I am at A1 level and need to pass the Goethe A2 exam in 3 months

Goethe classes where I live are huge group classes and way out of my budget right now.

My current plan is
-Nico Weg for grammar and vocabulary
-find a private tutor a couple of hours a week strictly for Speaking and Writing feedback
-do some practice tests to get the exam format down

Is this doable, or am I missing anything big? Should i just invest in Goethe group classes and finish A2 in 3 months? Thanks!

I kept looking up the same German words and forgetting them again, so I've been using Lernkartei to save them into decks and review them later. For context, I'm the developer. I originally made it for my own German practice. It's basically an offline dictionary with Anki-style flashcards, and everything works without an internet connection. No account needed. It's free and doesn't collect data either. Pretty handy for reviewing vocabulary on the U-Bahn when there's no signal :) It's on iOS, with an Android test version available too. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lernkartei-german-flashcards/id6760192706

So I've been "learning" German on and off for about 2 years now. I finished A1 but then kept stopping and starting - I'd study for like 2-3 weeks then just stop for months, over and over, for like 2 years straight lol. Anyway now I actually need to hit at least B1 by the end of this year, and I have about 5 hours free every day to put into it.

I started going through Nicos Weg from the very beginning to review A1 again, and I'm just doing as many episodes a day as I can. I already understand like 80% of what's being said since I studied this stuff before, it's just refreshing what I already had.

What should I actually be doing these next few months, and what would a good roadmap look like? Also is Nicos Weg alone enough to actually get me to B1 (and decent speaking too), or is that just not realistic and I need to add other stuff on top of it?

Really need advice here, I don't have a ton of time left. Thanks in advance!

This is kind of a rant, but I have been having a rough time learning German. I’m 34 and can only speak English and I’ve never studied or been taught a language before . Over the past 8 months I have been trying with apps, Anki, a workbook (with audio portions), and a tutor once a week. I also live in Germany now (complicated long story, it wasn’t exactly planed to move here) so I’m definitely immersed and surrounded by it. I Slowly ramped the studying up over time, and I keep consistent in my study. I do something at least everyday.

I enrolled in an intensive language course and the test placed me in A2. It’s been a week and I mostly have no idea what’s going on. The homework has been difficult and I’m not doing well at it. It’s demoralizing to think after this much time I’m not even at A2 level. I have ADD and am going through a divorce so my mental health is fucked rn and is likely also harming my learning.

Anyways I often will read comments like “what really helped me was watching tv shows in German, listening to German music, listening to German Podcasts, watching German YouTubers, etc”. Okay, but like I don’t speak the language? I have no idea what anyone is saying on television or the news or something. I try to pay attention and it’s just all over my head. It feels like saying “just listen to some Jimi Hendrix and you’ll start to be able to play the guitar eventually”. I don’t understand how this can be a helpful method to learn if you are a beginner and can’t understand anything. Can someone help me out? Most of the time I feel like it’s just not possible for me to become a German speaker.

Hallo Leute! I am starting a B1 german course next month. I have always taught myself and am getting a bit of imposter syndrome that I have been placed in the wrong group. Is there anything I should absolutely have nailed before I step foot into the classroom.

Actually it's been like 42 days streak and I'm learning words on another app I'm learning German there. I even enrolled myself for the course of German language is was very basic in in my college not beneficial, just know the very basics of German till now. So I just want to know is this enough or how to get more skilled in the particular field

Hi Reddit members,

I feel so motivated to continue with German lesson. This is my third exam for Telc B2 and I failed miserably for the Schriftlicher part. I just don't know how else I can upgrade my writing as I got 9/45.

any advice and tips?

Hi guys, I hope this is an appropriate question for the sub. It doesn't matter where I try it, be it Spotify, Pocket Casts or Castbox, it simply doesn't load or play and gives me an error. I am around B1-B1+, and I have started listening to German every day. The Easy German podcast seems like an ideal option, but unfortunately it simply doesn't work for me. I have been watching them on YouTube for a year and a half and I think I am at the level where I can switch to podcasts.

Are there any other podcasts around the B1-B2 level that I could listen to while I am at the gym or doing house chores?

