Balearic PAU Italian II common mistakes
Balearic PAU Italian II · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When a true/false or multiple-choice item asks about the overall message of a text, the candidate answers from one familiar word or one sentence near the start instead of reading the whole passage, and marks the option that repeats a term they recognise rather than the one that matches the author's position.
Under time pressure candidates scan for lexical matches and treat word overlap with the text as proof of correctness, so distractors built from recycled vocabulary feel safer than a paraphrase that requires real comprehension.
What to do instead
Read the whole text once for gist before looking at the options, then for each option locate the exact lines that support or contradict it. Reject any option you cannot tie to a specific sentence, and practise with texts where the correct answer is a paraphrase containing none of the original keywords.
On detailed-comprehension items the candidate confuses who did what, when, or how much (swapping subjects of two clauses, misreading a negation, or taking a number or date from the wrong paragraph).
Italian texts chain information through pronouns and implicit subjects, so a reader tracking only content words loses the referent of lui, ne, ci and relative clauses, and grabs the nearest plausible detail.
What to do instead
Underline every pronoun and subjectless verb and write its referent in the margin before answering. For each detail question, quote the supporting clause verbatim in your notes and check that the grammatical subject in that clause is the one the question asks about.
The candidate picks the literal meaning of an idiomatic or figurative expression (e.g., interpreting in gamba, prendere in giro, orecchio assoluto or fare il punto word by word) and answers the inference question on that basis.
Idioms are learned as isolated vocabulary rather than as fixed chunks, and candidates translate them compositionally because they lack exposure to them in context.
What to do instead
Keep a running list of idioms met in past papers with a one-line gloss and an example sentence each, and revise them as whole units. On inference items, first decide the tone and stance of the surrounding sentences, then choose the reading consistent with that stance rather than the literal one.
In cloze and transformation exercises the candidate selects the verb tense by translating the sentence into their own language, producing errors such as imperfect for passato prossimo, present for futuro, or indicative where the Italian sentence needs congiuntivo after penso che, benché, prima che.
The candidate's first language often uses a tense or mood that maps onto a different Italian form, and school grammar is remembered as labels rather than as triggers tied to specific conjunctions and structures.
What to do instead
Learn mood and tense as trigger lists: memorise the conjunctions and verbs that force congiuntivo (penso che, è necessario che, affinché, purché, prima che, benché) and drill ten transformation items per session. When checking, identify the time marker (già, mentre, domani, l'anno scorso) first and let it select the tense instead of translating.
The candidate omits or wrongly chooses articles and prepositions, especially articulated prepositions and prepositional verbs (pensare a, dipendere da, fidarsi di, riuscire a, interessarsi di), and writes a di without contraction or a where di belongs.
Italian preposition choice is largely lexical and does not transfer from the candidate's first language, and articulated forms are treated as decoration rather than as obligatory morphology.
What to do instead
Build a verb-plus-preposition list (innamorarsi di, contare su, rinunciare a, insistere su) and test yourself weekly. In every written task, do a dedicated pass that checks only articles and prepositions, asking for each noun phrase whether it is definite, indefinite or generic, and writing out the full articulated form (dello, alla, negli) explicitly.
The candidate misuses object and combined pronouns: choosing the wrong clitic, misplacing it with infinitives and imperatives, failing to make the past participle agree with a preceding ne or direct-object clitic, or ignoring the ne/ci distinction.
Clitics carry both meaning and agreement, and candidates process them as small optional words rather than as agreement-bearing elements; the placement rules with modals and imperatives are memorised separately from the forms.
What to do instead
Drill one pattern at a time: rewrite ten sentences replacing the object with lo/la/li/le, then with mi/ti/ci/vi, then with combined forms, then in the passato prossimo checking participle agreement. Practise the ne/ci contrast with pairs such as Quanti libri hai? Ne ho tre versus Vai a Roma? Ci vado domani, and always attach clitics to infinitives and informal imperatives in your own writing.
In the writing task the candidate produces a list of correct but disconnected sentences, with no paragraphing, few connectors, and register that drifts between formal and informal (tu and Lei mixed in the same letter, or colloquial che and cosa in a formal email).
The candidate composes sentence by sentence in the target language, so planning happens at sentence level; connectors and register are added only if remembered at that moment, and the model letter memorised in class is reproduced regardless of the actual addressee.
What to do instead
Spend three minutes before writing on a skeleton: opening formula, two or three body points each with a topic sentence, closing formula. Decide the register first (Lei versus tu) and keep a fixed set of connectors to deploy deliberately (tuttavia, inoltre, d'altra parte, quindi, in conclusione, pertanto). After writing, check every verb form addressed to the reader for consistency of person.
The candidate does not fulfil the task as set: writing 60 words when 120 are required, ignoring one of the bullet points, answering the wrong question type (narrating when asked to give an opinion), or leaving the required greeting or sign-off out of a letter or email.
Candidates write what they can say rather than what was asked, and stop when they run out of ideas instead of expanding each point with a reason and an example.
What to do instead
Before writing, number the requirements in the prompt and turn them into a checklist. Allocate a rough word budget per point, and expand each with one justification plus one concrete example or consequence. Count words at the end and add a sentence of comment or conclusion if short, or cut repetition if over.
On sociocultural items the candidate applies stereotypes or their own country's norms, for example assuming all Italians use the same greeting in every situation, that the north-south divide is uniform, or that a reference to a named institution, festival or current debate means something generic.
Cultural knowledge is often gathered from films and generalisations rather than from specific, current information, and the candidate has no framework for the regional and institutional differences that questions test.
What to do instead
Study a short list of concrete facts with dates and places: the structure of the Italian state and its main institutions, major national and regional festivals, key figures in literature, cinema and music, and a handful of current debates. For each, note the region or context it belongs to, and practise rejecting options that overgeneralise with words like sempre, tutti and mai.
The candidate meets an unknown word and stops, either abandoning the item or guessing from superficial similarity to a word in their own language, producing false friends such as attualmente, eventualmente, burro, camera, salire or confetti.
There is no trained procedure for inferring meaning, and cross-linguistic similarity feels like a reliable shortcut because it works often enough to be trusted.
What to do instead
Apply a fixed inference routine: use the word's morphology (prefixes, suffixes, roots), its part of speech, and the surrounding sentence logic to propose a meaning, then confirm it against the rest of the paragraph. Keep a personal false-friends list (attualmente = currently, eventualmente = possibly, burro = butter, camera = room) and review it before each practice paper, and mark uncertain items to revisit rather than leaving them blank.