Aruba Landsexamen VWO common mistakes
Aruba Landsexamen VWO · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the Dutch summary or essay assignment in a single long paragraph that mixes several main points together, so the examiner cannot find the required structure or the text-type conventions (betoog, beschouwing, uiteenzetting).
Candidates draft in one flow under time pressure and never return to insert paragraphs, signposting, or the introduction-body-conclusion frame that the Dutch writing rubric explicitly scores; the conventions are taught but not rehearsed under exam timing.
What to do instead
Before writing, spend three minutes sketching a skeleton: thesis or main question, three body points each with one paragraph, and a conclusion. Then write one point per paragraph with a topic sentence, and reserve the last five minutes to check that every paragraph opens with a signposting sentence and that the text type's required moves (opinion plus arguments for a betoog, balanced perspectives for a beschouwing) are visibly present.
Misreading the Dutch literature questions by retelling the plot of the read works instead of answering the interpretive question about theme, narrative perspective, or literary-historical context.
Candidates prepare by memorising summaries and character lists because those feel concrete, then fall back on plot recall when the question asks for analysis or for placing a work in its literary period.
What to do instead
Build a one-page profile per set text with columns for theme, narrative technique, setting, literary period, and two quotable passages. Practise answering past-style questions with the formula claim-plus-evidence-from-text-plus-link-to-period, and check each answer against the question verb to confirm you are analysing rather than summarising.
In the English writing task, producing accurate sentences but ignoring register and genre conventions, for example writing an informal letter where a formal complaint or article is required, or omitting the required structural features.
Candidates focus their revision on grammar accuracy and vocabulary range, so genre awareness (salutation, paragraphing, tone, purpose statement) is under-practised and collapses under time pressure.
What to do instead
Keep a checklist of the three or four text types that appear (formal letter, article, essay, report) with their fixed openings and closings. In the exam, underline the audience and purpose in the prompt and write a one-line plan naming the register before starting; finish by checking that salutation, closing, and paragraph count match the genre.
In mathematics, substituting numbers into a formula before establishing the correct model or domain, and dropping units and rounding instructions in the final answer.
Under time pressure candidates pattern-match to a familiar exercise and skip the modelling step, and the habit of writing bare numbers is carried over from practice where units were pre-printed.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed four-line layout for every problem: given, asked, model or formula, calculation with units. Write the unit at every intermediate step and circle the rounding instruction in the prompt. When a problem is unfamiliar, spend the first minute writing what is known and what is asked in words before touching algebra.
In Papiamento writing, mixing in Dutch or Spanish spelling and lexicon, or applying Dutch orthographic habits to Papiamento words, producing text that reads as code-switching rather than standard Papiamento.
Most candidates are multilingual and read Dutch and Spanish daily, so interference is constant; formal written Papiamento is practised far less than spoken Papiamento, and spelling conventions are not automatised.
What to do instead
Keep a personal interference list of the twenty words you most often write in Dutch or Spanish, with the correct Papiamento form, and drill it weekly. In the exam, draft the text then run a dedicated language pass checking accent marks, apostrophes, and the spelling of high-frequency connectives, using only Papiamento synonyms when a loanword comes to mind.
In Spanish, answering reading-comprehension questions by lifting whole sentences from the text verbatim, or writing open responses with the wrong verb tense because the question's tense was not noticed.
Copying feels safe when vocabulary is limited, and candidates read for gist rather than for the grammatical cue in the question stem, which often signals the required tense or person.
What to do instead
Practise paraphrasing: after each practice text, rewrite three lifted sentences in your own words with simpler structures. In the exam, circle the verb in each question before answering and match your response tense to it, and for open questions write one short sentence that answers the question rather than a copied quotation.
In history and civics questions, writing a narrative of events without using the required source-evaluation moves: origin, purpose, usefulness, and reliability of a source, or the difference between cause and consequence.
Candidates know the content well and equate more factual recall with more marks, while source-evaluation and causal-reasoning skills are assessed separately and practised less often.
What to do instead
Train a fixed answer frame for source questions: who made it, when, for whom, why, and what that means for its usefulness for this specific question. For causation questions, explicitly separate long-term causes, short-term triggers, and consequences, labelling each in the margin before writing.
In physics and chemistry calculations, reporting answers to the wrong number of significant figures, omitting units, or failing to convert to SI units before substituting into a formula.
Candidates concentrate on choosing the right equation and treat units and precision as cosmetic, and mixed units in prompts (grams, millilitres, kilojoules) are not systematically converted in practice.
What to do instead
Make unit conversion the first written step of every calculation, before selecting a formula, and state the final answer with both unit and significant figures justified by the data given. Build a habit of checking the order of magnitude of the result against an estimate, which catches conversion errors immediately.
In biology, describing a process such as osmosis, enzyme action, or the cardiac cycle as a list of labels rather than as a causal sequence with the relevant structures named at each step.
Revision is dominated by diagram-labelling practice, so candidates can name parts but have not rehearsed explaining mechanism and direction of change, which is what the open questions reward.
What to do instead
For each core process, write a numbered causal chain in full sentences, naming the structure and the change at each step, and practise explaining what happens if one step is blocked. In the exam, answer with the chain structure and include the direction of movement or change explicitly.
In economics and business studies, calculating a figure correctly but not interpreting it, or failing to apply the calculation to the specific case in the prompt, so the answer stops at the number.
Quantitative drills reward getting the number right, so candidates treat the calculation as the answer and do not practise the interpret-and-evaluate sentence that the mark scheme requires.
What to do instead
After every calculation, force two extra sentences: what the figure means for this business or market, and one limitation or alternative explanation. Practise with past questions by writing only those interpretation sentences, so the habit is separate from the arithmetic and survives time pressure.
Treating the profile-specific elective and the research project as a single end-of-year task, leaving the research question, source selection, and method justification until the last weeks, then submitting a question that cannot be answered with the available data.
The project is planned as a writing assignment rather than as a process, and candidates underestimate how long data collection and method justification take, so the research question is never tested for feasibility.
What to do instead
Set a written schedule with a feasibility checkpoint: draft the research question and proposed method in the first month and test it against one real data source or experiment before committing. Keep a log of method decisions with justifications, and have a teacher or peer review the question against the criteria of answerability, scope, and available evidence.