Most common mistakes in the B1 exam – from teachers' practice

Strategic mistakes – the costliest of all

The biggest costs come from mistakes in preparation and behaviour at the exam, because a single one can ruin the whole result. We describe the pass rules for each part in the guide to the B1 exam.

Grammar mistakes that come back most often

Most grammar mistakes at B1 concern cases after prepositions and verbs, aspect and numerals. Below are the ones that teachers correct in their students most often – in the grammar and writing modules and in the oral part.

We go through all these topics one by one in our overview of grammar for the B1 exam.

Mistakes in writing

In the writing module, what costs the most is not grammar but incomplete completion of the prompt and the wrong style. The mistakes we correct most often:

• A missed point of the prompt – the student writes a lot about one matter and forgets another. Solution: number the points and tick them off before handing in your work.
• Mixing styles – Szanowna Pani at the beginning and Buziaki at the end, or Cześć in an e-mail to an office.
• A lower-case letter in polite forms – in letters we write Pan, Pani, Państwo, Ty, Twój with a capital letter.
• No comma before a conjunction – before że, żeby, bo, ponieważ, który, kiedy, jeśli we put a comma: Myślę, że to dobry pomysł.
• One long paragraph – a text without division is hard to read and looks incoherent.
• Repetition – problem three times in one paragraph; use sytuacja, kłopot, sprawa instead.
• Spelling – mixing up ó / u, rz / ż, ch / h. Substitutions help: stół – stoły (ó, because it alternates with o), morze – morski (rz, because it alternates with r), mogę – może (ż, because it alternates with g).

The sample B1 letter with commentary shows these mistakes in a concrete e-mail, and you will find the rules of writing in our guide to writing in the B1 exam.

Mistakes in the oral part

In speaking, the most common mistake is saying too little, not speaking with errors. The Commission cannot assess skills that you do not show.

• An answer in one sentence – Tak, lubię sport. and silence. Add a reason, an example and a summary.
• Long silence instead of the phrase Muszę się chwilę zastanowić or a request to repeat the question.
• A learned monologue that does not answer the question – the examiner notices this and asks follow-up questions.
• Addressing the Commission as "ty" – we address the examiners as pan, pani.
• Switching to another language when you lack a word – it is better to describe the word in Polish: to taka rzecz, w której gotujemy zupę.
• Speaking too fast – candidates speed up from stress, and then they lose endings.

See how the oral part runs and how to build a good answer.

Calques from your native language

Some mistakes come from carrying over constructions from your native language. Each group of students has its own typical traps – below are a few examples that we meet most often in lessons.

If you speak Russian or Ukrainian, look through the extensive lists of mistakes made by Russian speakers and mistakes made by Ukrainian speakers.

How to get rid of recurring mistakes

The most effective method is keeping your own mistake journal: you write down the mistake, the correct form and the rule, and then deliberately use the correct form in new sentences. After a few weeks you can see which mistakes have disappeared and which keep returning.

1. Collect mistakes from corrected texts and recordings – not from a textbook, but from your own speech and writing.
2. Group them: cases, aspect, numerals, vocabulary, spelling.
3. Fix one type of mistake each week – write ten sentences of your own with the correct form.
4. Check your progress on a new text or recording.

Your own mistakes are the hardest to notice yourself. At a mock exam a teacher will show you which of them cost the most and where to start correcting.