Er

Er has no equivalent in most learners' first language, which is why it is either left out entirely or sprinkled in at random. It does four separate jobs: it opens a sentence about existence, it stands in for a place, it carries a number, and it glues onto a preposition to replace a thing. Nothing about the word tells you which job is running; only the sentence around it does. Leaving it out rarely changes the meaning, and always makes the Dutch sound like a translation.

Schrijven, where it is the single clearest marker of natural Dutch. The sentence tasks give you openings that need er and cannot be finished idiomatically without it, and two assessors read the result as a whole rather than as a checklist — a text without er reads as translated even when every word in it is correct. In Lezen the preposition form is the one that bites: eraan, ermee and erover point back at something said earlier, and a reader who does not follow the pointer loses the thread of the paragraph.

Er is een probleem met mijn bestelling.

Existence. The sentence cannot start with een probleem; er holds the front for it.

Ik werk er al drie jaar.

Place, standing in for a location already named. It replaces daar when the place is old information.

Ik heb er twee nodig.

Number. With a quantity and no noun, er is required, not optional.

Ik ben er niet tevreden over.

Preposition. Over what? Over something already mentioned. Er and the preposition may split across the sentence.

• Er zijn veel mensen die dezelfde klacht hebben.

  ✗Zijn veel mensen die dezelfde klacht hebben.

  The existence er, with a relative clause behind it — a normal B1 opening sentence for a complaint.

• Ik heb uw brief gelezen en ik ben het er niet mee eens.

  ✗Ik heb uw brief gelezen en ik ben het niet mee eens.

  Er splits from mee and both stay in the sentence. Dropping er here leaves a sentence that no Dutch reader would write.

• Ik denk er nog over na.

  A complete, natural answer to a question you need time for — and a useful line to have ready for the short tasks.

• +Exception 1

  Er never carries stress. When you want to point at a specific place, use daar: Daar werk ik, not Er werk ik.

• +Exception 2

  When something else already opens the sentence, the existence er moves in behind the verb: Vandaag is er geen les.

• ✗Leaving er out because the sentence still makes sense without it. It does, and it reads as a translation, which is exactly what the writing assessors notice.
• ✗Using er where daar belongs, in a sentence that is pointing at a place rather than referring back to one.
• ✗Reading eraan or erover in a text without going back to find what it points at, and then answering the question about the nearest noun instead.