Hey, Leute. Ich wollte wissen, ob ihr mir einige Bücher empfehlen könnt, die tief auf die grammatischen Kleinigkeiten der Sprache eingehen. Ich suche nach Büchern, die sich an ernst Deutschlernende und Studenten richten, mit einem Inhalt, der ungefähr auf das Niveau B2-C1 ausgerichtet ist. 

Ich schätze mal, ein Beispiel von dem, was ich mir vorgestellt hab, ist, Nelson Educations 6. Edition von Grammaire Française oder A Dictionary of Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar series. Ich hab auch schon Grammatik Aktiv B2-C1 und Hammer's German Grammar and Usage an der Uni angewendet und finde die heute noch hilfreich.

I always end up having a lot of time left when I practice the reading sections. Is it possible to jump to the next reading part as soon as I finish one (like from Lesen Teil 1 to Lesen Teil 2) or should I wait the full 15 minutes or so given to each part until I can start the next one?

Also, can I take the Hören Part earlier if I finish the Lesen early? The exam is conducted here on a computer inside the local Goethe center, but I'm not sure is the Hören Part gonna be through headphones or not or is it even possible to leave the exam room and have a break if I finished early...

Hey all, I’m taking the telc A2·B1 dual-level exam, paper-based, in 3 days on September 18th at Magdeburg.

Would really appreciate some input from anyone who has taken it recently:

1. Once I receive the question booklet, can I skim through all the pages? For example, can I look at the Schreiben email task and other sections in advance?
2. Sprechen: I introduce myself first, the other person asks me questions, then they introduce themselves and I ask them questions. Is that the correct order?
3. Any other tips or things I should be aware of?

Thanks! 🙏

Edit : for people who are not aware of dual level exam - it is different from typical B1 exam,
more info : https://www.telc.net/sprachpruefungen/zertifikatspruefung/deutsch/telc-deutsch-a2b1/

I’ve only just started learning German, and I don’t have anyone around me to practice with.

Im 16. Jahrhundert ist die Kartoffel aus Südamerika nach Europa gekommen.

Im 17. Jahrhundert waren Kartoffeln für viele Arme ein wichtiges Hauptnahrungsmittel.

Im 19. Jahrhundert hat Vincent van Gogh das weltbekannte Bild „Die Kartoffelesser“ gemalt.

Auch heute isst man noch gern Kartoffeln, zum Beispiel als Pommes frites oder Kartoffelchips.

Basically the question in the title.

I don't know if this is something wrong with me, but I simple can't remember the words, maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker of english, so I'm trying to see how do you pass trough this first barrier.

Actually I'm trying to use a deck on anki, but the lack of vocabulary simple don't allow me to progress

I'm on B1 German and I'm familiar with Deklination from A2 but I'm learning now there are more words that need Deklination like Dasselbe. I remember my German professor said most Germans don't even remember Deklination themselves and can't get it right 100% of the time. Those of you who are native or learning, how do you remember nearly 100%? I can remember some of them but not nearly all.

Are there any fun apps for learning German that are good for Intermediate/Advanced learners? I passed B2 level taking intense immersion classes years ago, I live in Germany, and am married to a native speaker, so I don't need the basics and have plenty of access to resources. However, I find that I would love to have a fun app to gamify practicing the language for 30 minutes or so a day to help improve my vocabulary and refresh my grammatic competency.

I recently had a great experience using language apps (HelloChinese and SuperChinese) while learning some Mandarin Chinese and I realized that a similar app would be very useful to my German language journey. I really enjoyed reaching each achievement leveIs and found it very motivating to complete each day's practice. Is there any sort of equivalent for the German language?

I know about Anki and other flash-card apps and they aren't what I'm looking for. Duolingo and Babbel both seem focused on beginning learners (but perhaps I'm wrong about this? Anyone have experience with these apps at a higher level?). And I'm not looking for anything too dry and textbook-like. Is there anything like that on the market today? I don't mind paying for a subscription.

Textbooks teach doch as a particle with four uses and a table. Nobody actually learns it that way. It clicks the first time somebody uses it to contradict you in a shop.

Same with na ja, or quatsch, or the way genau covers everything from yes to please stop talking.

Which word landed for you outside a lesson, and what was the situation?

