LC Italian common mistakes
LC Italian · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the listening section, the candidate stops writing after the first word or phrase they recognise and mentally rehearses it while the recording continues, so the answer to the actual question is missed.
Under time pressure the brain latches onto a familiar lexical item as an anchor; candidates are trained by classroom dictation to capture words rather than to hold a question in mind while listening. The recording is played once or twice only, so the cost of this anchoring is total loss of the following segment.
What to do instead
Before each audio segment, read the question stem and predict the type of answer required (a time, a place, a reason, a number). During playback, keep the pen still and listen for the answer type; write only after the item is complete, using abbreviations and symbols. Practise with one-play authentic audio (radio interviews, announcements) and a strict rule: no writing during the first 30 seconds of each track.
The candidate treats every word in a listening track as equally important and tries to understand the whole text, then panics and abandons the remaining items when one passage or speaker is unclear.
School listening tasks often reward full comprehension, but exam listening is selective: items target specific details, gist, or speaker attitude. Candidates without a strategy for partial comprehension freeze when a regional accent, a fast speaker, or an unfamiliar topic appears.
What to do instead
Train item-type recognition: for each question decide in advance whether it asks for gist, detail, inference, or attitude, and listen only for that. Build tolerance for gaps by practising with fast authentic speech and deliberately letting unknown words pass. Adopt a reset rule: after a missed item, take one breath and read the next question immediately, since items are independent.
In reading, the candidate reads the passage first, word by word, then reads the questions, and returns to the text for each item without a time budget, so the final passage or the last items are rushed or left blank.
Careful linear reading feels safer and mirrors how candidates were taught literature, but exam reading is timed and the questions, not the text, define what matters. Unknown vocabulary triggers dictionary-style fixation that consumes minutes.
What to do instead
Reverse the order: read the questions first, underline keywords, then scan the passage for the relevant paragraph. Skim the whole text in about one minute for topic and structure before answering. Set hard time limits per passage (for example, 15 minutes for a 700-word text with five items) and practise with a timer. When a word is unknown, use morphology and context and move on.
The candidate chooses an answer that repeats words from the passage rather than the option that paraphrases the meaning, and misreads negative or limiting constructions such as 'non è che', 'a meno che', 'solo se', 'piuttosto che'.
Distractors are built by lexical copying, while correct answers are usually paraphrases; candidates under time pressure match surface forms. Italian negative and restrictive structures are syntactically complex and are easily processed as their positive counterpart.
What to do instead
For each item, locate the exact sentence in the text and rewrite it in your own words before looking at the options. Then eliminate options on the basis of meaning, not word overlap. Build a personal list of restrictive and negative connectors (a meno che, purché, benché, nonostante, anziché, salvo che) and practise rewriting sentences that contain them into plain affirmative paraphrases.
In the writing task, the candidate produces a text that answers the prompt only loosely, omits one of the required points (for example, giving an opinion when the task asks to describe, compare, and recommend), and uses a fixed essay memorised in advance.
Candidates prepare generic essay templates and try to fit the prompt to the template rather than the reverse. Under exam stress, they read the prompt once and start writing immediately, missing the second or third bullet point and the specified register or recipient.
What to do instead
Spend three to four minutes planning: underline every instruction in the prompt, list one line per required point, and decide the register and text type (informal email, formal letter, article, report). Write a plan and check the finished text point by point against the prompt. Practise with prompts that contain multiple constraints and self-mark with a checklist of required content points.
The candidate writes long, complex sentences with stacked subordinate clauses, loses control of verb agreement and mood midway, and does not leave time to proofread, submitting errors that a two-minute check would have caught.
Candidates believe complexity earns marks, but exam scales reward accuracy and range together; ambition without control produces errors in subject-verb agreement, participle agreement with preceding direct objects, and subjunctive use. Time is usually allocated entirely to drafting.
What to do instead
Deliberately mix short and medium sentences and use complex structures only where you control them. Reserve the final five to seven minutes for a targeted proofread in fixed passes: verb endings and auxiliaries, agreement of articles, adjectives, and participles, accents (è/e, né/ne, sé/se), and punctuation. Keep a personal error log from marked work and check only those recurring errors.
The candidate confuses the auxiliary and agreement rules of compound tenses: using 'avere' with verbs of motion or reflexives, failing to agree the past participle with a preceding direct object pronoun, and misforming the passato prossimo of impersonal and pronominal verbs.
These rules are irregular and language-specific; learners overgeneralise from the frequent pattern of 'avere' plus invariable participle, and spoken input rarely makes the agreement audible because final vowels are reduced or elided.
What to do instead
Learn verbs in auxiliary pairs (salire, scendere, volare, vivere, correre) with meaning-dependent auxiliaries. Drill the agreement rule with object pronouns: 'le ho viste', 'li ho comprati', 'mi sono lavata'. Do transformation exercises from present to passato prossimo with pronoun substitution, and read the results aloud to make agreement audible.
The candidate overuses the subjunctive in contexts that require the indicative, or avoids it entirely in contexts that require it, and mixes up 'che' plus subjunctive with 'di' plus infinitive after verbs of opinion and command.
The subjunctive is taught late and often as a list of triggers; learners then apply it mechanically to every 'che' clause, including factual clauses with 'so che', 'è vero che', and after 'se' in real conditions. Conversely, fear of error leads to avoidance with verbs like 'penso', 'credo', 'sembra'.
What to do instead
Separate three cases explicitly: certainty and fact take the indicative (so che, è evidente che); opinion, doubt, emotion, and unreal clauses take the subjunctive; same-subject constructions take 'di' plus infinitive (penso di partire, non credo di poter venire). Drill contrast pairs and mark the trigger word in every sentence you write.
In the oral examination, the candidate prepares a memorised monologue, delivers it too fast, and cannot recover when the examiner interrupts with a follow-up question, producing long silences and repeated 'sì, sì' or 'non lo so'.
Candidates rehearse a script but not the interaction; examiners probe with follow-ups precisely to test spontaneous speech. Anxiety raises speed and blocks the repair strategies that native speakers use automatically.
What to do instead
Rehearse the presentation in sections with a one-line summary of each, not as a script, and practise being interrupted at random points. Learn and drill repair phrases (come dicevo, volevo dire, mi sono perso un attimo, può ripetere la domanda?). Record yourself and check pace, pauses, and whether you answer the question asked rather than the one you prepared.
In the oral interaction, the candidate answers in single words or short phrases, never initiates, and uses the informal 'tu' with an examiner or in a role-play requiring formal address, or switches to English when a word is missing.
Turn-taking and register are rarely practised in class, where the teacher controls the floor; candidates treat the oral as a question-and-answer test rather than an interaction. Missing vocabulary feels like failure, so they code-switch instead of paraphrasing.
What to do instead
Prepare a set of functions to deploy actively: asking for an opinion, disagreeing politely, giving an example, and closing a turn. Practise role-plays with a partner where you must speak at least 30 seconds per turn and use formal 'Lei' consistently with an examiner or official. Build paraphrase habits (la cosa che serve per..., una specie di...) so that a missing word never forces a switch to English.