A1 level German: Passing the Goethe Zertifikat A1 quickly and cheaply!

When I did my Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam, most of the people in the room were there for the A1 exam. The next biggest group was the A2-ers. There was one girl for the B1 exam and then little old me. No higher exams that day. The reason is that many/most language learners learn it out of necessity or for the opportunities it might bring them and not just for fun. They might even downright hate learning a language. If you are the spouse or partner of someone who is moving to Germany on a work visa, then you will most likely need to pass the A1 exam to be able to join them. So, although you might not like language learning, or not particularly the German language, culture, or country, you have to learn it to join your loved one. So, it might be a pretty mixed bag in terms of motivation!

First of all, let me say that A1 is not a doddle. For me, it seems pretty easy, but I can recognise where they try to trip up beginners and I also remember what it is like to listen to a language in the early stages without the right type of practice. This will require some work. However, it is not a particularly high hurdle and I believe that if you start off in the right direction you'll be able to prepare in quite a short period of time.

Now, it is certainly possible to do it for free because the internet is an amazing resource. A great place to get started is on the BBC's website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/german/, which also links through to Deutsche Welle's German learning site, amongst others. In particular, the A1 level material can be found here: http://www.dw.de/learn-german/level-a1/s-13227. However, as helpful as some of this can be, I personally found many of the beginner's programs somewhat, ahhh... twee, at best.

But don't just take my word for it - have a listen to some of "Radio D"!

It's really great that this stuff's out there for free, but I think it's just too slow and contains way too much English. The pace is also treacle slow compared to what you can achieve. It seems to be mainly for school teachers. If you're a solo learner, you can do much better.

I personally don't have a lot of experience with a wide variety of packages, but I personally credit Assimil's New German with Ease with much of my success in passing the Goethe Zertifikat B2 exam. I don't think it takes you all the way to the B2 level as claimed, but if you're looking to pass the A1, all the grammar and listening comprehension you need can be found in this book. Even better, you definitely won't need to do 100 lessons to cover all you need. If I were starting from scratch, I would definitely just get this book + audio and get cracking. I haven't done a scientific experiment or anything, but since the difference in difficulty between each level of the CEFR is not constant (in other words, it takes longer to progress between levels the more advanced you are), I would guess that the second half of the book takes you from low A2-ish to B1-B2. B1 in terms of vocabulary and real world listening practice, but B2 in terms of familiarity with the grammar and probably not far off the level required in terms of listening ability for actually passing the exam (with extra exam-specific practice, of course).

VERY IMPORTANT! Don't forget to SHADOW! If you don't know what shadowing is, this will change your world :-) You can skip the bit about walking briskly (I certainly never did, since I mostly did this in the car on the way to work) - just read the section entitled "Using shadowing to master your coursebook, accompanied by other techniques". I never considered that I had finished a lesson until I could "blind shadow" it without any noticeable errors (in my own opinion, of course!) which was sometimes frustrating, and definitely tiring exercise for the mouth, but important all the same. It will help you become comfortable with making the new sounds at a decent speed. The essence of shadowing is simple, really - first, know the meaning of the dialogue. This usually means you've read through the translation and notes at least once. Then just listen to the audio for that day's lesson pretty much continuously until you can repeat the audio just after the speaker has spoken for the whole dialogue. I set myself a benchmark of being error free because it's a specific and measurable goal, but I suspect that doing a 100% perfect run on the whole dialogue from start to finish is not really necessary!

Given all that, you probably don't need to go past lesson 50 to be able to start confidently studying directly for the exam. Even better, the first 50 lessons are a bit shorter and easier than the last 50, so you should be able to manage one per day for at least 5 days per week over a total of 10 weeks, right? If not, you might ask yourself how committed you are the passing the test, because this isn't much to ask, really! If you find yourself struggling to continue, re-check your motivation. That's actually the most fundamental part of the problem for most people.

This will fill up your listening needs for those 10 weeks. What else should you do? You'll want to start practicing speaking as soon as possible, but before doing that I would suggest getting a basic vocabulary list into an SRS based learning system right from the start. If you've read anything else on this site, you'll realise that I highly recommend Anki. Make your own word list (here is a good tip for building one up from your basic course), or download one. The biggest hurdle to passing that A1 exam after using a good quality basic course for a few months is going to be vocabulary. Anki can help a lot with this, but it's not everything. For example, I personally have found that after leaving my Anki list for a long time and then coming back to it that I'm quite rusty on that particular list of words. If you're not doing it every day, your command of your lists of words will definitely diminish.

Some possible ways to avoid this loss is through making up little stories, or using analogies (See some examples at Memrise to get an idea, and also possibly just use it :-) ), breaking long words into component parts and adding those to your Anki list, visualising actions, etc. Also, of course, if you're using and hearing/reading the words as often as possible, they will become firmly implanted in your memory.

This brings me to another point - if you don't want to spend the money on the Assimil course, you can always try Duolingo. I haven't really gone through all the course material for German but I think it might be able to get you to an A1-ish level eventually. You will need to supplement this with a good grammar book/website (after a month or so of the Duolingo course, probably) and the aforementioned vocab training.

Following the Assimil course plan, after about 10 weeks of regular (but not super-stressful) work, you should be able to get into practicing the exam format. You might easily be ready earlier than after 10 weeks, but I think you should be fairly certain before doing the practice exams because there aren't that many available. You can find the Goethe Institute's own practice exams here.

I recommend trying the first one when you think you are ready and then assessing your results. What was your weak spot? For me, the first time I did a practice exam I found that my vocabulary for the required reading was really lacking and I worked hard on improving this. I personally used Lesetraining B2 but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for A1. I suspect that's because the required vocabulary is so much smaller. I suspect that if you've done 50 lessons of Assimil then you will just need to get used to the sorts of audio content in the exams to improve your results in this area. Also, practicing speaking will be important. Find someone to chat to! The cheapest way to do this is a language exchange, so give it a go! Or even just make new friends who will be kind enough to help you with their language like I did. I found a German-speaker at my work who was willing to help, and made two very good friends through Couch Surfing. Or find a Meetup group. I've yet to go to one, but I know that the group in Sydney is quite active and regular, so I suspect they are in any major city around the world.

Phew! That's all I can think of for now, so off you go and get cracking. Report back in 3 or 4 months when you've sat and passed the A1 exam! Viel Spaß!


(NOTE: Most book links in the blog are now affiliate links with BookDepository to help me continue providing resources for language learners on this site. I chose Book Depository because they're quick and cheap, but you can also check other sites for cheap deals. For Australians, I recommend checking out booko.com.au which compares prices including delivery from a number of suppliers.)