Written Production and Language Accuracy in Italian
The written paper has two halves: a composition of roughly 250-300 words (article, formal letter, essay, report or narrative) and language-accuracy tasks - cloze, sentence transformation, completion and error correction. Marks are split between content, organisation, range and accuracy, so a fluent but off-task answer scores badly.
Planning the composition
Take four minutes: write a one-line thesis, two or three supporting points and a conclusion. Choose register deliberately: a letter to a newspaper opens Egregio Direttore and closes Distinti saluti, with Lei forms throughout; a school-magazine article can be semi-formal. Link paragraphs by function (aggiunta: inoltre, per di più; contrasto: tuttavia, d'altra parte; causa: poiché, dal momento che; conseguenza: pertanto, di conseguenza; esempio: ad esempio, vale a dire).
Accuracy priorities
- Congiuntivo after opinion, doubt, emotion and impersonal expressions, and after benché, affinché, purché, a meno che, prima che, senza che, nonostante.
- Periodo ipotetico: realtà (indicativo), possibilità (congiuntivo imperfetto + condizionale presente), irrealtà (congiuntivo trapassato + condizionale passato).
- Ne versus ci; combined pronouns (me lo, gliela); past participle agreeing with a preceding direct-object pronoun (l'ho vista).
- Impersonal si with a plural verb in transitive clauses (si vendono biglietti).
Worked example
«Benché ___ (essere) stanco, ha finito il lavoro.» Reasoning: benché always takes the congiuntivo. The main verb is past (ha finito), so the subordinate needs a past-referring subjunctive: fosse. Writing era or è is an immediate error; sia stato would shift the sense to a state viewed from the present.
Traps
- Accents and apostrophes: perché, è, sì, qual è (no apostrophe), un po'.
- Mixing tu and Lei inside the same letter.
- False friends: realizzare (to achieve), attendere (to wait), confidenza (familiarity).
- Overshooting the word limit and losing accuracy marks.
- A memorised essay that does not answer the actual prompt.