MATSEC IM Italian common mistakes
MATSEC IM Italian · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing a composition or essay that stays in the present tense throughout, even when narrating past events, and slipping into passato prossimo only occasionally and inconsistently.
Candidates rehearse present-tense sentence patterns and avoid the passato prossimo/imperfetto distinction because choosing the auxiliary (avere/essere) and agreeing the past participle feels risky; under timed pressure they default to the tense they control.
What to do instead
Before writing, sketch a three-line timeline (background, event, consequence) and assign imperfetto to background/description and passato prossimo to single completed events. Drill 20 sentences weekly where you must justify the auxiliary and participle agreement aloud; keep a personal list of essere-verbs (movement, change of state, reflexive) and check every participle against the subject.
Confusing the use of the subjunctive after conjunctions and verbs of opinion, producing forms like 'penso che è' or 'benché viene' instead of 'penso che sia' and 'benché venga'.
The indicative is the unmarked default in speech and in the candidate's own language, and the subjunctive paradigm (especially irregulars like sia, abbia, venga, faccia) is memorised incompletely, so the safer indicative wins.
What to do instead
Build a trigger list on one page: verbs of opinion/doubt (pensare, credere, dubitare), impersonal expressions (è importante che, bisogna che), conjunctions (benché, affinché, purché, prima che), and superlatives. Practise transforming indicative sentences into subjunctive ones in writing until the trigger automatically fires; memorise the six irregular present subjunctives as a chant.
Choosing the wrong preposition or omitting the article in fixed expressions, e.g. 'andare a scuola' vs 'andare alla scuola', 'pensare a' vs 'pensare di', 'in Italia' vs 'all'Italia', or writing 'di solito' as 'in solito'.
Prepositions are learned as vocabulary items rather than as governed patterns, and interference from English or Maltese collocations produces literal translations; articles in Italian carry more grammatical load than in the candidate's first language.
What to do instead
Keep a collocation notebook organised by verb and adjective (pensare di/a, dipendere da, essere d'accordo con, innamorarsi di) and record each new expression with its preposition and article. Do gap-fill exercises on articulated prepositions (al, del, nel, sul) weekly, and when reading, underline every prepositional phrase and say it aloud.
Misreading a reading-comprehension passage by relying on words that look like English or Maltese ('false friends') and answering from general knowledge rather than from the text, e.g. treating 'attualmente' as 'actually' or 'eventualmente' as 'eventually'.
Candidates skim for familiar-looking lexis and answer before locating the relevant sentence; cognate guessing feels efficient under time pressure and is rarely checked against the surrounding context.
What to do instead
Maintain a false-friends list (attualmente = currently, eventualmente = possibly, magari = perhaps, burro = butter, camera = room) and review it before each practice paper. Train a two-step method: read the question, locate and underline the exact line in the text, then paraphrase it in your own words before choosing an option; justify every answer with a quoted phrase.
In listening tasks, writing down the first number, time, or name heard and moving on, missing negations, corrections, or a speaker's change of plan ('no, facciamo alle otto e mezza').
Candidates transcribe word by word instead of listening for the whole utterance, and they are unfamiliar with the speed and connected speech of authentic Italian, so they catch the first salient detail and stop processing.
What to do instead
Practise with short authentic clips at normal speed and answer only after a second listening; focus on discourse markers that signal correction or contrast (invece, però, anzi, piuttosto, non... ma). Develop shorthand for numbers, days, and times, and always check whether a negation (non, nessuno, mai, niente) precedes the detail you noted.
Producing written work with no paragraphing or cohesive devices, so ideas appear as a list of short unrelated sentences with repeated subjects and no connectives.
Candidates compose sentence by sentence and translate thoughts directly, and they have not internalised Italian discourse connectors (inoltre, tuttavia, quindi, d'altra parte, in primo luogo, infine), so cohesion is never planned.
What to do instead
Before writing, produce a five-line plan with one connective assigned to each transition; draft with a fixed repertoire of ten connectors and check that each paragraph opens with a linking phrase. After writing, rewrite the text adding at least six connectives and vary sentence openings so the subject is not always first.
Mixing formal and informal register in the same piece (e.g. a formal letter that uses 'tu' or 'ciao' alongside 'Le scrivo'), or using 'Lei' with a third-person verb error such as 'Lei è' when 'Lei sia' or the correct polite imperative is required.
Candidates learn the polite form as a vocabulary item ('Lei' = you) without mastering its verb agreement, pronouns (Le, La, Le), and possessives (Suo/Sua), and they transfer the informal patterns they use in speech.
What to do instead
Learn the formal frame as a template: 'Gentile Signore/Signora, Le scrivo in merito a... La ringrazio... In attesa di un Suo riscontro, porgo distinti saluti.' Practise converting informal letters into formal ones and vice versa, checking every verb, pronoun, and possessive for consistency; never mix 'tu' and 'Lei' in one text.
Answering oral questions with one-word or single-clause replies, and freezing when the examiner uses a tense or structure the candidate has not rehearsed.
Candidates prepare topics as written scripts and memorise them, so unscripted follow-up questions expose a lack of functional phrases for buying time, clarifying, or paraphrasing.
What to do instead
Prepare each topic as a mind map of nouns and verbs, not a script, and rehearse extending every answer with a reason and an example ('...perché...', 'per esempio...'). Memorise repair phrases (Come scusi? Può ripetere? Intendevo dire...; Cioè...; Dipende da...) and record yourself answering random follow-up questions for two minutes each.
In translation or transformation tasks, translating word for word and preserving the source structure, producing ungrammatical Italian such as 'Ho 20 anni vecchio' or 'Mi piace molto leggere libri' where idiom requires a different construction.
Candidates treat translation as substitution of individual words and do not know idiomatic equivalents (avere X anni, mi piace + infinitive, fare una passeggiata, avere bisogno di), so source-language syntax leaks into the target.
What to do instead
Translate meaning units, not words: read the whole sentence, say it aloud in simple Italian, then write it. Build an idiom bank from every practice text (avere fame/sonno/ragione, fare attenzione, andare d'accordo) and back-translate your Italian into the source language to check that the meaning survived.
Spelling and accent errors that change meaning or break agreement: missing or wrong accents (e vs è, si vs sì, ne vs né, da vs dà), double consonants written single (pala/palla, casa/cassa), and 'h' omitted in ho/hai/ha or added in a/hanno confusions.
Italian spelling is largely phonetic but accents and geminates are not marked in the candidate's speech habits, and quick handwriting or typing hides the error; candidates also confuse homophones without checking grammatical function.
What to do instead
Learn the minimal pairs as meaning pairs and test yourself on them (e/è, si/sì, ne/né, da/dà, di/dì, la/là, se/sé). Keep a personal error log from marked work and re-test it weekly; proofread final drafts specifically for accents, double consonants, and h-forms, reading the text backwards to catch slips.