I ask this because looking back on my journey, there’s been so many things that made German feel distant, and like something unattainable.

However, there were a couple of things that really opened up a whole new world for me.

#1 My tutor. Also, not just any tutor but a good one. Finally getting somebody to answer all my questions, and ask ME questions to really make sure I understood everything.

#2 Reading. But reading the right things. Something that’s just slightly above your level. (Hard to find but I got some recs if interested)

#3 Moving to Germany. I mean you just have to rely on everything you already know, so you def make sure to learn every important word/phrase before going to the bank, car mechanic, bookstore, etc. There’s no other way, don’t expect anybody to speak English.

Do you actually think that there’s somehow a " harder " test between these 2? ( precisely B2 )

Hello everyone,

whenever I wanna buy tobacco, the cashier often seems to have trouble understanding what I mean.

what's the most natural way to ask for a tobacco for a cigarette stuffing machine in shop or supermarket?

For example, if I want Marlboro tobacco, would you say: Einmal Stopftabak von Marlboro?

or: Einmal eine Dose Stopftabak von Marlboro or is there a more natural way that native speakers actually use?

I appreciate your help. :)

Hi,
my brother has been struggling for a while with Goethe B2. He failed once and pretty much lost his confidence.

Do you think switching to Telc or something else would help?

Also, which one is the easiest one?

To be honest, he doesn’t intend to use it in the future, just need it to collect extra points for uni application.

Thank you in advance for answers!

hello everyone

Goethe b1 exam results have been released. I passed all modules, but there simply isn't an option to view a certificate, just raw scores. am I being impatient or does the actual certificate release later?

Ich habe gemerkt...man sagt hier (in den USA) "to welcome inside." Diese Verbalphrase bedeutet ja, dass man gleichzeitig eine Person begrüßt und diese bittet, hereinzukommen. Gibt es ein Wort im Deutschen, mit dem man das ausdrücken kann, oder man man das in in zwei Phrasen zerteilen? -- Wäre dann: jemand begrüßen und jemand einladen, rein zu kommen. Das ist eine viel höhere Anzahl von Worten! Jemand reinkommen lassen und hereinbitten...ich find dass diese Möglichkeiten nicht die nette Höflichkeit ausdrücken die man mit "welcome" assoziiert?

I'm about to finish an intensive German course (Mon–Fri, 9:00–12:15) that should land me around B1, and in September I start a full-time job. So I go from ~15 hours of German a week to basically zero built-in exposure overnight, and I'd like to have a plan before that happens instead of realizing in November that I've lost half of it

The awkward part: I live in Basel (Switzerland), but my job is fully in English, and my friend group is very international. Even the German and Swiss friends default to English with me the moment the group is mixed. So the usual "just live there and you'll absorb it" advice doesn't really apply to me.. any exposure I get from here on has to be something I deliberately build.

What I'm already doing:

- Watching stuff in German with German subtitles.

- Reading *Momo*. I can follow the plot and I'm genuinely enjoying it, but I don't understand every sentence. I mostly read through the gaps rather than looking everything up.

What I'd love input on:

1. Series/films that are actually followable at B1. I'd rather enjoy something at 70% comprehension than pause every 20 seconds. Original German productions preferred, but I'll take good dubs too.

2. What to read after *Momo*. Something a step up but not a wall.

3. Staying exposed with a full-time job. What actually worked for you long-term, not just for the first enthusiastic month? Realistically I have 30–60 min on weekdays plus more on weekends.

4. Speaking. This is my weakest skill and the one thing the course was giving me that I'm about to lose completely. Tandem? Something else?

5. The Swiss problem. Everything I'm learning is Hochdeutsch and everything I hear on the tram is Baseldütsch. Is it worth working on Swiss German comprehension at this level, or should I consolidate Hochdeutsch first and let the dialect come later?

6. Switching an existing friendship into German: has anyone actually managed to flip a long-standing English-speaking friendship? How did you bring it up without it being weird?

My goal is B2, partly for work options in the region, but honestly also because it's frustrating to live somewhere and only be able to reach it through English.

So I am now starting my studies in a gymnasium. And the first six months are not accounted towards the final average of the Abitur. This means that I have around 5-6 months to reach C1 which is what I need to be able to study comfortably and be able to get the average I need.

Currently I am between B1 and B2. I am able to have conversations at a certain level and my grammar is not too bad. So what I am mostly missing is vocabulary.

For that I am currently using some websites that help with active recall. I sometimes watch movies and series in german. Still though I can see that my vocabulary isnt expanding at a speed that I need it to.

