Valencian Community PAU Valencian Language and Literature II common mistakes
Valencian Community PAU Valencian Language and Literature II · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the expository or argumentative composition with a single undivided block of text, without an introduction that announces the thesis, without paragraphing that separates arguments, and without a closing conclusion, so the reader cannot reconstruct the line of reasoning.
Candidates plan only the content ('what do I say about this topic') and not the architecture, and under time pressure they start writing the first sentence that comes and keep going. School practice often rewards length and quantity of ideas over visible organisation, so paragraph breaks feel cosmetic rather than functional.
What to do instead
Before writing, spend three to four minutes producing a skeleton on the sheet: a one-line thesis, two or three argument labels, and a conclusion label. Then write exactly one paragraph per label, each opening with a topic sentence that states its point, followed by evidence or example, and a final paragraph that restates the position and closes. Physically indent or leave a blank line between paragraphs so the structure is visible at a glance, and check at the end that a reader could summarise your text from the topic sentences alone.
Confusing the author's thesis with the topic of the text: asked to identify the thesis, the candidate writes 'the text talks about the loss of Valencian in the cities' or copies the first sentence, instead of stating the specific claim the author defends and would have to be argued for.
The topic is usually explicit and repeated, while the thesis is often implicit, distributed across the text, or signalled by concessive and adversative connectors ('però', 'tanmateix', 'el que realment importa és'). Candidates trained to summarise rather than to argue read for content and stop at the subject matter.
What to do instead
Locate the argumentative core by looking for the paragraph that contains the highest density of evaluative and modal language and the connectors of contrast or consequence. Formulate the thesis as a full declarative sentence that someone could disagree with, and test it by asking 'could a reasonable person defend the opposite?'. If the answer is no, you have written the topic, not the thesis. Practise on three or four op-ed pieces, writing the topic and the thesis side by side until the difference is automatic.
Misclassifying the register and communicative purpose: labelling a journalistic opinion article as 'informal and subjective because it uses the first person', or calling an academic expository text 'argumentative' merely because it contains an opinion, without distinguishing the dominant function from secondary traces.
Candidates match surface features one-to-one with registers (first person equals colloquial, technical vocabulary equals scientific) instead of weighing the whole configuration: channel, audience, lexical density, syntax, modality and the text's declared aim. They also ignore that most real texts are hybrid and that the task asks for the dominant purpose.
What to do instead
Build a checklist you apply in a fixed order: who writes for whom, in what medium, with what expected effect on the reader, and which function dominates. Then note secondary features separately as 'traces'. Justify the classification with two or three concrete linguistic citations from the text (a modal verb, a specialised term, a syntactic pattern), because the mark is for the reasoning, not the label. Remember that first-person argumentative journalism is standard rather than informal.
Producing cohesive devices mechanically: stringing connectors at the start of every sentence ('En primer lloc... A més... A més... Finalment...') regardless of the logical relation, or using 'però' and 'sinó' interchangeably, so the text reads as a list rather than an argument.
Connectors are taught as a checklist of words to insert to 'show cohesion', so candidates treat them as decoration. Because they are chosen after the sentence is written rather than before, the logical relation is never decided, and the connector is picked for variety instead of meaning.
What to do instead
Decide the relation first and then choose: contrast (però, tanmateix, en canvi, ara bé), addition (a més, així mateix, d'altra banda), consequence (per tant, en conseqüència, així doncs), concession (tot i que, malgrat que, si bé), reformulation (és a dir, o siga, en altres paraules). Vary the mechanism: use lexical cohesion, pronouns, ellipsis and parallel structures as well, not only sentence-initial connectors. After drafting, read only the sentence openings in sequence; if more than half begin with a connector, rewrite.
Applying Spanish spelling and morphosyntax to Valencian: writing 'también' for 'també', 'hay' for 'hi ha', 'porque' for 'perquè', 'a lo mejor' for 'potser', using the Spanish periphrastic preterite calque 'va ser fet' where 'es va fer' is required, or placing the pronoun before an infinitive or imperative ('es llevar', 'te calles') in violation of Valencian enclisis rules.
Spanish is the dominant everyday language for most candidates, so interference operates below conscious attention; the forms feel right because they are grammatical in the language of habitual use. Reading in Valencian is often limited to exam texts, so the correct patterns are recognised passively but not produced.
