Practising writing and speaking for A2 — a practical approach

Reading, Listening and KNM can be practised with questions that mark themselves. Writing and Speaking cannot — there you produce language yourself, and that is where people stay stuck longest.

The good news: less is required at A2 than most people assume.

What A2 actually asks for

Writing means short, practical texts: an informal email, filling in a form, a short message, a short description. Simple sentences, ordinary connectives (en, maar, want, omdat, daarna), present and perfect tense.

You do not need long complex sentences. They earn no extra marks and they do produce more mistakes. Four short correct sentences beat two long faulty ones.

Speaking shows you a situation and asks you to record an answer within a fixed time. Again: ordinary language, comprehensible, on the point.

An approach that works

Write against the clock, not for quality. Set a timer to the real duration and write until it goes off. Correct afterwards. Anyone trying to write perfectly from the first word runs out of time in the exam.

Count your words. Every task has a minimum, and below it the task does not count. Learn roughly how many words a line of your handwriting holds so you can judge it by eye.

Answer each point separately. The task names three or four things that must appear. One sentence per point, ticked off as you write.

Speak aloud, not in your head. Answering mentally feels productive and trains nothing. Record yourself on your phone and listen back — it is uncomfortable and it works.

Start your answer immediately. The clock runs from the beep. Open with a sentence you can always say ("Ik denk dat…") and work out the rest while talking.

Keep going when a word escapes you. Describe it instead. No huurcontract? "The paper of the house." That is precisely what A2 asks for.

Feedback: the piece that is usually missing

You can only improve deliberately if something tells you what went wrong. The typical A2 errors are fairly predictable:

• d/dt — hij wordt, hij vindt
• word order — Morgen ga ik naar de dokter (verb in second position)
• de/het — the wrong article is a grammar error, not a slip
• separable verbs — ik sta om zeven uur op
• mixing u and je — pick one and keep it

On this site you can practise writing and speaking with instant feedback on exactly those points, and describing photos for speaking fluency. The assessment is for practice — it is not an official exam result.

What to do next

• Practise writing with feedback
• Practise speaking with feedback
• Read the common mistakes

Official source: inburgeren.nl — content of the language exams.