PAU Catalan Language and Literature (Catalonia) common mistakes
PAU Catalan Language and Literature (Catalonia) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering comprehension questions by copying a whole sentence or paragraph from the text verbatim instead of reformulating the idea in your own words.
Under time pressure, lifting text feels safe and fast, and candidates assume matching words proves they understood. In fact, literal copying shows location skills, not comprehension, and often fails the requirement to explain or synthesise.
What to do instead
Before writing, underline the exact words in the text that answer the question, then close the text mentally and write the answer from memory in one or two sentences. Check that no run of more than four or five words matches the original. Practise with past papers by timing yourself and rewriting each copied answer into a paraphrase.
Confusing the author's thesis with a secondary idea or an example, so the summary of the text states a detail as the main point.
Candidates read linearly and treat the first paragraph or the most striking sentence as the thesis, and they do not distinguish argument from illustration. This is especially common in opinion articles and expository texts with an anecdotal opening.
What to do instead
After reading, write a one-line answer to 'What does the author want me to believe or know?' and a second line listing the evidence used. If the two lines swap easily, reread the closing paragraph, where the thesis is often restated. Practise identifying the function of each paragraph (thesis, example, counterargument, conclusion) before summarising.
Producing a written text with correct grammar but no clear structure: a single block of prose, an introduction that never states the position, and no concluding paragraph.
Candidates draft directly onto the answer sheet and focus all attention on sentence-level correctness, because that is what they have practised most. Planning feels like lost time in a timed exam, so the text grows organically and loses its thread.
What to do instead
Spend three to four minutes before writing to produce a skeleton: thesis, two or three arguments with one example each, and a conclusion. Write one paragraph per idea with a topic sentence. Use explicit connectors (d'altra banda, en conseqüència, en definitiva) to mark the relations. Leave two minutes to check that each paragraph does one job.
Switching register mid-text, mixing colloquial forms (doncs, moltíssim, una mica de tot, lo) with formal written Catalan, or addressing the reader inconsistently (tu, vós, impersonal).
Candidates transfer spoken Catalan and social-media habits into formal writing, and they have not internalised which forms belong to the standard written register expected in an academic essay or an opinion piece.
What to do instead
Decide the register and addressee before writing and state it in the plan (for example, formal, impersonal, third person). Keep a personal list of colloquial forms you use and their formal equivalents (per exemple, 'lo' → 'el que', 'una mica' → 'lleugerament'). Do a final pass reading only for register, not for grammar.
Applying Spanish accentuation and spelling intuitions to Catalan, for example writing 'també' as 'tambien', 'perquè' as 'porque', or misplacing accents on words like 'història', 'públic', 'música'.
Bilingual candidates rely on Spanish orthographic patterns, and Catalan's rules for acute versus grave accents and for diacritics differ. Frequent exposure to Spanish in daily life reinforces the interference.
What to do instead
Memorise the accent rule: acute for closed vowels (é, í, ó, ú) and grave for open ones (à, è, ò), and learn the small set of diacritic accents (sí/si, més/mes, bé/be, dóna/dona). Build a list of your ten most frequent misspellings and test yourself weekly. Read Catalan press daily to consolidate the visual pattern.
Making pronoun and preposition errors with weak pronouns (en, hi, ho, li, els) and with verbs of motion or location, for example omitting 'hi' in 'vaig anar-hi' or misusing 'en' for 'hi'.
The pronominal system is one of the hardest parts of Catalan grammar and has no one-to-one equivalent in Spanish. Candidates translate from Spanish and drop pronouns that Catalan requires or substitutes the wrong one.
What to do instead
Learn the pronoun system by function rather than by translation: 'en' for partitive and origin, 'hi' for place and prepositional complements, 'ho' for neuter direct object. Practise with substitution drills where you replace an underlined complement with the correct pronoun, and check against a reference grammar. Include at least one pronoun exercise in every study session.
Confusing 'per' and 'per a', or using 'que' where 'què' or 'el qual' is required, in relative and causal clauses.
These pairs are systematic traps for Spanish speakers because Spanish uses 'para' and 'por' differently, and because the distinction between stressed and unstressed 'que' is not taught enough in early schooling.
What to do instead
Memorise the core distinction: 'per' expresses cause, means, and agent; 'per a' expresses purpose and destination. Test with substitution: if you can replace with 'a causa de', use 'per'; if with 'amb la finalitat de', use 'per a'. For 'que/què', check whether the word can be stressed in speech and whether it introduces a question or exclamation.
Answering literature questions with a plot summary of the work instead of analysing literary features such as narrative voice, symbolism, structure, or the work's place in a movement.
Candidates revise plots because they are easy to memorise, and they fear that analysis requires inventing an interpretation. They therefore retell the story and lose the marks allocated to literary commentary.
What to do instead
For each set work, prepare a one-page sheet with four headings: theme, narrative voice and point of view, key symbols or images, and stylistic features. In the exam, always link a feature to an effect or meaning ('the use of the first person creates...'). Practise writing three-sentence analytical paragraphs on each work rather than summaries.
Placing authors and works in the wrong period or movement, for example attributing a Modernista poet to the Noucentisme or dating a novel of the post-war period to the 1920s.
Movements overlap chronologically and share features, and candidates learn authors as isolated names without a timeline. Pressure in the exam then produces a plausible-sounding but wrong attribution.
What to do instead
Build a single annotated timeline from the Renaixença to the present, with each movement's dates, defining features, and two representative authors and works. Learn each author through one distinctive marker (a theme, a form, a historical event). Test yourself by placing random authors on a blank timeline until you are consistently correct.
Writing literary commentary that paraphrases the poem or fragment line by line without identifying the metric form, rhetorical figures, or the relationship between form and meaning.
Candidates are unsure of metrical terminology and figure names, so they avoid them and fall back on content paraphrase. This forfeits the technical marks that distinguish a good commentary from a summary.
What to do instead
Memorise the essential toolkit: syllable counting with sinalefa and hiatus, common metres (decasíl·lab, alexandrí, octosíl·lab), rhyme schemes, and the figures most examined (metàfora, metonímia, hipèrbaton, anàfora, al·literació). For each commentary, force yourself to include one section on form and one sentence linking form to meaning. Practise on short fragments under timed conditions.