How We Built 29 Writing Exercises from Official Practice Exams

DUO publishes 3 free A2 schrijven practice exams on inburgering.nl. They are publicly available. Anyone preparing for the inburgering exam can download them.

We did not just read the PDFs manually. We built an AI-powered pipeline to extract and analyze every task systematically.

How we analyzed the exams

We used browser automation (Skyvern, browser-use) to navigate the official practice exam pages on inburgering.nl, extract every task, and feed them into an AI model (Gemini) for structured analysis. The pipeline extracted each task’s scenario text, bullet points, sentence starters, register (formal vs. informal), and response format (email, form, free text).

We did the same for the other exam parts — listening, speaking, KNM — scraping audio files, transcribing them with OpenAI’s speech-to-text, and analyzing the question patterns. The writing analysis below is one piece of a larger project to understand the full inburgering exam.

Across all 12 writing tasks from the 3 practice exams, we asked one question: what patterns repeat?

The answer was clear. The exam is not random. It uses the same small set of task types, over and over.

What we found: 4 task types

Every task in every practice exam falls into one of four categories:

1. Emails (5 of 12 tasks)

The most common type. You get a situation and 2-3 bullet points telling you what to write. The email interface is pre-filled with the recipient address, subject line, greeting, and closing.

Some emails are informal — writing to a friend, classmate, or colleague. These use “jij/je” and casual closings like “Groetjes.”

Some are formal — writing to a boss, teacher, or institution. These use “u” and closings like “Vriendelijke groet” or “Met vriendelijke groet.”

The exam tests whether you can match the right register to the situation.

Common email scenarios from the practice exams:

• Rescheduling an appointment with a classmate
• Asking a colleague to swap shifts
• Borrowing something from a fellow student
• Requesting a day off from your boss
• Emailing a teacher about missing a test

2. Wijkkrant — personal stories (3 of 12 tasks)

A wijkkrant is a neighborhood newspaper. The task asks you to write a short personal text about a topic. You get 3 guiding questions and a sentence starter like “Dit is mijn tekst over…”

The topics are always everyday life: a party you celebrate, your favorite clothes, your weekend.

You need to write at least 3 complete sentences. The guiding questions help you structure your answer: what, who, when.

3. Forms (3 of 12 tasks)

You fill in a form. Personal details (name, address, phone) plus 1-2 open questions where you write short answers.

The form scenarios are practical: registering at a gym, filing an insurance claim after a burglary, reporting a street problem to the gemeente.

Some details you fill in from the task description. Some you need to make up yourself (“Bedenk zelf”).

4. Notes with instructions (1 of 12 tasks)

You write a short note to someone telling them what to do. The task gives you images showing the actions. You write 3 instructions using imperative verb forms.

This appeared in 1 of 3 exams. It is less common but worth practicing because it tests a specific grammar skill.

The pattern behind the pattern

Beyond the 4 task types, every task shares the same structure:

1. A situation — 2-3 sentences explaining the context
2. Bullet points — 2-4 specific things you must address
3. A sentence starter — already written for you (greeting, opening line)
4. “Schrijf in hele zinnen” — write in complete sentences (appears in every task)

The exam is not testing creativity. It is testing whether you can read a situation, follow instructions, and write clear Dutch at A2 level.

How we turned this into 29 exercises

Once we had the patterns, we used AI (OpenAI GPT) to generate original exercises that follow the exact same format. Each exercise was reviewed and refined to make sure the scenario is realistic, the bullet points are clear, and the difficulty is appropriate for the level.

Every exercise in our curriculum uses the same format the exam uses: a situation, bullet points, a sentence starter.

We organized them by difficulty:

Level	What it practices	Count
Beginner	English instructions, 1-2 sentences. Build confidence.	4
Easy	Informal Dutch messages. 2-3 sentences.	8
Standard	Exam-format tasks. 3+ sentences with bullet points.	13
Advanced	Complex formal scenarios. 4+ sentences, u-form required.	4

Level 3 (Standard) is the largest group because it matches the actual exam format. If you can pass those 13 exercises, you can pass the exam.

We covered all 4 task types:

• Emails: formal and informal, across many real-life scenarios
• Wijkkrant: personal stories about hobbies, clothes, weekends
• Forms: reporting problems, requesting documents
• Imperative notes: writing instructions for a colleague

What we did not do

We did not copy any exam content. Our exercises are original scenarios. We studied the format and patterns of the practice exams, not the specific questions.

Think of it like this: if every practice exam has an email about rescheduling an appointment, we know appointment emails are important. So we created our own appointment scenarios — with different names, different situations, different bullet points.

The practice exams are publicly available on inburgering.nl. We encourage everyone to download them and try them alongside our exercises.

Start practicing

Our 29 exercises are available for free in the Inburgering Coach app. Start with Level 1 if you are just beginning, or jump to Level 3 if you want exam-format practice right away.

Every exercise gives you instant AI feedback on your grammar, vocabulary, and whether you addressed all the bullet points — the same things the exam evaluates. The AI knows which task type you are practicing (email, wijkkrant, form, or note) and adjusts its feedback accordingly. It does not expect email structure from a wijkkrant exercise, or formal language in an informal message.

The same AI pipeline that analyzed the practice exams now powers the feedback you get on every exercise.