Galicia PAU English - First Foreign Language common mistakes
Galicia PAU English - First Foreign Language · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing a general-topic answer to the global-understanding question (e.g. summarising what the student thinks about social media instead of stating what the text argues about it).
Candidates treat the first open question as a free composition and import their own opinions and examples, because the prompt wording ('What is the text about?') feels like an invitation to comment rather than to report the author's line of argument.
What to do instead
Before writing, produce a one-sentence 'author says X because Y' statement from the introduction and conclusion paragraphs only, then check every sentence you write against the question 'is this in the text?'. Delete any sentence containing an opinion marker such as 'I think', 'in my opinion' or 'nowadays' unless the question explicitly asks for your view.
Giving a paragraph-by-paragraph retelling as the global-understanding answer, listing every detail in the order it appears.
Under time pressure the safest-looking strategy is to translate the text sequentially, and candidates do not distinguish summary from gist, so they include supporting examples and figures that belong to the specific-information questions.
What to do instead
Practise the 'topic + stance' formula: name the topic in a noun phrase and the author's position in a verb phrase (e.g. 'The article argues that remote work widens inequality'). Cap the answer at the requested number of words and cut any figure, name or date, since those signal detail rather than gist.
Copying long stretches of the original text verbatim into comprehension answers, including full sentences with the same subjects and verbs.
Candidates fear losing marks for inaccurate wording and believe exact copying guarantees correctness, but they have not been taught that lifted strings show no comprehension and often contain pronouns that no longer refer correctly out of context.
What to do instead
Rewrite each answer with a different subject and a reporting verb ('The author claims that...'), and replace pronouns with the noun they refer to. Keep only proper nouns and technical terms identical. If a sentence can be found word-for-word in the text, rewrite it before moving on.
Answering true/false or yes/no items with the bare word and no justification, or justifying with a line that does not actually contain the evidence.
Candidates read the statement, locate a keyword in the text, feel recognition, and stop; they do not check whether the quoted line supports the truth value, and they underestimate how strictly justification is marked.
What to do instead
Use a two-step routine: decide the truth value, then find the shortest span (maximum one sentence) that logically forces that value, and copy it with quotation marks plus line reference. Test the quote by asking whether someone reading only the quote would reach the same verdict.
Treating inference items as literal-lookup items, so answers restate a sentence from the text instead of drawing the unstated conclusion the question asks for.
Questions using 'suggest', 'imply' or 'the writer probably believes' look like normal comprehension questions, and candidates do not notice that the answer is not printed anywhere, so they hunt for a matching sentence and settle for the nearest one.
What to do instead
Highlight the inferential verb in the question before answering, then locate the two or three text clues it depends on and write the conclusion in your own words with 'this suggests that...'. If your answer is a sentence you can point to in the text, it is the wrong type of answer.
Guessing vocabulary from surface similarity to a Spanish word or from a familiar root, producing a false friend or an over-broad meaning.
Spanish is the candidates' first language and cognate transfer is automatic and fast, while the context-checking step is slow, so the first plausible meaning wins even when the surrounding sentence contradicts it.
What to do instead
Apply the substitution test: insert your candidate meaning into the original sentence and read the whole sentence for coherence. If it clashes with the sentence's logic or with a connector like 'however' or 'although', reject it. Build a personal list of the false friends that recur in this exam register (e.g. 'actually', 'eventually', 'assist', 'library', 'sensible').
Completing gap-fill grammar items by ear or by translating the Spanish structure directly, ignoring the time markers and the verb patterns around the gap.
Candidates answer each gap in isolation, sentence by sentence, without reading the surrounding lines, and Spanish allows structures (e.g. a present tense where English needs a perfect, or a bare infinitive after certain verbs) that the item is specifically testing.
What to do instead
Read the whole paragraph once before filling anything, then for each gap underline the time expression or the governing verb and decide the form from that evidence, not from the Spanish equivalent. After filling, reread the completed paragraph aloud to check tense consistency across sentences.
Writing a composition that answers a different question from the one set, or that ignores the required format (article, email, opinion essay) and register.
Candidates memorise a model essay before the exam and try to fit the prompt to it, and they skim the task instructions because they are anxious to start writing within the time limit.
What to do instead
Spend the first two minutes underlining the task's content points, the required format and the intended reader, and write a three-line plan mapping one paragraph to each content point. Check at the end that every underlined point appears and that greetings, sign-offs and contractions match the format.
Producing a composition with no paragraph divisions, or with paragraphs that mix the introduction, arguments and conclusion in one block.
Candidates draft in a single flow to save time and never return to structure, and Spanish academic writing habits sometimes tolerate longer, less visibly segmented paragraphs than English exam rubrics reward.
What to do instead
Impose a fixed skeleton before writing: introduction stating position, two body paragraphs each opening with a topic sentence and supported by one example, and a conclusion restating the position without new arguments. Indent or leave a blank line between paragraphs, and verify each paragraph opens with a sentence that announces its content.
Losing marks on mechanics: missing capital letters on nationalities, languages and days, comma splices joining two main clauses, and apostrophes dropped from possessives and contractions.
Candidates focus all their revision on vocabulary and verb tenses, and the Spanish habit of writing nationalities and languages in lower case and of linking clauses with commas transfers directly into English.
What to do instead
Reserve the final three minutes of the writing task for a mechanics-only pass in this order: capitals, apostrophes, comma splices, spelling of high-frequency irregular words. For comma splices, check every comma whether a finite verb follows on both sides; if so, replace the comma with a full stop, a semicolon or a conjunction.