QCAA English as an Additional Language common mistakes
QCAA English as an Additional Language · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When answering a listening question, the candidate writes about the general topic of the recording instead of the specific information the question asks for (e.g., asks 'why did the speaker change plans?' and the candidate summarises what the plans were).
Under time pressure candidates latch onto the first familiar words they hear, and note-taking tends to record content nouns rather than the relationship between ideas, so the purpose of the question is lost by the time they write.
What to do instead
Before the audio starts, underline the question's interrogative and key noun (why/change plans). During the first listening, take notes in two columns: what was said, and which question it answers. Answer in one sentence that begins with the question's stem (e.g., 'She changed plans because...') so the response cannot drift into topic summary.
The candidate produces a spoken response with long pauses, self-corrections and fillers, and abandons a sentence mid-clause to restart it rather than repairing it in flow.
Candidates rehearse whole sentences mentally, so when a word is missing the entire planned sentence collapses; they have not practised the paraphrase strategies that keep a turn alive.
What to do instead
Practise a 'keep talking' drill: record 60-second responses to unseen prompts and forbid silence longer than two seconds, requiring a filler-plus-paraphrase move ('the word I want is... it's the thing that...'). Transcribe one recording and count restarts; aim to halve them next attempt.
In reading tasks, the candidate copies a sentence from the text as the answer even when the question requires transformation (e.g., 'in your own words' or a specified word limit), and the copied sentence contains irrelevant material.
Copying feels safe because the words are guaranteed accurate, and candidates do not distinguish between locating evidence and answering a question about it.
What to do instead
After locating the evidence, cover the text and write the answer from memory, then compare. Practise converting noun phrases to clauses and vice versa, and check word limits by counting before moving on.
The candidate ignores the question's instruction words (compare, evaluate, explain how, justify) and produces a response that describes or lists instead of analysing or evaluating.
Instruction words look like decoration and candidates respond to the topic instead; describing is also cognitively easier and feels productive under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Circle the instruction word and write it at the top of the response space. Before writing, produce a one-line 'command check': what operation is required, and what will count as evidence of it. For compare/evaluate, deliberately include a contrast or judgement sentence in every body paragraph.
The candidate analyses a multimodal text (advertisement, infographic, web page) using only its written words and ignores layout, image, colour, salience and placement.
School reading practice is overwhelmingly verbal, so candidates default to quoting captions and headlines and have no metalanguage for visual design.
What to do instead
Use a fixed viewing checklist on every multimodal text: what is largest/most central, what the image shows that the words do not, where the eye is led, and what is omitted. Write one sentence per element linking the choice to the intended audience response.
In extended writing, the candidate answers the topic but not the specified purpose, audience and role (e.g., writes an informal personal anecdote when asked for a letter to a principal persuading about a school policy).
Candidates focus on content generation and treat register as a cosmetic layer added at the end, if at all; they also lack automated control of formal and informal alternatives.
What to do instead
Before drafting, write a three-line audience profile: who reads this, what they already know, what they need to be moved to do. Draft the opening and closing first in the correct register, then build the body to match. Keep a personal bank of formal/informal pairs (get in touch/contact; kids/students) and check the draft against it.
The candidate's paragraphs are organised by the order in which ideas came to mind, with no topic sentence and connectives used incorrectly (e.g., 'however' to add a similar point, 'therefore' for a contrast).
Planning time is spent on content notes rather than structure, and cohesive devices are learned as vocabulary items rather than as logical signals.
What to do instead
Spend three minutes on a skeleton plan: one line per paragraph stating its claim. Write the topic sentence first and check it predicts the paragraph. Learn connectives in functional sets (addition, contrast, cause, concession) and self-test by inserting each into a fixed sentence frame to see whether the logic holds.
The candidate writes grammatically ambitious sentences with errors in article use, subject-verb agreement, tense consistency and countable/uncountable quantifiers, and does not reserve time to proofread.
Candidates equate sophistication with length and complexity, and errors in articles and agreement are low-salience because they rarely block the writer's own comprehension.
What to do instead
Proofread in passes with a single target each: pass one for verbs and tense, pass two for articles and plurals, pass three for sentence boundaries. Keep a personal error log from marked work and check only the five most frequent items under exam conditions.
In textual analysis, the candidate retells the plot or describes what happens and labels it analysis, quoting evidence without explaining how the language feature creates meaning or positioning the reader.
Narrative content is the most memorable part of a text, and candidates have not internalised the feature-effect-link sentence pattern that turns observation into interpretation.
What to do instead
Use a strict three-part sentence frame for every body point: the technique named precisely, the quotation, then the effect on the reader and how it supports the text's overall meaning. Ban plot summary by requiring that every sentence contain either a technique term or an interpretive claim.
The candidate treats the text's cultural setting as background decoration or judges it by their own norms, rather than showing how context shapes the values, assumptions and language of the text and how the intended audience would receive it.
Intercultural reading is often reduced to naming a country or festival, and candidates lack the habit of asking whose perspective is represented, absent or privileged.
What to do instead
For each text, answer three questions in note form: whose voice and values are centred, what the text assumes the reader already believes, and how a reader from a different context might read it differently. Anchor each observation to a specific textual detail rather than a generalisation about the culture.