The 186-word email: register, length and the weather paragraph
The interaction task in the department's mock reads: «Escreve um e-mail (120–150 palavras) ao Serviço de Alojamento da Universidade de Coimbra: apresenta-te, indica a tua data de chegada (14 de setembro) e faz duas perguntas sobre o quarto.» Marta's draft runs to 186 words. It opens «Olá! Tudo bem?» and closes «Beijos, Marta». Within one paragraph she writes «podes dizer-me se ainda há quartos?» and «A senhora pode enviar-me o formulário?». Three consecutive sentences begin with «E». A 34-word paragraph describes the September weather in Segovia. One sentence reads «Eu queria saber se o quarto tem internet e também se também há também uma cozinha partilhada». The grid gives 3 points for adequação, 3 for coerência e coesão and 4 for correção, and the department's convention is to deduct when a script falls more than 20% outside the word range. Marta argues that the length and the weather paragraph should not be penalised, because more content shows more vocabulary.
1. Assign a mark on each of the three criteria and justify every mark with textual evidence.
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Adequação: 1,5/3. The task is a formal request to a university service; «Olá! Tudo bem?» and «Beijos» belong to another genre, and the alternation between podes and a senhora pode shows the candidate has not decided who she is writing to. All three required contents are present, which is why this is not a zero.
Coerência e coesão: 1,5/3. The content is ordered, but the 34-word weather paragraph answers no part of the task and breaks the purpose. Three sentences open with «E», and «também… também… também» inside one sentence shows the connector set is exhausted rather than deployed.
Correção: 2,5/4. The syntax is largely intelligible; the faults are lexical repetition and unstable address forms rather than morphology.
Length: 186 words against a ceiling of 150 is 24% over, so the convention applies. Say explicitly that the deduction follows the convention, not the ideas.
2. Rewrite the opening and the closing, and state the principle behind each choice.
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Opening: «Exmos. Senhores, venho por este meio solicitar informação sobre o alojamento universitário para o próximo ano letivo.» Closing: «Agradeço desde já a atenção dispensada. Com os melhores cumprimentos, Marta Fernández.»
Principles: the addressee is an institution, so the greeting is a formula, not a question about wellbeing; European Portuguese formal writing prefers impersonal or third-person framing plus a fixed closing formula; «Beijos» belongs to family and friends and would read as careless or over-familiar. And once the register is fixed it must be consistent: choose o senhor / a senhora or the impersonal V. Exas., never both in one paragraph. Point out that «venho por este meio» and «com os melhores cumprimentos» are memorisable and transfer to any PAU letter of request.
3. Marta says cutting the weather paragraph would cost her vocabulary marks. Respond, and name the words to cut.
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Vocabulary is credited on the words that do the task, not on the number of words on the page. A paragraph about Segovia's September weather costs coherence marks and earns nothing, because examiners count range inside the required content. The 34 words to delete are the whole paragraph; if she wants a trace of personal detail, one clause inside the arrival sentence is enough: «Chego a 14 de setembro, vinda de Segovia, e gostaria de saber se o quarto estará disponível nessa data.» That recycles the same information, keeps the date and removes the digression.
With 34 words gone the script sits at 152. Trimming «Eu queria saber se» to «Gostaria de saber se» and deleting two of the também brings it to roughly 145, inside the range, so the length deduction disappears as a side effect - which is a better argument than appealing the convention.