CACD Diplomata common mistakes
CACD Diplomata · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the Portuguese dissertation in a colloquial or journalistic register, with first-person opinions and contractions, instead of the impersonal, formal register required of diplomatic prose.
Candidates transfer habits from university essays or social-media writing and never practise producing sustained formal argument under time pressure, so register slips go unnoticed until the exam.
What to do instead
Build a personal list of 20 formal connectives (destarte, conquanto, por conseguinte, cumpre salientar) and rewrite one 400-word opinion piece per week into impersonal argumentative prose; have a tutor mark register errors separately from content errors.
Treating Brazilian literature questions as plot recall, so the candidate can summarise a novel but cannot situate it in a movement, name its formal innovations, or connect it to historical context.
Undergraduate reading lists often emphasise summary and author biography over the periodisation and formal analysis the exam rewards, and candidates revise from plot summaries rather than from primary texts.
What to do instead
For each major author and work, prepare a three-line card: period and movement, two formal features with a textual example, and one historical or social dimension; test yourself by explaining the card aloud without notes.
Presenting Brazilian history as a sequence of dates and events without causal argument, so answers narrate the Proclamation of the Republic or the Vargas era rather than analysing why and with what consequences.
School and exam-prep revision rewards chronological recall, and candidates never practise the analytic essay form that asks for interpretation and historiographical debate.
What to do instead
Practise answering every history prompt with a thesis sentence followed by two causal mechanisms and one counter-argument; explicitly cite at least two competing historiographical positions per topic.
Studying world history only through a Brazilian lens, leaving gaps on topics such as the Peace of Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna, decolonisation in Africa and Asia, and the Cold War in the Global South.
Candidates assume the exam is Brazilian-foreign-policy-centric and under-invest in the broader world-history syllabus, then freeze on questions outside the national narrative.
What to do instead
Build a timeline of 30 turning points from 1648 to 1991 with one cause, one consequence and one Brazilian connection each; review it weekly and self-quiz on non-Brazilian entries.
Answering geography questions with memorised statistics (area, population, GDP) while failing to explain spatial processes such as urbanisation, agrarian frontiers, regional inequality and climate dynamics.
Revision materials foreground databank facts, and candidates mistake recall of numbers for geographic reasoning, so they cannot answer 'why' or 'what follows' questions.
What to do instead
For each Brazilian region, write a one-page explanation linking physical geography, settlement history, economic activity and current conflict; practise interpreting maps and data tables with no labels.
Describing Brazilian foreign policy as a static list of principles (non-intervention, peaceful settlement, multilateralism) without tracing how they were applied differently across specific governments and crises.
Candidates memorise doctrine labels from introductory textbooks and never build a chronological map linking doctrine to concrete decisions and their critics.
What to do instead
Create a matrix of administrations against five cases (a border dispute, a trade negotiation, a UN vote, a regional crisis, a bilateral relationship) and write two sentences per cell on continuity and change.
Citing international law sources vaguely ('according to international law') without naming the treaty, custom or case, and without distinguishing sources under Article 38 of the ICJ Statute.
Candidates study international law through summaries that omit citation practice, and they lack a mental hierarchy of sources, so they generalise under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Memorise the Article 38 hierarchy and, for ten core topics (use of force, diplomatic immunity, human rights, environmental law, investment), keep a card with one treaty article and one leading case, cited precisely.
Using economic terminology loosely, confusing GDP with GNP, nominal with real values, and tariffs with quotas, or asserting causal claims without specifying a mechanism or data source.
Candidates from non-economics backgrounds learn definitions passively and never practise applying them to Brazilian macroeconomic episodes such as the Real Plan or the 1999 devaluation.
What to do instead
Work through ten past-style economics prompts writing definitions, a mechanism and a Brazilian example in each; keep a glossary where every term is paired with a numerical illustration you can reproduce.
Producing English, Spanish or French text that is grammatically serviceable but stylistically flat, with limited range of structures and repeated vocabulary, and misusing false friends under time pressure.
Candidates prepare by reading passively rather than by producing timed written and spoken output, so accuracy is untested and interference from Portuguese goes uncorrected.
What to do instead
Do one 250-word timed composition per week in the target language on a diplomatic theme, plus a five-minute recorded summary of a news article; log recurring errors in a personal correction list and review it before each session.
In the written essay and the oral examination, presenting a list of points without a clear thesis, structure or conclusion, and failing to engage with counter-arguments or with the examiner's follow-up questions.
Candidates prepare content knowledge but not the genre conventions of the discursive essay and the oral defence, and they rehearse monologues rather than anticipating challenge.
What to do instead
Use a fixed skeleton (context, thesis, two developed arguments with evidence, counter-argument, conclusion) for every practice essay, and run weekly mock orals where a tutor must interrupt with at least three challenging follow-ups.