Estonian Upper-Secondary English Exam common mistakes
Estonian Upper-Secondary English Exam · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering reading-comprehension questions from general knowledge or personal opinion instead of locating the relevant sentence in the passage and matching it to the option.
The texts are short and the topics are often familiar (environment, technology, school life), so candidates skim, feel they already know the answer, and never check the exact wording; this is especially tempting when an option sounds true in real life.
What to do instead
For every question, underline the phrase in the passage that justifies the answer and write its line number next to the chosen option. If no single sentence supports it, the option is wrong. Practise with past-paper-style texts by covering the options first, predicting the answer from the text, then revealing the options.
Confusing the question type in reading tasks: giving a personal opinion on a 'What does the author say?' item, or answering a 'Which statement is true according to the text?' item with an inference the text does not support.
Estonian exam tasks mix factual, inference, main-idea and author-attitude questions in one section, and candidates do not stop to classify what is being asked before choosing.
What to do instead
Before reading the options, label each question in the margin as F (fact), I (inference), M (main idea) or A (attitude). For F questions the answer must be literally checkable; for I questions it must follow necessarily from the text; for M questions it must cover the whole passage, not one paragraph.
Missing the answer in a listening task because the candidate is still writing or thinking about the previous item when the recording moves on.
Recordings are usually played once or twice with no pause per question, and candidates try to write full sentences or check spelling mid-track instead of listening ahead.
What to do instead
Use the pre-listening time to read all questions and mark the key word in each. Write only abbreviations or the first letters during the first listening, complete the answers during the second, and never stop listening to finish a word. If an item is missed, mark it and move on immediately.
Losing marks on listening tasks that require numbers, times, prices, dates or spelled names because the candidate writes the first number heard rather than the corrected one.
Authentic recordings contain self-correction ('at half past three - no, sorry, four'), and distractors are deliberately placed before the correct figure; candidates also confuse -teen and -ty or mishear letters such as A/E or G/J.
What to do instead
Train on numbers and the alphabet separately: dictate prices, times, phone numbers and surnames, including self-corrections. In the exam, wait for the end of the utterance before writing a figure, and cross out any value that is later changed.
Producing a writing task that ignores the required genre conventions - for example, writing a formal essay where an informal e-mail to a friend was asked for, or omitting the greeting, closing and register that the task type implies.
Candidates focus on content and grammar and treat the instruction about text type as decoration, although the marking criteria reward appropriate format, register and reader awareness.
What to do instead
Before writing, note the text type, the reader and the purpose in one line at the top of the plan. Learn the fixed frames: informal e-mail (Hi X, … Best wishes, Y), formal letter (Dear Sir/Madam, … Yours faithfully), opinion essay (introduction, two body paragraphs, conclusion), article (headline, hook, subheadings). Check the frame is present before submitting.
Answering only part of the writing prompt - covering two of the three required points, or writing a description where the task asks for advantages and disadvantages plus a personal conclusion.
Under time pressure candidates start writing after reading the first line of the instruction and never return to the bullet points; content points are marked separately, so each omission costs marks.
What to do instead
Number the required content points in the instruction, tick each one in the plan, and after drafting tick them again in the finished text. Reserve the last three minutes purely for this checklist plus word count.
Writing a text that is far below or far above the required word count, or padding with repetition to reach it.
Candidates either run out of ideas and stop early, losing content marks, or write a long, unstructured text with no time left to check grammar, so accuracy marks fall.
What to do instead
Know the target length and plan one paragraph per content point, roughly equal in size. In practice, time yourself: 5 minutes planning, 20 minutes writing, 5 minutes checking. If short of words, add a concrete example or a reason rather than repeating the same idea.
Choosing the wrong tense or aspect in gap-fill and transformation items - for example using past simple where the sentence needs present perfect because of 'since' or 'for', or missing the passive where the agent is unknown.
Candidates translate the Estonian sentence in their head, and Estonian has no direct equivalent of the present perfect or the continuous aspect, so the time reference in the English sentence is not noticed.
What to do instead
Before filling a gap, find the time markers (since, for, already, yet, ago, by the time, at the moment) and the subject–verb relationship (does the subject do the action or undergo it?). Decide tense and voice from those signals, not from the meaning of the sentence alone.
Losing marks in word-formation and open cloze tasks by writing a form that is grammatically possible but wrong for the slot - a noun where an adjective is needed, or a positive form where the meaning requires a negative prefix.
Candidates supply the base word's most familiar form and do not check what the sentence needs; negative prefixes (un-, in-, im-, dis-, ir-) and suffixes are tested precisely because they change the word class or meaning.
What to do instead
For each gap, first decide the word class needed from the words around it (article + ___ + noun means adjective; verb + ___ means adverb or object). Then check whether the meaning is positive or negative and apply the correct prefix. Read the completed sentence aloud to test it.
Making repeated low-level accuracy errors in the writing task - subject–verb agreement, missing third-person -s, article use with countable nouns, and preposition collocations - that are individually small but accumulate across the marking criteria.
These are the structures where Estonian interference is strongest (no articles, no grammatical gender, different preposition patterns), and candidates proofread for big mistakes only, reading for meaning rather than form.
What to do instead
Keep a personal error log of the five mistakes you repeat most and check only those in the final proofread, reading the text backwards sentence by sentence so meaning does not hide the form. Drill the specific patterns (a/an/the with first vs subsequent mention; depend on, interested in, good at) as collocations, not rules.