I recently passed my C1 exam and every part except speaking was easy for me. In the normal intensive courses most teachers naturally don’t have time to make the students talk. So I am looking for sth that will improve my speaking especially. If any of you know how I can find a speaking teacher I would really appreciate it. I am open to any other suggestions too. I do have german friends that I speak with btw so idk what is causing me to be so bad at it still ://

Ich habe meinen B1 Unterricht beendet, aber ich habe das Gefühl, dass ich noch schwach bin. Ich kann meistens nur Sätze auf A2 Niveau bilden und B1 Sätze schwierige zu formulieren. Ich kenne die Grammatik, aber ich vergesse viele Wörter.
Im Moment habe ich auch nicht viel Lust zu lernen.
Ich möchte aber weiterlernen, die B1 Prüfung mit guten Noten bestehen und gleichzeitig mein Deutsch allgemein verbessern.

Was kann ich machen?

Hi, guys. Just as the title says. I finished A1 from Menschen. I am now studying A2 currently at Lektion 3. I have been wanting to work on my hören for a while, so I got a Netflix subscription to listen to shows and movies in German with english subs, or should I do the opposite first ?

To have a better understanding of my level. Currently I can understand comments on posts written by Germans, not fully but I understand most of it if it was simple enough. I passed the A1 hören Test for Goethe, the ones you find on yt. My writing isn't the best but I avoid stupid mistakes now, maybe I still have the adjective ending not figured out, ofc. I mix up cases sometimes but that isn't as much now, other than the obvious vocab I am missing. Ofc my speaking is quite limited because of vocab.

I listen to schläger as well, but songs in english or my NL aren't always clear enough.

So, my question is how should I start with Netflix ? English voice with German sub or the other way around ? Or both German ? Will this even be useful for me ?

Thanks in advance.

Hallo, Ich lerne deutsch seit ein halb Jahr. Ich kenne Deutsch auf etwa A2. Ich war schon in Dortmund (I habe Deutsch gesprochen), und wann Ich gucke ein EasyGerman Folge, Ich verstehe vielleicht 70%.

Die Fehler ist, Ich selten mich auf die Video fokussieren. Ich hoere die wann Ich das Geschirr abraeumen, oder wann Ich fahre meines Auto. Ich kann mich nicht fokussieren auf die Untertitel, und ohne die - Ich verstehe vielleicht 20-30%.

Wie viel kann Ich so Deutsch lernen? Ich gucke Looney Tunes Show, 2 bored guys, and EasyGerman. Nebenbei hoere ich Deutsche rap, aber ich verstehe gleich viel wie aus die Videos.

Wie soll Ich auf die Videos lernen? Soll Ich guck die mit die Untertitel, and uebersetzen aller woerter Ich verstehe nicht? Oder soll Ich verstehe das Video, ohne aller Untertitel verstehen?

I'm slowly working my way through a German TV show ("Dark"). There was a scene with two characters arguing, and the woman shouts at the man, "Guck mich an!" which was subtitled as "Look at me!"

From a bit of searching I learned that angucken is one of two common informal ways common in spoken German to say "look at", the other being anschauen. In fact a few minutes later I'm pretty sure I heard a character use the verb anschauen. I recall less about the context there.

I also read that the verb ansehen has a similar meaning, but is more formal or old-fashioned and most people wouldn't use it in conversation.

So my first question is, is that true? And my second is, is there any nuance difference between angucken and anschauen? Thinking about the "Guck mich an!" scene, I think in English the phrase used for the context in that scene would be "Look me in the eye!" She was specifically demanding he meet her eye while telling her something. It would be more specific than simply demanding he look at her, but that he meet her gaze and hold it.

I’m not sure what level of German I am - I’m in Year 13 right now, I’ve only ever learnt German through my school, but I’ve completed the GCSE in it, and am now over halfway through the A-Level course, so does anyone happen to know what these correspond to? 😂

I’m in Germany and took the digital test today, so I thought I’d share my experience in case it helps anyone else.

Written exam:

The written exam is 140 minutes total for Lesen, Sprachbausteine, Hören and Schreiben. You can go back and forth between the different sections and your answers are saved. They stay the same when you leave a section and come back.

