EN VIII Romanian Language and Literature common mistakes
EN VIII Romanian Language and Literature · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When asked to identify the theme or the main idea of a literary text, the candidate retells the plot events instead of stating a general idea, and writes something like 'The text is about a boy who goes to the city.'
Students are trained in primary school to summarize 'what happens', and the difference between topic, plot and theme is rarely practised explicitly; under time pressure retelling feels safe because it is clearly 'in the text'.
What to do instead
Practise a fixed formula: name the subject in 2-3 words (e.g. 'childhood and loss'), then state what the text says about it ('the text shows that leaving home means losing a part of yourself'). Before writing, underline all repeated words and ask what abstract noun they point to; never include a character name in the theme sentence.
The candidate quotes a line from the text without quotation marks or page/line reference, or paraphrases a critic's idea as if it were their own, in both literary and informative-text answers.
Students memorize the rule 'quote to support your answer' but not the mechanics of integrating a quotation, and in the digital age copy-paste habits blur the line between own words and source words.
What to do instead
Use the three-step integration drill: introduce the quotation ('The narrator states:'), reproduce it exactly between quotation marks, then comment on it in one sentence of your own. For informative texts, always add the source in parentheses. Check every quotation against the original text word by word before submitting.
On informative or argumentative texts, the candidate answers 'What is the author's purpose?' or 'What is the tone?' with a vague label ('to inform', 'serious') without pointing to any textual evidence, or confuses the author's purpose with the reader's reaction.
Purpose and tone are abstract meta-concepts that require inferring from linguistic signals (modality, evaluative adjectives, rhetorical questions), and students are seldom taught to read those signals as evidence.
What to do instead
Build a signal checklist: imperatives and 'must/should' = persuasive; statistics and neutral verbs = informative; irony markers and hyperbole = critical. For every purpose/tone answer, require one quoted phrase as proof, e.g. 'persuasive, as shown by the repeated imperative "trebuie să"'.
The candidate lifts whole sentences from an informative text into the answer, or copies the first sentence of a paragraph as the 'main idea of the paragraph', producing answers that are verbatim but do not answer the question asked.
Topic sentences often do contain the main idea, so copying them sometimes works; students generalize this shortcut and stop reformulating, which fails when the question asks to compare, synthesize or explain causes.
What to do instead
Train reformulation with a rule: no more than four consecutive words may match the source. Practise converting topic sentences into 'X causes Y because Z' or 'A differs from B in that...' structures. For synthesis questions, combine two paragraphs into one sentence with a connective (therefore, in contrast, as a result).
The candidate confuses parts of speech and sentence functions: labels 'lui Ion' or 'copilului' as an adjective, calls a predicative ('a devenit profesor') a direct object, or misidentifies the subject when it is expressed by a pronoun in an oblique case.
Romanian case marking is carried by articles and prepositions (lui, -ul, -i) rather than by word order, and school drills often test isolated paradigms instead of functions in real sentences, so students pattern-match on form, not function.
What to do instead
Apply the two-question test to every highlighted word: (1) What question does it answer (cine/ce, pe cine, cui, al cui)? (2) Can it be replaced by a pronoun in the same case? Practise with minimal pairs ('Cartea lui Ion' = attribute vs 'I-am dat lui Ion cartea' = indirect object) and always state the regent word the function depends on.
The candidate writes a composition with no clear thesis and no paragraph structure: one long block of text, narration of personal anecdote when the prompt asks for an argumentative or reflective essay, and a conclusion that merely repeats the introduction.
Students plan nothing and write as they think, because in-class practice is usually timed and unplanned; they also misread the prompt's genre (a 'reflection on a theme' is treated as 'tell a story about yourself').
What to do instead
Enforce a five-minute plan before writing: underline the prompt's key verb (argue, compare, reflect, describe), write a one-sentence thesis, and list three supporting points. Use a visible paragraph skeleton (claim - evidence - comment) and make the conclusion answer 'so what?', adding a consequence or an open question rather than restating.
In the composition, the candidate refers to a literary text only through plot summary, without analysing how the text is built (narrative perspective, imagery, rhythm, lexical choices), and without linking the analysis back to the thesis.
Students equate 'writing about literature' with 'telling what happens', and literary terminology is often memorized as labels without practice in using it as an argumentative tool.
What to do instead
Use the technique-plus-effect-plus-thesis chain for each body paragraph: name the device ('the first-person narrator', 'the repetition of "singur"'), quote it, state its effect on the reader, and connect it to the thesis in one clause. Ban plot verbs (then, after that) from analysis paragraphs; use present tense and analytical verbs (suggests, foregrounds, contrasts).
The candidate puts a comma between subject and predicate, omits the comma before 'dar/însă/ci' or around an inserted explanatory phrase, and writes 'sa' for 's-a' or 'sau' for 's-au'.
Romanian punctuation rules interact with the hyphenated forms of the reflexive pronoun and with the comma-before-conjunction rule, and students rely on how the sentence sounds rather than on syntactic structure.
What to do instead
Memorize three high-frequency rules and apply them as a checklist on the final read: no comma between subject and predicate; comma before coordinating adversative conjunctions joining clauses; comma around appositions and vocatives. For 's-a/sa' and 's-au/sau', test by inserting 'pe sine': if it fits, hyphenate (s-a spălat); if it means possession or 'or', no hyphen.
During text editing, the candidate corrects only spelling and leaves agreement, government and register errors untouched: 'un coleg de la care am învățat multe lucruri' changed to a synonym, while 'își dau seama de că...' or a mismatch of tense across the paragraph remains.
Editing is perceived as proofreading for typos, and students lack a hierarchy of what to check; verb-preposition government (a se gândi la, a-și da seama de) is rarely taught contrastively.
What to do instead
Edit in three passes with a fixed order: (1) sentence boundaries and punctuation, (2) agreement and government (subject-verb, adjective-noun, verb-preposition pairs), (3) register and repetition. Keep a personal error log from marked scripts and check only those five recurring items in the final minutes.
The candidate answers a two-part item (e.g. 'identify the figure of speech and explain its effect') with only one part, or writes a one-word answer where the item asks for justification, losing partial credit on otherwise correct responses.
Under exam time pressure students read the stem once and answer the first thing they recognize; multi-command items are common but are not rehearsed as a reading skill.
What to do instead
Circle every command verb in the stem before answering (identify, explain, justify, compare, illustrate) and number them in the margin; after writing, tick each number against the answer. If the item says 'justify', the answer is incomplete without 'because' plus textual evidence.