Aruba Landsexamen MAVO common mistakes
Aruba Landsexamen MAVO · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the Papiamento text message or letter in the wrong register, mixing formal openers like 'Estimado señor' with slangy closings and abbreviations such as 'bo ta' shortened to 'bo t'a' inside a formal letter, or using Dutch or English words in the middle of a Papiamento sentence.
Candidates speak Papiamento daily in an informal, code-switched way with Dutch and English loanwords, so the first words that come to mind are conversational, not the schooled written register the exam expects.
What to do instead
Memorise two fixed templates, one formal (Estimado/Estimada, bo servisio, Atentamente) and one informal (Halo, Kon ta bai, Ayo), and practise writing the same content twice, once in each register, so the differences become automatic.
Answering a Dutch reading question with a personal opinion or a paraphrase of the topic instead of quoting or closely citing the sentence in the text that supports the answer.
Students read for general gist and answer from memory of the topic, missing that Dutch exam questions often require 'citeer uit de tekst' or 'met welke zin' evidence-based answers.
What to do instead
Train a two-step routine: underline the keyword in the question, scan for that keyword or a synonym in the text, then copy the relevant clause verbatim before writing anything in your own words.
In Dutch writing tasks, producing one long run-on sentence with commas where full stops belong, and omitting the required structural elements (aanhef, inleiding, middenstuk, slot, afsluiting) that the scoring rubric lists.
Under time pressure students write the way they speak, and secondary-school Dutch writing instruction in Aruba often emphasises content over sentence boundaries and text structure.
What to do instead
Before writing, jot a four-line plan (opening, two content points, closing) and force a full stop after every idea; afterwards count sentences and check each one has a subject and a finite verb.
Using the wrong tense or aspect in English gap-fill and transformation items, for example writing 'He has went' or 'I am living here since 2010', and confusing present perfect with simple past in sentences with 'since', 'for', 'ago' and 'yesterday'.
Papiamento tense marking works differently (ta, tabata, a, lo), so learners map their own system onto English and miss the time-marker cues that decide the tense.
What to do instead
Build a one-page table of time markers (yesterday, ago, last week, since, for, already, yet) with the tense each one forces, and drill ten sentences per marker until the choice is cue-driven rather than felt.
In mathematics word problems, extracting the numbers and immediately performing an operation without identifying what is being asked, so a question about the price per person is answered with the total price, or a percentage-increase problem is answered with the new amount instead of the increase.
Students pattern-match on familiar numbers and keywords, and the exam deliberately embeds distractors and multi-step contexts that punish keyword guessing.
What to do instead
Write a one-line 'given / asked' summary before calculating, and end every problem by re-reading the question sentence and labelling the unit of the answer (florin, persons, percent).
Dropping negative signs and mis-ordering operations in algebra and arithmetic, for example evaluating 3 + 2 × 4 as 20, or writing −(x − 5) as −x − 5 when simplifying.
Operations are done left to right by habit, and the distributive effect of a minus sign in front of brackets is a rule students have seen but rarely practised to the point of reliability.
What to do instead
Show every intermediate step on paper, apply the order of operations explicitly (brackets, powers, multiply/divide, add/subtract), and when removing brackets with a minus in front, rewrite each inner sign before continuing.
On Aruban civics and history items, confusing the status of Aruba within the Kingdom (land within the Koninkrijk since 1986, separate from the Netherlands Antilles) and mixing up dates and institutions such as the Staten, the Gouverneur and the Gevolmachtigd Minister.
Dates and constitutional terms are learned as isolated lists without a timeline, and everyday political news blurs the distinction between Aruba, the Netherlands and the Kingdom as a whole.
What to do instead
Draw a single timeline from 1986 onwards with the key constitutional facts attached to each point, and make a three-column table (Aruba / Nederland / Koninkrijk) listing which body or official belongs where.
Describing an experiment or a biological process by naming the result only, for example 'the plant grows' or 'it melts', without stating the variable changed, the variable measured and the variables kept the same.
Practical work in class is often done as a demonstration with the conclusion supplied, so students never practise articulating the design of a fair test.
What to do instead
Use a fixed sentence frame for every experiment: 'I change ___, I measure ___, I keep ___ the same, so that ___', and apply it to past practicals until it is produced without prompting.
In vocational and profile subjects, writing a procedure or work preparation as a vague summary ('then I did the task safely') instead of a step-by-step sequence with materials, tools, safety measures and a stated quality check.
Students learn these subjects hands-on and rarely write down what they do, so they underestimate how detailed and ordered an exam answer must be.
What to do instead
Practise writing one procedure per week in numbered steps, each step starting with a verb, plus a separate line for safety and a final line stating how the result is checked against the requirement.
Mismanaging exam time and question coverage: spending too long on one long writing or calculation task, leaving later questions blank, and skipping items that look hard instead of returning to them.
Students rehearse content but not pacing, and without a timing plan the first demanding task absorbs the minutes that the many short items need.
What to do instead
In every practice run, allocate minutes per section based on marks, do a first pass answering all quick items, mark hard ones with a star, and reserve the last ten minutes for starred items and a check of names, units and number of words.