Balearic Islands PAU Portuguese II common mistakes
Balearic Islands PAU Portuguese II · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering main-idea questions with a detail that appears early in the text (often a number, date, or proper noun) and treating it as the thesis, instead of stating what the whole passage is arguing or narrating.
Under time pressure candidates latch onto the first concrete thing they can verify, and numbers feel safe because they are checkable. They also confuse 'what the text is about' with 'what the text mentions', so a salient statistic hijacks the answer.
What to do instead
Before looking at options, write a one-sentence summary of the passage in your own words using no numbers and no proper nouns. Then check which option is compatible with that sentence. If an option only matches one paragraph, discard it as a secondary idea. Practise on three short texts per session, labelling each paragraph M (main) or S (secondary) before answering.
Choosing an inference option that is merely plausible in real life but not licensed by the text, e.g. concluding the author is against tourism because the passage describes overcrowding.
Candidates import world knowledge and their own opinions, and PAU inference items are deliberately built with distractors that are true in general but unsupported here. The word 'infer' is misread as 'guess what is probably true'.
What to do instead
For every inference option, point to the exact clause that supports it and state the reasoning link aloud: 'the text says X, therefore Y'. If the link needs an assumption not written in the passage, the option is wrong. Train by writing, next to each distractor, the outside fact it relies on.
Translating a polysemous or false-friend word by its most frequent Spanish/Catalan sense rather than the sense the sentence requires (e.g. reading 'puxar' or 'ainda' through a Spanish lens, or assuming 'actual' means 'current' in a Portuguese text).
The Balearic candidate's L1 and L2 are Romance languages, so cognates feel transparent and the brain skips verification. Vocabulary-in-context items are precisely where that shortcut fails.
What to do instead
Cover the target word, read the full sentence and the one before it, propose a synonym in Portuguese, then substitute it back. Keep a personal log of false friends and polysemous items (actual, realizar, assistir, brincar/jogar, ainda, logo) with the sentence where you met them, and review it weekly.
Mixing up pretérito perfeito simples and pretérito imperfeito in both comprehension and production, e.g. rendering 'quando cheguei, ele dormia' as if both events were simultaneous and completed.
Spanish and Catalan interference plus a tendency to treat both as 'past tense'. Candidates learn the forms in isolation and never internalise the aspectual contrast (bounded event vs. background/habitual state).
What to do instead
Memorise the contrast as a rule: perfeito = single completed event that advances the narrative; imperfeito = setting, habit, or ongoing background. Drill with paired sentences ('Ontem lia quando o telefone tocou') and, in composition, underline every past-tense verb and justify the choice in the margin.
Producing the personal infinitive incorrectly or avoiding it entirely, and misapplying subjunctive after expressions like 'espero que', 'é possível que', 'quando' with future reference, or 'se' in hypothetical clauses.
The personal infinitive is a Portuguese-specific feature with no direct equivalent in Spanish or Catalan, and mood selection depends on triggers rather than on meaning alone, so candidates default to the indicative or to the Spanish pattern.
What to do instead
Build a trigger list for the subjunctive (volition, emotion, doubt, evaluation, conjunctions of time with future reference, indefinites) and a separate list for personal-infinitive contexts (same or different subject after prepositions and causatives). Write ten sentences per structure and have them corrected; recycle the corrections into a checklist before the exam.
Errors in gender, number, and agreement of nouns and adjectives, especially nouns ending in -agem, -ção, -dade treated as masculine, and adjectives like 'português/portuguesa' or 'bom/bons' left unagreed.
Candidates infer gender from the Spanish or Catalan equivalent or from the final letter, and they edit for meaning before form, so agreement slips survive proofreading.
What to do instead
Keep a gender list of high-frequency exceptions (-agem, -ção, -dade, -tude, o dia, a análise, o problema, a viagem) and drill agreement with noun phrases rather than isolated words. In the writing task, reserve two minutes for a dedicated agreement pass reading only for articles, adjectives, and verb endings, not for content.
Placing object pronouns wrongly or omitting them: writing 'vi ele' instead of 'vi-o', putting the clitic after the verb where proclisis is required after negation or adverbs, or ignoring contractions like 'do', 'no', 'àquele'.
Colloquial Brazilian usage heard in media conflicts with the normative European pattern the exam expects, and clitic placement rules (attraction by 'não', 'já', 'também', 'que') are taught late and practised little.
What to do instead
Learn proclisis triggers as a fixed list (negation, adverbs, subordinating 'que', indefinites, 'em'+gerund) and treat enclisis as the default only in main affirmative clauses. Rewrite ten active sentences with clitics daily, including contractions, and check each against the trigger list.
Writing a composition that answers the prompt only loosely: no clear opening statement, paragraphs that are lists of ideas, connectors limited to 'e', 'mas', 'porque', and register that swings between informal chat and stilted textbook prose.
Candidates write what they can say rather than what the task asks, run out of planning time, and fall back on the few connectors they control. Register is rarely taught explicitly, so they copy the tone of the reading passage.
What to do instead
Spend three minutes on an outline: thesis sentence, two supporting points, conclusion. Use a fixed connector set for each function (adição, contraste, causa, consequência, conclusão) and force at least four different ones into the text. Keep a formal register: no 'a gente', no abbreviations, no exclamation marks; address the reader impersonally.
Losing marks on accentuation and punctuation: omitting accents on proparoxytones and on forms like 'é', 'há', 'pôde', confusing 'porque/porquê/por que', and using commas as in Spanish, or omitting the comma before a subordinate clause.
Accents are treated as decoration and skipped during a timed write, and the Spanish comma habit (fewer commas in enumerations, different treatment of vocatives) transfers silently into Portuguese.
What to do instead
Do a final accent-only pass, reading the text backwards word by word so meaning does not distract you. Memorise the four 'porquês' with one example each, and practise the comma rules that differ: mandatory comma before 'mas', 'pois', 'ou seja', and around explicative appositives.
Treating the Portuguese-speaking world as a single culture, e.g. assuming Brazilian and European spelling and vocabulary are interchangeable in a text, or failing to identify the variety, country, or institution a cultural item refers to (PALOP, CPLP, Acordo Ortográfico).
Study materials often present one national variety, and cultural items are memorised as isolated facts without a geographic or historical frame, so candidates cannot place a reference in context.
What to do instead
For each text, identify the variety from spelling and lexicon ('autocarro/ônibus', 'receção/recepção') as a first step. Build a one-page map of the CPLP countries with capital, independence date, and one distinctive cultural marker each, and revise the Acordo Ortográfico rules that visibly separate the two norms.