Nuance
Wellicht, enigszins, doorgaans: saying how sure you are, in one word.
At B2 the difference between a strong claim and an overstated one is a single adverb. Dutch marks degree of certainty with a small closed set of words that sit inside the sentence rather than around it, and a writer who does not use them ends up asserting everything with equal force. That reads as careless, not confident. The words are easy to recognise and rarely produced, because they have no fixed slot a learner can memorise — they go where the sentence needs them.
How the exam tests this
Both halves, and this is the topic where they meet. In Schrijven, the sentence tasks and the medium task are judged on whether the claim you make is the claim you can support; an unhedged assertion about a whole group is a weaker answer than a measured one, and two assessors read for that. In Lezen, the questions that ask what the writer thinks are usually decided by one of these words: doorgaans and vrijwel altijd are not the same claim, and the wrong option in a multiple-choice item is often the right idea at the wrong strength.
What is wrong with this sentence?
De maatregel heeft effect.
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