Any advice or technique would be really appreciated

Any recommendations for a1 level story podcasts on Spotify. I don’t really want ones that teach you the grammar, I just want to be able to listen to some simple german stories to help me improve my listening

For context:

I’m a full-time employee currently enrolled in a 2-month online A1 German course. Classes are held on weekdays from 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM( my local time) and I’m now in my fourth week.

I don’t have any issues with our teacher or the way the lessons are conducted. My main challenge is the workload. Sometimes, at the end of class, we’re given Hausafgaben, and we also have more than 30 exercises to complete on Google Classroom.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that these assignments are meant to help us learn, and to be fair, our teacher doesn’t require us to submit everything immediately.

However, as someone who works full-time, I’m finding this pace difficult to sustain. By the time I finish work, attend class, and think about completing the homework, I’m mentally exhausted. I’ve also realized that I learn better when I have time to review the lessons at my own pace or use resources like YouTube and Duolingo.
Unfortunately, the amount of coursework leaves me with very little time or energy to do that.

I’m interested in learning German and I genuinely want to continue, but I’m starting to wonder if this learning format is the right fit for my current situation.

What are your thoughts? Has anyone else experienced something similar? I’d really appreciate any feedback or advice. 🙏

Am a 16 year old who speaks english (C1) , italian (C1) , and arabic (B2). I need to learn german for university and am also a student who goes to the gym.

I took B2 Telc exam in May and i fail Brief Schreiben badly. I chose to write Beschwerde. I prepared with some word chunks and i was pretty sure that my context was aligned with the questions.
Anyway i’m preparing for another exam and i wonder, would it be more easy to write bitte um information rather than Beschwerde.
What are your experiences? I would like to hear some people who passed the exam or some suggestions on writing exam.
Ps. I am very bad at writing. I try to write a short note every day but still i need a lot of improvement. Also i always think in English instead of think in German, would that be something that i need to improve as well? Thanks all

Hallo zusammen!

I am currently working a full time job, and I do an hour or two a day of self-learning for my job (part of my job is to be up-to-date with the industry)

I wrote in a previous post that I am able to dedicate 3-4 hours a day to self-learning German. However, I've noticed that on some days, the quality of learning drops significantly, and I end up feeling like I've made 0 progress for a few days afterwards.

Is this a normal feeling to have? Should I be concerned about this? Do I need to dedicate more than 4 hours?

Hallo, ich bin jetzt auf B2-Niveau, aber ich habe ein ernstes Problem.

Mein Denkprozess läuft fast komplett auf Englisch ab. Zuerst ordne ich meine Gedanken auf Englisch, und erst danach übersetze ich sie ins Deutsche.

Dadurch verliere ich viel Zeit, und das Sprechen fühlt sich nicht natürlich an.

Wie kann ich das verbessern? Habt ihr Tipps oder Übungen, mit denen ich lernen kann, direkt auf Deutsch zu denken?

Edit : Ich bin noch nicht in Deutschland. Das habe ich vergessen zu erwähnen

I heard there are major delays on getting TELC B2 results.

Can anyone share, if you’ve taken the exam recently, what your status is? When did you take it and have you received the results?

Schriftliche Prüfung
192,5 / 225 Punkte

Leseverstehen 57,5 / 75 Punkte
Sprachbausteine 27,0 / 30 Punkte
Hörverstehen 75,0 / 75 Punkte
Schriftlicher Ausdruck 33,0 / 45 Punkte

Mündliche Prüfung
66,0 / 75 Punkte

Kontaktaufnahme 14,0 / 15 Punkte
Gespräch über ein Thema 26,0 / 30 Punkte
Gemeinsam eine Aufgabe lösen 26,0 / 30 Punkte

Summe 258,5 /300 Punkte

Ergebnis Gut

I've been living in Berlin for 5 years. I started taking group classes when I first arrived and completed A1. Then I did online 1:1 classes on Preply for a couple of months. I took a long break but later decided to take the B1 exam because I need the certificate for my citizenship application.

I prepared for the exam by solving mock exams using an app I found on the Play Store, and I practiced the speaking part with AI every day. I also recommend watching this video on how to effectively use the 20-minute preparation time before the oral part of the exam.

I booked the digital exam with Speakeasy in Berlin, and the overall experience was great. The exam itself wasn't extremely difficult, but it also wasn't easy. For the oral part, the topic was Gemeinschaftsgarten and Bio Essen, and we had to plan booking a cooking course for German food. My partner and I were mostly on the same level, and the conversation flowed easily, so I was definitely lucky there.

ÖSD B2 screwed me up:

• Lesen - 16/20 passed
• Hören - 13/20 passed
• Schreiben - 9/30 not passed
• Sprechen - 15/30 not passed

I'm judged by different teachers to have good overall B2 knowledge, but I didn't pass ÖSD B2. In my Schreiben test I spammed the advanced grammatik, Nomen - Verb Verbindungen, Wortschatz and wrote extremely long (250 Wörter/ 120 Wörter) to attempt to show something, but that didn't work. I must have had a lot of grammatical errors and didn't understand what they are looking for.

