DELE B2 Writing Exam: How to Prepare for Tarea 1 and Tarea 2

Of the four DELE B2 papers, Writing (Expresión e Interacción Escritas) is the one people tend to under-prepare for. It’s easy to assume that if you can hold a conversation, you can write — but the exam rewards a specific kind of writing: controlled, well-organized, and produced fast, under a strict word count and a strict clock. Here’s exactly what you’ll face and how to walk in ready.

The format: 80 minutes, two tasks

You get 80 minutes total to complete two writing tasks. There’s no official breakdown of minutes per task, which means time management is entirely your responsibility — and it’s one of the most common reasons candidates run out of time on Tarea 2 after over-polishing Tarea 1.

Tarea 1: a letter or email, built from a listening

You’ll hear a short audio recording — played twice — and take notes as you listen. Then you write a letter or email (150–180 words) that responds to what you heard: a complaint, an invitation, a request for information, a problem that needs addressing. The register can be formal or informal depending on the prompt, so the first thing to decide is who you’re writing to and how close your relationship with them is.

This task is really testing two skills at once: can you understand spoken Spanish accurately enough to extract the details you need, and can you then organize those details into a coherent written response. Missing a detail from the audio is one of the most common ways to lose points here, even when the writing itself is strong.

Tarea 2: a composition, your choice of topic

You’ll be given two topic options and you pick one. This is a more traditional piece of writing (150–180 words): an opinion essay, a description, or a narrative, depending on the exam version. Because you get to choose, this is the task where good preparation pays off most directly — walk in with a mental toolkit of structures and vocabulary you can adapt to almost any topic, and you’ll never be starting from zero.

What the examiners are actually scoring

DELE writing is marked on a few consistent dimensions, and it helps to know them before you write a single word:

• Does it do the job? Did you address everything the task asked for — every point from the audio in Tarea 1, every part of the prompt in Tarea 2?
• Does it flow? Coherence and cohesion — are your ideas connected with linking words, or do they just sit next to each other?
• Is the grammar controlled? Range and accuracy appropriate to B2 — subjunctive, past tenses, conditional sentences used correctly, not just simple present throughout.
• Is the vocabulary varied? Repeating the same five words throughout a 180-word text stands out immediately to an examiner.

Notice that none of these reward length. Going over the word count doesn’t impress anyone — it usually just means you’ll run out of time to proofread, and a text that drifts past 180 words with no new ideas reads as padding, not fluency.