La Rioja PAU English (UR) common mistakes
La Rioja PAU English (UR) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the reading-comprehension true/false or multiple-choice items, the candidate answers from personal opinion or general knowledge about the topic instead of locating the sentence in the passage that decides the answer, and cannot say which lines justify the choice.
Under time pressure the passage feels familiar and students skim for the gist, then trust memory. PAU reading texts are short but lexically dense, and distractors are usually built by repeating words from the text in a false relationship, so gist-level reading is exactly what the item punishes.
What to do instead
Train a locate-and-quote routine: for every item, underline the exact words in the text that decide it and write the line number beside the option before marking. For true/false, require a paraphrase of the justifying sentence in the margin. Practise with items whose distractors recycle vocabulary so the candidate learns to check relations (who did what to whom), not word matching.
When asked to find a synonym, antonym or the meaning of a word 'in context', the candidate supplies a dictionary sense that does not fit the sentence, or gives a word from a different word class (a noun for a verb).
Vocabulary is often studied as bilingual word lists, so the first translation that comes to mind is offered regardless of the surrounding syntax. Candidates also ignore the instruction to use their own words and simply copy a nearby word from the text.
What to do instead
Practise context-clue work: cover the target word, read the full sentence, predict meaning and word class, then check. Drill word families (decide/decision/decisive) so the answer matches the grammatical slot. In the exam, always reread the substituted sentence to confirm it still makes sense.
In the reading section the candidate leaves the answer sheet blank or writes a full sentence copied verbatim from the text when a short answer is required, and does not transfer answers from the booklet to the official sheet in the given time.
Candidates manage the passage but not the clock: they spend too long on one item, then rush transfer. Copying whole sentences feels safer than paraphrasing, and students are unaware that an answer lifted word for word may not be accepted where reformulation is demanded.
What to do instead
Simulate the real timing with a hard stop and a separate transfer phase; practise a rule of roughly one minute per item with a marked 'abandon and return' flag. Train short answers of two to six words that answer the question directly, and rehearse paraphrasing the same idea three ways.
The composition ignores the prompt's format and register: a formal opinion essay is written as a chatty narrative, an informal email opens with 'Dear Sir or Madam', or the required word count is missed by a wide margin (well under or far over the limit).
Students prepare one memorised essay and force every prompt into it, and many have never been explicitly taught the conventions of the formats that appear in the exam (opinion essay, for-and-against, informal email, description, narrative). Register is treated as decoration rather than a graded criterion.
What to do instead
Build a one-page format sheet per genre: purpose, typical opening and closing, paragraph structure, and the register markers (contractions and phrasal verbs for informal; full forms and impersonal structures for formal). Practise writing to a counted length in the exam's range, timing it, and self-check the checklist before handing in.
The composition has no clear paragraph plan: ideas appear in one block, the thesis is only revealed in the last line, and linking words are either absent or used mechanically ('Firstly... Secondly... Finally...' with no logical relation to the content).
Candidates write as they think, in a single draft, because planning feels like lost minutes. Connectors are memorised as a list rather than as meaning-carrying devices, so they are inserted to look advanced rather than to signal contrast, cause or addition.
What to do instead
Enforce a three-minute plan: jot the position, two supporting reasons with an example each, and a conclusion, then write to that skeleton. Teach connectors by function (contrast: however, whereas; cause: therefore, as a result) and require each one to be justified by the relation between the two sentences it joins.
The composition is marked down for repeated basic errors that the candidate could self-correct: third-person -s, subject-verb agreement, article use, and Spanish-influenced spelling or false friends (e.g. 'actually' for 'currently', 'assist' for 'attend').
L1 interference and a lack of editing habit: students finish the last sentence and stop, treating the draft as final. Error types are fossilised because feedback is received as a mark, not as a list of personal recurring faults.
What to do instead
Keep a personal error log of the five errors the candidate actually makes and run a targeted two-minute check for exactly those after writing. Drill high-frequency false friends in contrastive pairs, and practise rewriting the same paragraph correcting only agreement and articles to build automaticity.
In the use-of-English items the candidate fills the gap with a word that fits the meaning but not the grammar: wrong tense or form in a verb gap, an adjective where an adverb is needed, or a bare infinitive after a preposition.
Gap-fill is treated as a vocabulary test, so students translate the missing idea and stop, without asking what the sentence structure requires. Word-formation items in particular are answered with the base word or a plausible but non-existent derivative.
What to do instead
Before writing, identify the slot: what word class and what form does the syntax demand? For word formation, apply the suffix and then check spelling shifts (happy/happiness, prefer/preference) and whether a negative prefix is needed. Build a table of common suffixes by word class and drill it in sentence context.
In transformation or tense-choice items the candidate changes the words but loses the original meaning, or ignores the prompt's cue word and produces a different structure (e.g. fails to keep the passive, reported speech or conditional type the item is testing).
Students translate sentence by sentence rather than applying a grammatical operation, and they do not check back against the original. Backshift, pronoun and time-expression changes in reported speech, and tense sequencing in conditionals, are the operations most often half-applied.
What to do instead
Teach transformations as fixed procedures with a checklist: identify the structure required, apply each change in order (tense, pronoun, time marker, word order), then compare meaning with the original. Drill reported speech and conditionals in minimal pairs so the candidate sees exactly which element changes.
On the listening task the candidate tries to write while the audio plays, misses the next answer, and then cannot recover; answers are also taken from a word heard in the recording that belongs to a distractor rather than to the correct option.
The recording is played a limited number of times and candidates are not used to processing at natural speed, so they cling to individual words instead of following the argument. They also read the options only after the audio starts, so they do not know what information to listen for.
What to do instead
Use the preview time to underline the key word in each option and predict the kind of answer expected. Take abbreviated notes, not full sentences, and write the final answer during the pause. Practise with authentic audio at exam speed, including distractors where a speaker mentions an option and then rejects it.
The candidate mishears or fails to decode connected speech and numbers, names and spelled words: contractions, weak forms, linking, and letters that sound alike in English (B/V, G/J, A/E/I) are written down wrongly.
Classroom listening is often slower and clearer than exam audio, and Spanish speakers map English sounds onto Spanish phonemes, so 'thirteen/thirty' or a spelled surname become guesswork. Candidates also do not know that a spelled-out word or figure is usually an answer key and must be captured exactly.
What to do instead
Do focused decoding work: minimal-pair dictation for numbers and letters, and shadowing of short clips with contractions and linking. In the exam, write the spelled letters as heard and read them back; for figures, note the stress pattern (thirTEEN vs THIRty) and check plausibility against the context.