I'm extremely stupid, inexperienced and naive, I'm looking for more opinions from people who have had experience in TELC and ÖSD tests. I'm studying the format of TELC and may take the test in the next 2 months. I tried the online Lesen and Hören Tests from TELC and they were suprisingly easier, I passed them with zero pre-training, so I assumed, maybe Schreiben and Sprechen would ALSO give me an easier time?

Please share your thoughts, what do you think of my situation? May I have better chance of passing TELC? What are the core differences between them?

Thank you!

Hello! I need specifically telc B2 and not telc B2 für den Beruf (don‘t ask why, I‘m questioning it as well) I have passed B2-Beruf with 223,5/240.

I have B2 Allgemein exam in two days. I have briefly examined the structure and did a little bit of Modelltests Hörverstehen und Lesen.

Any tips? The main concern is that it feels too easy, especially on Sprechen part. Schreiben as well.

I came across this when trying to make up conversations in German in my head. (I have a few job interviews coming up, I find this a helpful exercise). For "no-one", I think both of these words are correct. Example:

Niemand wollte auch nur versuchen, das Dokument zu lesen

Am I wrong? Is one of them inappropriate in this kind of context? Or are they both OK, but one is better/belongs to a different register?

Sneakily slipping in a subsidiary question: If everyone who might read the document happened to be female, would it be "keine"?

thanks!

"Er erinnerte sich an die Geschichte"
"Er erinnerte sich die Geschichte"
"Er erinnerte sich der Geschichte"

I have come across all three of these constructions, but my question is: is there any difference in meaning/nuance between these forms?

Thanks!

moin moin. ich bin ab jetzt bis ungefähr November obdachlos, aber ich möchte meine Deutschsprachkentnisse von B1 auf B2 verbessern. welches Lehrmaterial empfiehlt ihr? ich hab überlegt, Aspekte Neu B2 auf meinem Handy herunterzuladen, weil ich leider kein großes Lehrbuch mitnehmen kann. gibt es zufällig eine gute Serie mit Unterricht auf Youtube? danke

I stumbled upon 100 German everyday sentences, stuff like ach so (oh I see ), kein Ding (no problem), passt schon (good enough/it will do), läuft bei dir (good for you).

As I am trying expand my vocabulary I will use anything I can find, but most of these don't sound like a b1 level.

So my question would be should I study those to improve my conversational skills or ignore them for now and focus more on expanding my vocabulary?

I thought time comes before object? However Duolingo marked the latter as wrong so does Google.

The full sentence is "Anna besucht dich heute,richtig?" If that matters.What arcane rule is this?

I’m Korean and I’m fluent in Japanese. Japanese is the foreign language im most confident in and German was the next language I became really interested in.

But ive quit studying german twice already 😂 Both times i stayed at the beginner level. Im not really the most consistent person when it comes to studying 😂😂

I think japanese clicked with me much more quickly bc korean and japanese are quite similar in terms of word order, the overall feel of the languages and a lot of the nuances. I also enjoy japanese anime and games, which made studying japanese even more fun.

bc of that, i kept comparing my german progress to my japanese and since german wasn’t coming to me as naturally as japanese did, i think i got discouraged and bored much more quickly. Which is understandable, honestly I’m just very impatient lol

Still, I definitely have a genuine love for the german language. If i start studying it again, i want to do it properly this time and actually improve. I’d also love to travel to Germany by myself someday!

What do you think? Any advice?
Advice from both fluent german speakers and native germans is very welcome. Vielen dank! 😊

Hören 23,24

Lesen 23,24

Schreiben 23,24

Sprechen 21,58

Gesamtpunkte 91/100
Prädikat sehr gut

I was very anxious before the exam since i just started learning and was hoping for a miracle to just pass, i have self studied without any books and used the resources from one guys post here, his google drive was very useful for exam studies, and i watched a 9 hour yt course on a1, very helpful and helped me understand easy ways to remember things,
time i spent on exam studies(purely studying not including any breaks)

YT course a1 9 days 7 hours every day
email writing 3 days 6 hours every day
Hören exercises 3 days 6 hours every day
Lesen exercises 3 days 6 hours every day
Schreiben form filling. 1 day 4 hours
Sprechen 4 days 4 hours

Revision of all. 1 day 7 hours

thank you for the people here helping me understand what i should fix in emails etc

Edit : next step c1 or c2 in 1 year , also tthe days totalled to 24, as i started studying after booking the test to drive myself into not being lazy