On the A2 Writing exam you rarely lose points because a word was too hard. You lose them on small things: a missing capital, a missing full stop, a comma that is not there. Below are the eight mistakes our teacher sees every week when she marks writing tasks. You do not need to learn any new Dutch for them. You only need to learn to spot them.
The Writing exam at level A2 is taken with pen and paper. You get 4 writing tasks and the exam lasts 40 minutes.
Source: inburgeren.nl — content of the language exams — consulted 28-07-2026 (Dutch)
Marieke Schipper · NT2 teacher
I almost never see someone fail because they did not know a word. I see people lose points on the full stop at the end of the sentence.
The eight mistakes
1. Forgetting the capital letter
This is the most common mistake of all. A capital belongs in four places, and those four are enough for A2.
At the start of every sentence. Also when the sentence is only three words long.
For names of people and animals: Fatima, Ahmed, my dog Max.
For place names and countries: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Nederland, Syrië.
For rivers and mountain ranges: de Maas, de Rijn, de Alpen.
Wrong
- ik woon in amsterdam met mijn zoon ali.
Right
- Ik woon in Amsterdam met mijn zoon Ali.
2. Forgetting the full stop
Every sentence ends with a full stop. Including the last sentence of your letter. Including a short sentence. It feels like a detail, but an assessor notices it immediately.
Wrong
- Ik kom morgen langs Tot ziens
Right
- Ik kom morgen langs. Tot ziens.
3. No comma before ‘want’ and ‘omdat’
The words want and omdat (both meaning ‘because’) always take a comma in front of them.
Wrong
- Ik kan niet komen want ik moet werken.
Right
- Ik kan niet komen, want ik moet werken.
- Ik kan niet komen, omdat ik moet werken.
Not sure whether to use want or omdat? Choose want. It saves you a word-order mistake, and why that is so is explained in Want or omdat: almost always choose ‘want’.
4. No comma after the greeting and the sign-off
A letter or e-mail almost always starts and ends the same way, and both of those lines take a comma. You know in advance that you will need them, which makes these the easiest points on the whole exam.
| Where | How you write it | Watch out |
|---|---|---|
| Greeting | Beste meneer Jansen, | comma after it |
| Greeting, informal | Hoi Sanne, | comma after it |
| Sign-off | Met vriendelijke groet, | comma after it, your name below |
5. Months and days with a capital
In Dutch you write months and days in lower case. English does it differently, which is exactly why this goes wrong so often for people who also speak English.
Wrong
- Ik kom op Maandag 3 Maart.
Right
- Ik kom op maandag 3 maart.
Countries and languages do take a capital: Nederland, Nederlands, Marokko, Arabisch. Months and days do not.
6. Writing the time the wrong way
There are two ways to write a time. Pick one and do not mix them. A half-analogue, half-digital time is a mistake an assessor always spots.
Analogue time
You write the word ‘uur’
Example
1 uur · 9 uur · half tien
In a sentence
Ik kom om 5 uur langs.
Digital time
You write digits with a colon
Example
13:00 · 21:00 · 09:30
In a sentence
Ik kom om 17:00 langs.
Wrong
- Ik kom om 17: uur.
Right
- Ik kom om 17:00.
- Ik kom om 5 uur.
7. Mixing ‘u’ and ‘je’
Look at the task. Does the question use u? Then you write u too. Does it use je? Then you write je. Pick one and keep it up through your whole text.
Wrong
- Beste meneer Jansen, kunt u mij helpen? Ik hoor graag van je.
Right
- Beste meneer Jansen, kunt u mij helpen? Ik hoor graag van u.
This is not a politeness rule, it is a consistency rule. Either form is fine; mixing them is not.
8. Not reading your text back
All seven mistakes above can be found again in two minutes. Plan those two minutes. You have 40 minutes for four tasks, so roughly 10 minutes each — keep one of those minutes per task for checking.
Your checklist for the last minute. Capital at the start of every sentence · full stop at the end of every sentence · comma before want and omdat · comma after the greeting and the sign-off · months and days in lower case · one kind of time notation · u everywhere or je everywhere.
Where to practise this
You do not learn these points from a grammar book. You learn them by writing a whole task and then looking back at it on purpose — exactly as on the exam, where you have to do everything at once.
On our platform you write real exam tasks and get feedback per assessment point, with model answers and a marking rubric written by a certified NT2 teacher. Not by an AI. See the A2 Writing practice exams.
Do you normally write everything on your phone? Then practise at least a few times with a pen on paper. Forty minutes of handwriting is heavier than you expect, and Writing is the only part that is not done on a computer.