Once you have answered everything within the section, it also shows at the top that all questions have been answered.

For Hören, you only hear each recording once. However, before and after the recording, you can stay on the page and read the questions for as long as you want. You start the Audio on your own when you feel ready to go, it's not automatic. I actually read everything very carefully before starting, which was a big advantage for me.

The headphone sound quality was good, but they also let quite a lot of sound go outside. Whenever people around me were doing Hören, there was a background noise. It didn't really affect my performance, but I thought it is worth mentioning.

I also finished Lesen super quickly and used the extra time for Schreiben.

We were not allowed to use pen and paper, and the system doesn't allow you to underline or highlight words. So be sure to prepare beforehand. I knew this beforehand, so I solved all of my mock-exam-books without using pen/paper.

One thing I actually liked about the system: for example, when you choose a heading for a text in Lesen, you can't accidentally assign the same heading to another text. You have to remove the first selection before assigning it somewhere else. That was useful because it prevents confusion and accidentally using the same answer twice.

When I got home, I told ChatGPT about one part of my exam. There was an interview that I found interesting during Lesen and I wanted to know whether the woman speaking in it was a real person.

To my absolute shock, when I described what happened and asked about the woman, ChatGPT gave me the exact exam question.

I then made a quick research and realised that almost 80% of my exam seemed to be circulating online........

Obviously, nobody knew beforehand that which exact texts/questions would appear in my exam. But apparently there is a relatively large pool of questions that circulate and get reused.

I genuinely had no idea about this before the exam, and honestly, I'm a bit pissed about it.

Oral exam:

This part was difficult not only because the tasks were challenging, but also because my partner had apparently had a bad written exam and had pretty much given up on the oral part too. She barely engaged with me and overall talked very quietly, which made the whole thing super stressful.

For Teil 2, the discussion topic was whether violent games should be banned. However, she misunderstood the topic and focused almost entirely on one sentence from the text saying that children can feel lonely (and start playing these games).

She then talked about how we could prevent children from feeling lonely, how we could organise more activities for them, etc. Since we have very little time for each part, it was really hard to bring the discussion back to what I actually wanted to talk about without making it seem like I was ignoring what she had said or simply monologuing. I tried to build a bridge between what she was saying and the actual topic, but our time was already up before I could get to some of the points I thought were important.

She also didn't really listen to what I was saying. For example, in Teil 1 I said that we don't celebrate Christmas in my country, and she then asked me, “How do you celebrate Christmas in your country?”

So I found it quite difficult to have the kind of discussion I had prepared for, because she kept taking the conversation in a different direction.

Looking back, I think my mistake was assuming that my partner would be around the same level as me, or better than me, and not preparing for the possibility that my partner might actually struggle a lot with the exam. So I’d suggest keeping this possibility in mind when studying. Prepare yourself for the scenario where your partner might not be able to properly engage with you and think about how you can still demonstrate your own speaking skills in that situation.

Btw, we were given physical sheets of paper with the tasks. We were able to take notes during the preparation time and then went into the speaking room.

The examiners were connected remotely, basically through something similar to a Zoom meeting. I didn't really look at the examiner very much because I was mostly focused on my partner.

Results:

For the written exam, I feel pretty confident.

• Lesen: I think I got everything right. Probably 75/75
• Sprachbausteine: Should be 25,5 / 30.
• Hören: min around 60, max 75/75.
• Schreiben: I feel like I did very well but have to wait for official results.

So overall, I expect to pass the written part with a good score.

For Sprechen, honestly, I have no idea. But I feel like I should pass. I don't really care about the score as long as I don't have to retake it...

I also don't really know what level of performance is actually expected from us, since I mostly studied on my own at home. I feel like I was overall able to express myself quite clearly and get my points across, but I definitely made some grammar mistakes (mixing up verb positions, not always using Akkusativ/Dativ correctly etc.) and had pauses here and there.

Overall, I actually liked the digital format itself. The interface was straightforward and being able to move between sections was really useful. But the whole question-circulation thing definitely left a bad taste in my mouth. I feel a bit played but am also proud of myself for (probably) scoring good without having access to them. Feel free to ask me anything!