„Schreiben Sie eigentlich (noch) Briefe?“ - „Ich habe früher meiner Oma oder so mal einen geschrieben.“ Zur Funktion des persönlichen Briefes im Zertifikat Deutsch

The paper deals with the German international language certificate Zertifikat Deutsch (ZD), an exam for adult people at B1 level, and the part of the ZD that assesses writing skills. In this part, candidates are required to be able to produce one type of text, such as a formal or an informal letter based on a given context and following instructions regarding the content of this piece of writing. The paper will present some letters written by Italian students which were assessed according to the criteria of the ZD certificate and compare these skills with the writing abilities as described by the Common European Framework. Since the ZD certificate is widely recognized by Universities in Italy, it will be argued that the production of only one type of text, a letter, should be integrated by a greater variety of texts, in order to express better the different writing abilities in the foreign language at the level of competence B1, as desribed by the Common European Framework of Reference for languages at this level.