Galicia PAU German - Second Foreign Language common mistakes
Galicia PAU German - Second Foreign Language · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering reading-comprehension questions by copying a full sentence from the text verbatim, or by lifting a phrase that merely contains a keyword from the question, instead of producing a short answer that actually responds to what was asked (e.g. 'Warum...?' answered with a 'Was...' fact).
Candidates under time pressure scan for the keyword, find the matching line, and copy it, assuming 'found the word' equals 'found the answer'. They also fear making grammar errors in their own words, so quoting feels safer.
What to do instead
Before writing, underline the question word (warum, wer, wann, wie lange, womit) and the verb, then locate the sentence that answers that specific question, not just the one that repeats the keyword. Reformulate in 5-12 words using the text's content but your own syntax, and check the answer against the question word: a 'warum' answer must contain a reason (weil/denn/deshalb or a causal phrase). Practise with 10 short texts, writing answers without copying, then compare with the original to verify the content matches.
Treating 'richtig/falsch' or true-false-with-justification items as a guess, and justifying with a sentence that contradicts the chosen option or with no textual evidence at all.
Students answer from general world knowledge or personal opinion rather than from the passage, and they do not re-read their justification against their tick. In Galicia PAU-style tasks the justification is often worth as much as the tick.
What to do instead
Adopt a two-step routine: (1) decide true/false only after finding the exact line; (2) copy or paraphrase the minimal evidence fragment and explicitly check that it supports the tick you made ('If I say false, my quote must show the opposite of the statement'). Train by covering the options, predicting the answer from the text, then revealing the options.
Misreading negation and contrast markers (nicht, kein, nie, kaum, ohne, statt, außer, sondern, zwar...aber, trotzdem, dennoch) and therefore inverting the meaning of a sentence in comprehension items.
These small words are visually unstressed and candidates read for content words only; Spanish/Galician syntax also makes 'sondern' and 'aber' feel interchangeable, and 'kaum' is often unknown.
What to do instead
Build a personal list of 15 'meaning-flip' words and, in every reading text, highlight them before answering. Do a dedicated drill: take 10 sentences, insert or remove a negation, and state how the meaning changes. In exam conditions, re-read any sentence containing one of these markers twice before choosing an option.
Choosing vocabulary options by superficial similarity to a Spanish/Galician/English word (false friends) or by the root of a word rather than its context, e.g. mapping 'bekommen' to 'become/get as in receive' confusion, 'Gift' to 'gift', 'Fabrik' to 'fábrica/factory' vs 'Fabric', 'eventuell' to 'eventually'.
The L1/L2 lexicon is activated automatically and the first plausible meaning wins; candidates rarely verify the option back in the sentence.
What to do instead
Keep a false-friend log with the German word, its real meaning, and a short example sentence, reviewed weekly. In multiple-choice vocabulary items, always substitute the chosen option back into the original sentence and read it aloud mentally; if the sentence becomes odd, the option is wrong. Learn vocabulary in collocations (eine Prüfung bestehen, eine Entscheidung treffen) rather than isolated glosses.
Producing verb-final or verb-second order incorrectly in subordinate and main clauses: putting the finite verb in second position after 'weil' or 'dass', or forgetting inversion after a fronted adverbial ('Gestern ich ging...' instead of 'Gestern ging ich...').
The V2 rule of German main clauses conflicts with the L1 pattern and with the verb-final rule of subordinate clauses; learners overgeneralise one pattern to the other, and the error is invisible when reading quickly.
What to do instead
Drill the two frames separately with sentence-building exercises: main clause = position 1 (any element) + finite verb + rest; subordinate = conjunction + ... + finite verb at the end. Convert 20 pairs of sentences between main and subordinate form (Ich bleibe zu Hause, weil es regnet / Es regnet, deshalb bleibe ich zu Hause). In the writing task, reserve two minutes to check every 'weil/dass/wenn/obwohl' clause for final verb position.
Writing the guided production with no paragraph structure and no connectors, producing a list of short main clauses ('Ich mag Sport. Es ist gut. Ich mache es jeden Tag.') instead of cohesive text with introduction, development and conclusion.
Candidates write what they can control grammatically and avoid risk; they were never taught a reusable text skeleton, so planning time is spent on vocabulary rather than organisation.
What to do instead
Memorise a three-part skeleton per text type (e.g. opinion text: Einleitung mit Thema und These - zwei Argumente mit 'erstens', 'außerdem', 'zum Beispiel' - Schluss mit 'deshalb/meiner Meinung nach'). Practise with a fixed checklist of connectors to include (zuerst, außerdem, jedoch, deshalb, zum Schluss). Write the same 120-word task three times with different content to internalise the frame.
Ignoring the task instructions in the writing prompt: wrong register (using 'du' forms in a formal letter or 'Sie' in an informal email to a friend), missing required content points, or writing far below/above the word limit.
Under exam pressure candidates read the prompt once, recognise the topic, and start writing from a memorised template; register and bullet points are treated as decoration rather than as scored criteria.
What to do instead
Use a 3-minute pre-writing phase: number the required content points in the prompt, note the addressee and the register (du/Sie, greetings and closings: 'Liebe/r...' vs 'Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren'), and jot one keyword per point. After writing, tick each content point off and count words. Build a two-column sheet of formal vs informal formulae and practise converting the same message between the two registers.
Treating the cultural/sociolinguistic items as general knowledge trivia and answering from stereotypes (e.g. assuming all Germans say 'Fräulein', that Austria and Germany share the same everyday vocabulary, or that 'Sie' is old-fashioned), or skipping them entirely because they are 'not in the book'.
Cultural knowledge is often taught as isolated facts without contrast, and learners generalise from films or from one region; the DACH principle (Deutschland, Austria, Schweiz) is rarely applied systematically.
What to do instead
Study culture in contrast pairs: greeting and address conventions, meal times and food names (Brötchen/Semmel/Weckerl, Sahne/Obers, Tomate/Paradeiser), school systems, and public holidays, always labelled by country. Keep a one-page DACH table and add three entries per week from authentic sources (news sites, official tourism pages). For any item, ask 'is this true in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, or only one?' before answering.
Using a bilingual dictionary or translation app word-for-word during practice and then, in the exam, writing literal translations of L1 idioms and structures ('Ich habe 18 Jahre' for 'I am 18', 'Es gefällt mir sehr gut' misused for 'I like it a lot' with a person as subject, 'machen eine Frage' for 'ask a question').
Translation feels efficient and gives immediate output, so learners never build German-in-German patterns; interference from L1 is strongest in high-frequency phrases that seem 'obvious'.
What to do instead
Switch to monolingual definitions and collocation lookups for the 200 most frequent verbs and nouns, and keep a personal error log of L1-interference phrases with the correct German version. Learn fixed expressions as chunks (Ich bin 18 Jahre alt; Ich stelle eine Frage; Mir gefällt das). In the exam, if a phrase feels like a direct translation, replace it with a simpler structure you know is German.
Spending the same amount of time on every section and running out of time on the writing task, leaving it unfinished or unrevised, and never returning to check agreement, case endings and capitalisation of nouns.
Candidates do tasks in the order printed and get absorbed in difficult reading items; they also underestimate how long 120-150 words takes to write and check, and they do not know the mark distribution.
What to do instead
Before starting, find out the mark weighting and time allocation for each section and write the times on the answer sheet. Do the writing task while your energy is highest if the rules allow, and cap reading items at their allotted minutes, marking uncertain ones and moving on. Reserve a fixed 5-minute final check with a concrete checklist: noun capitalisation, subject-verb agreement, verb position, case after prepositions, and completeness of content points.