The writing part of the A2 check — three tasks, 35 minutes

The writing part (rakstītprasme) at A2 lasts 35 minutes, is sat on paper, and contains three tasks worth 15 points in total — a description of a person from pictures, five word forms, and a functional text written to a five-point plan. The threshold here is the same as everywhere else: at least 9 points out of 15, and a good result in the other three skills cannot replace them.

This is the part where candidates most often fall short by just a couple of points, which makes it worth knowing exactly where those points sit.

Where this part falls in the day

On the day of the check, listening (klausīšanās) and reading (lasītprasme) are taken on a computer first, and only afterwards are the writing sheets handed out. Writing is the only part sat on paper, and you may write with a blue or black pen. Aids — dictionaries, phone, smartwatch — are not allowed; they stay in your bag.

That means one practical thing: handwriting has to be legible to a person reading it for the first time. When you practise on a computer, this is easy to forget.

The three tasks and how the points split

Task	Points	Length	What it is
1. Description of a person	4	at least 30 words	a description based on pictures and a business card
2. Word forms	5	5 forms	five headlines, the correct form of the word to be written in
3. Functional text	6	35 words	an email, letter, invitation or advertisement written to a five-point plan
Total	15	35 minutes

The centre of gravity is visible immediately: the third task alone carries 6 of the 15 points — more than the first — and it is also the one that takes the most time. If time runs out, the task that suffers is the one that pays most.

Task 1 — description of a person

You are given pictures and a business card, and you have to write at least 30 words in full sentences about that person. What can usually be read off the pictures and the card is occupation, place of work, family, home, a hobby and contact details.

The task looks easy, and that is exactly why points are lost on it. Two typical mistakes:

• A list instead of sentences. "Ārste. Rīga. Divi bērni." ("A doctor. Riga. Two children.") is not full sentences; the requirement is to write in full sentences.
• Half the given information stays unused. If the card shows an occupation and a place of work but the text mentions only the name and the city, the content is not complete.

The safest structure is one sentence per piece of given information: who he or she is, where they work, where they live, what the family is like, what they do in their free time. Five or six such lines already exceed 30 words.

Describing pictures is a broader topic in its own right — see the article on describing a picture in the check.

Task 2 — word forms, and why it matters more than it looks

You are given five internet headlines, each missing one word, with its base form in brackets. You write in the correct form.

Here lies the quiet peculiarity of this check: there is no separate grammar part in the A2 check. Latvian declension and verb forms are tested in this one task, and it is worth 5 points out of 15 — a third of the whole writing part.

The examples show that several grammar areas have to be handled at once: noun case ("visai ______ (vasara)" — for the whole summer), the past tense of a verb ("Nesen Rīgā ______ (viesoties)" — recently visited Riga), the future ("Kad šogad ______ (notikt) festivāls" — when the festival takes place this year), a possessive pronoun ("par ______ (savs) ceļu" — about one's own journey) and adjective agreement ("atklāja ______ (jauna) stadionu" — opened a new stadium).

Diacritics are part of the correct form. The long marks (ā, ē, ī, ū) and the softening marks (č, ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ, š, ž) have to be written — a form without them is not the same form. Our training mode checks this task automatically for exactly that reason: so that the habit forms.

This is also the task where preparation pays off fastest: five forms are five concrete pieces of knowledge, not a skill that grows over months.

Task 3 — a functional text written to a plan

The third task is 35 words and 6 points. You are given a situation — for example, you have moved into a new flat, or you have been on a trip — and a five-point plan, in which each point calls for a different language function: greeting, describing something, saying when, evaluating what you did and did not like, and closing.

The marking logic here is simple and unforgiving: a plan point not reflected in the text is a part of the task left undone. A beautifully written text missing two of the five points loses more than a plain text that has all five.

The practical method is robust: before you start writing, mark the five points in the margin and write at least one sentence for each. Five sentences of about seven words are enough to reach the required length, and by definition they cover the whole plan.

The second requirement is genre. An email has a salutation and a closing; an advertisement does not, but it has a structure of its own. A text that ignores the required genre does not match the task, even if the language is good.

What is assessed, and what cannot be known about the assessment

What is assessed: whether the content matches the task, the required genre, the required language functions, cohesion and coherence, whether the vocabulary is sufficient, and the extent to which the errors made do or do not impede comprehension of the text.

That last formulation matters a great deal: errors are not counted as such, and there is no separate spelling criterion. What counts is whether the reader understands what is meant. This is still not an invitation to treat form carelessly — in the second task form is assessed directly, and in the third task an error that changes the meaning of a sentence impedes comprehension by definition.

What cannot be said here: the point bands are not published. It is known what is assessed, but no table has been published setting out how many points correspond to which degree of error, or what happens if a text is shorter than the required length. This article therefore contains no claim that points are "not deducted" for a shorter text — that cannot be confirmed from what has been published, and the safe course is to reach the required length.

How your work is marked

Writing is marked by two independent raters. If their scores differ by more than three points, a third rater is brought in, and the final mark is made up of the third rater's score together with whichever of the first two is closest to it.

That means borderline cases really are looked at by more than one person, and that illegible handwriting works against you twice over.

35 minutes — how to divide them

Step	Time	Why
Read all three tasks	~2 min	so you know where the plan is and where the pictures are
Task 2 (word forms)	~7 min	the quickest points, nothing to plan
Task 1 (description of a person)	~8 min	five sentences from the given information
Task 3 (text to a plan)	~14 min	the most valuable task, it needs the time
Read back over	~4 min	are all five plan points there, are the diacritics there

The order is deliberate: first what pays quickly, then what pays most. The worst outcome is an unfinished third task, because it holds 6 of the 15 points, and the 9-point threshold is hard to reach without it.

How to train for this part specifically

Three things pay most. First, write by hand, not only on a computer — that is what the check will be. Second, train the word forms separately, because that is the only place where grammar is tested directly. Third, write every text to a plan and then check it point by point to see whether all five are in the text.

On this site you can try writing tasks in the check format in the exam section, while in training mode artificial intelligence gives feedback on content, genre and language. The result there is training feedback, not an official assessment. The overall arithmetic is in the article how many points you need for the A2 check, and the most common mistakes across all parts are here.

This article is not legal advice. The task descriptions reflect the published check programme and Cabinet Regulation No. 157 (MK noteikumi Nr. 157), and they can change. Before applying, check the current programme and the version of the regulation in force.