Woordvolgorde

Dutch pins the verb to slot two and lets anything take slot one. Learners meet the rule as "the verb comes second" and then never apply it, because the sentences where it bites are the ones that open with a place or a time — and at A1 almost every useful sentence opens with a place or a time. The difficulty is not knowing the rule; it is noticing mid-sentence that slot one is already taken.

Spreken, where it costs marks, and Lezen, where it costs comprehension. Twelve of the twenty-two Spreken tasks ask you to finish a sentence out loud from a picture, so you build a whole clause with nobody to correct you, and two trained assessors are listening for whether it is understandable Dutch. In Lezen the rule works against you: a sentence that opens with a place or a date puts the verb before the subject, and a reader expecting the subject first mistakes it for a question and loses the fact it carries.

In Nederland betaalt u met de euro.

Place in slot 1, so the verb comes next and the subject follows it: betaalt u, never u betaalt.

Op 27 april vieren Nederlanders Koningsdag.

A date behaves exactly like a place. Slot 1 is about position, not meaning.

Bij een ongeluk of noodgeval belt u 112.

A long opening is still one slot: five words that together name a single situation.

U betaalt in de winkel met uw pinpas.

Start with the subject and nothing moves. This order is always available to you.

• Bij de pinautomaat haalt u geld uit de muur.

  ✗Bij de pinautomaat u haalt geld uit de muur.

  A photo of a cash machine is exactly the Spreken prompt this answers, and naming the place first is the natural way to answer it — which is what puts the verb in front of u.

• In Nederland rijdt u aan de rechterkant van de weg.

  Meet this in a Lezen text expecting the subject first and rijdt u looks like a question. It is a statement, and it carries the fact the question will ask about.

• In de zomer gaan veel Nederlanders op vakantie.

  ✗In de zomer veel Nederlanders gaan op vakantie.

  A time in slot 1 does the same thing as a place. The subject veel Nederlanders sits behind the verb and is still the subject.

• +Exception 1

  ja, nee and sorry stand outside the sentence and take no slot: Ja, ik kom is right, not Ja, kom ik.

• +Exception 2

  en, maar and want join two sentences without taking slot 1, so the part after them starts again with the subject.

• ✗Answering a Spreken picture with the place first and then keeping the subject in front of the verb. It is the most audible error at this level, and the sentence-completion tasks invite it.
• ✗Reading a Lezen sentence that opens with a place as if it were a question, and then hunting for its answer elsewhere in the text.
• ✗Putting a time and a place together in slot 1 and pushing the verb to third. One item only, however long it is.