Personal and Imaginative Writing in Portuguese
What this domain tests
You produce a coherent text of roughly 150–250 words in Portuguese: a diary entry, letter, email, short narrative, description or opinion piece. Marks reward task fulfilment, range of language, accuracy and organisation.
Concepts to master
- Text-type conventions: letters and emails need a greeting and closing (Estimado(a)…, Com os melhores cumprimentos); diaries use dates and first person; narratives need orientation, complication and resolution.
- Tense control: present for description, pretérito perfeito for completed events (fui, comi), imperfeito for background and habits (era, costumava), futuro or ir + infinitive for plans.
- Connectors to build flow: primeiro, depois, entretanto, além disso, por isso, finalmente, embora, visto que.
- Varied structures: subordinate clauses, comparatives, direct speech, and appropriate adjectives and adverbs.
- Register consistency: keep informal (tu) or formal (você/o senhor) throughout.
Traps to watch for
- Ignoring part of the prompt (e.g. forgetting to mention a reason or a future plan).
- Mixing tenses so the timeline becomes unclear.
- Anglicisms and literal translations (fazer uma decisão instead of tomar uma decisão).
- Overlong sentences with comma splices; vary sentence length instead.
Rule of thumb
Spend two minutes planning: who you are writing to, why, and three main points. Then write, and reserve two minutes to check verb endings, gender/number agreement and accents.
Worked example
Prompt: write an email to a friend inviting them on a weekend trip and explaining the plan. Opening: «Olá, Marta! Como estás? Escrevo-te porque…» Body uses future: «Vamos sair no sábado de manhã e, se o tempo estiver bom, podemos ir à praia.» Closing: «Diz-me se podes vir. Beijos, Ana.» Note the consistent tu form and the conditional se… estiver for a plausible future condition.