Kort bericht
A short handwritten note or message to one person — around 20 to 40 words.
A message is judged on whether it does its job: the reader must know what happened, what you want, and by when. It is short enough that nothing can be padded and nothing can hide — every sentence is read. The difficulty is not length but completeness, because the task always asks for two or three things and a message that answers two of them is an incomplete message.
How the exam tests this
Part of Schrijven: four tasks in 40 minutes — a form, one or two short messages, one or two pieces of short open writing. It is written BY HAND on paper, which matters twice: there is no spellchecker, and a sentence you cross out and rewrite is still on the page. The task states who the message is for, and that decides whether you write je or u. Marking asks whether the required information is there and whether the Dutch is understandable, not whether it is elegant.
What is wrong with this sentence?
Donderdag ik kan niet komen.
Most candidates write it exactly like this and lose the mark without knowing why.
The rest of this lesson
The rule, the worked examples, the exceptions and what to do in the exam room open with Mastery, together with every other lesson for this exam.
See plans