What to do instead
Keep a personal interference log of the twenty or thirty forms you actually get wrong, with the correct Valencian on the right, and review it before each practice piece. Target the high-frequency trouble spots explicitly: the verb 'haver-hi', the causal conjunctions, the pronominal system and its combinations (el, la, els, les, li, los, hi, en), enclisis with infinitive, gerund and imperative, and the use of 'ser' and 'estar'. Write one short text a week and proofread it only for these items, marking each hit.
Ignoring the normative accentuation and diacritic rules of the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua: omitting accents on open-mid vowels that require them, mis-accentuating words ending in -ia, or failing to apply the AVL criteria for diacritic accents and for the hyphen in compounds, and mixing Valencian and Catalan normative conventions in the same text.
The AVL standard differs in detail from both Spanish and from the Catalan of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, and candidates learn accentuation by analogy with Spanish or by half-remembered school rules. Because accents are treated as a final cosmetic step, they are revised last, when time has run out.
What to do instead
Work from the AVL's own normative summary rather than from memory or from Catalan materials, and build a one-page reference of the rules that actually differ: the accentuation of -ia words, the diacritics, the treatment of monosyllables, and the hyphenation of compounds and numerals. Apply accents while writing, not afterwards, and reserve a fixed two minutes at the end of the exam to re-read only for accents and apostrophes, pronouncing each word aloud in your head to hear where the stress falls.
Describing literary texts by retelling their content and labelling rhetorical devices without explaining their effect: writing 'hi ha una metàfora i una anàfora' or summarising the plot of a poem, instead of analysing how the device constructs meaning, tone or theme in this specific passage.
Literature is often studied as a list of authors, works and figures to be recognised, so the exam answer becomes a display of vocabulary. Candidates lack practice in the move from identification to interpretation, and fear that interpretation is subjective and therefore risky.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed three-step formula for every device: quote the exact words, name the device, and state its function in context ('the anaphora of "no" across three lines accumulates the negation and turns private grief into a collective refusal'). Tie every observation back to theme, structure or tone, and anchor it in a quotation so it cannot be dismissed as vague. Practise on short passages, writing three such sentences rather than a full commentary.
Treating literary history as an undifferentiated list: attributing works to the wrong century or movement, confusing medieval authors with the Decadència or the Renaixença, inventing titles, or placing a contemporary author in the wrong generation, and dating the Decadència or the Renaixença imprecisely.
Periods are memorised as labels with a few famous names attached, without a mental timeline linking them to political and linguistic events. Under exam pressure, similar-sounding names and titles collapse into each other, and the temptation to fill a gap with a plausible-sounding invention is strong.
What to do instead
Build a single chronological spine on one page, from the medieval chronicles and Ausiàs March through the Decadència, the Renaixença, Modernisme, the avant-garde, post-war and contemporary writing, anchoring each period to two or three defining works and to the political and linguistic events that frame it. Attach each author to one signature work and one identifying trait. If a title or date does not come to mind, write what you do know and omit the uncertain detail rather than inventing it.
Commenting on a literary text without connecting it to its historical, social and linguistic context: analysing a Renaixença poem as if it were a timeless expression of feeling, without mentioning the recovery of the language, the Romantic framework or the audience it was addressing.
Close reading is taught as an autonomous skill, and candidates fear that contextual material is 'extra' and will cost them marks for irrelevance. They also lack a compact framework of what each period was responding to, so context feels like a list of dates rather than an explanation.
What to do instead
For each period, memorise a single sentence of the form 'this movement responds to X by doing Y with the language', for example the Renaixença responding to the loss of public prestige of Valencian by reclaiming it as a literary language. In the commentary, dedicate one short paragraph to situating the text in that frame and then show one concrete link back to the text itself, so the context illuminates a specific word, image or genre choice rather than sitting as an ornament.
Mismanaging time and revision: spending most of the allotted time on the reading comprehension and the literary commentary, then writing the composition in the last fifteen minutes with no planning and no proofreading, or conversely writing a long composition and leaving the literary question half-answered.
Candidates work sequentially and give the first section whatever time it absorbs, without knowing the mark weighting of each part. The composition feels easiest and is therefore deferred, and revision is treated as optional rather than as a scored stage.
What to do instead
Before starting, read the whole paper and write the mark allocation and a time budget next to each section, reserving a fixed ten minutes for revision. Do the section you find hardest while you are freshest, and keep strictly to the budget with a watch on the desk. In the revision phase, check in this order: whether each question is actually answered, then accents and interference errors, then paragraph structure and connectors.