitchen") for Kuchen ("cake"), though both correct forms were often printed in the rubric.

The digest names this the single most repeated Task Completion fault, named every sitting: answer every bullet in the tense it signals. What you DID needs a past tense; what you WILL do needs a future, modal or conditional. Wrong-tense German still loses that bullet's mark. Fix: underline the tense word (letztes Jahr, nächstes Jahr, normalerweise) first.

The digest names a Range ceiling: many candidates "opted for short clauses and used a small number of conjunctions, usually weil or und". The Range mark then stalls in its middle band. To move up: varied sentence length; conjunctions beyond weil (dass, denn, wenn, obwohl); relative pronouns; and V2 inversion after a fronted element (am Wochenende werde ich...).

The digest names the wrong perfect auxiliary the single most-repeated Accuracy fault, with movement verbs: "the perfect tense of fahren was often conjugated with haben" (s23; also w22). Trap: Ich habe nach Hause gefahren (WRONG) vs Ich bin nach Hause gefahren (CORRECT) — motion and change-of-state verbs (fahren, gehen, kommen, fliegen) take sein, not haben.

Past-participle FORMATION of well-rehearsed verbs is repeatedly flagged: basic verbs like spielen, gehen, fahren are often mis-formed, and non-standard forms gebakt (for gebacken) and gegeht (for gegangen) are named in both November sittings. Use the correct form: gegangen not gegeht, gefahren not gefahrt, gebacken not gebakt.

Conditional confusion is named across sittings: the imperfect ich mochte ("liked") is written for the conditional ich möchte ("would like") (s22 Q2, s23 Q2); the report also names "wurde instead of würde and mochte for möchte" (s23). möchte/würde are Konjunktiv II; mochte/wurde are Präteritum ("liked"/"became"). The umlaut changes both meaning and tense.

Candidates transfer the English apostrophe-possessive into German instead of von + dative, named in two sittings' Accuracy sections: write das Zimmer von meiner Schwester ("my sister's room"), never meiner Schwester's Zimmer. von is dative, so the following possessive takes dative endings (von meinem Bruder).

The digest names lieber misused as a verb the most repeated Writing confusion: ich lieber Filme als Bücher instead of ich sehe lieber.... lieber is an adverb ("rather"), not a verb — it modifies a conjugated verb (ich fahre lieber mit dem Zug). Treating it as a standalone verb omits the verb the sentence needs, even when the preference vocabulary was right.