How to learn German? Self-preparation for exam A1. Test to determine the level of German language proficiency (A1) What you need to know for A1 German

Before you begin choosing the most optimal program for learning German, it is very important to determine your language level, that is, to evaluate your linguistic base. Why is this necessary? To understand exactly what stage you are at, what you already know, what you need to work hard on and what you need to strive for. Correct determination of the level is the most important condition for successful mastery of a foreign language. Moreover, in German there are no less than six of them: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. Next, we invite you to familiarize yourself in detail with their main features.

A1 – survival

Entry level a1 German – what do you need to know about the entry level? Since this is the simplest stage, the basic requirements are put forward here:

listening - understanding individual phrases spoken very slowly and clearly;
reading - understanding the basic words that are most often found on posters, signs, advertising or guidebooks;
speaking - the ability to conduct a short conversation on common topics: about oneself, about family, about place of residence, about work;
writing – the ability to fill out simple forms and sign postcards.

Although this is the most primitive stage, it is important to start diligently improving your linguistic skills from here if you want to master a foreign language without gaps. For the most effective learning, we recommend using a modern German tutorial, about which you can find out more.

A2 – prethreshold

The pre-threshold stage also does not go beyond general everyday topics - at this stage you can only operate with simple words and phrases: family, work, study, recreation, hobbies, service sector. You understand native speakers if they talk about simple and familiar things in short sentences. You can read short texts and find information in them for everyday communication. You can support everyday dialogue, but you still cannot carry on a conversation. As for writing skills, at this stage you only need to be able to write short personal messages and fill out registration forms.

B1 – threshold

The German language for level B1 is more complex and rich, because you move from the beginner stage to the stage of elementary foreign language proficiency. What requirements does this threshold level make?

Your speech arsenal should contain not only basic words, but also their synonyms/antonyms. You can speak within the literary norm on familiar topics: work, hobbies, travel, current events. The situation is similar with listening - you must perceive by ear clearly pronounced literary sentences on well-known topics.

Already at this stage, you should be able to write coherent small texts on simple everyday or personal topics, as well as read multi-format texts that are based on frequent vocabulary.

B2 – threshold advanced

This is the stage of confident intermediate language proficiency, sufficient for relatively active use of a foreign language. You must understand lectures, news, and native speech on various everyday and professional topics, but without complex phrases. And to further improve your listening comprehension of foreign languages, we recommend that you start watching films in German, about the benefits of which you can read.

At the advanced level for the intermediate level, the student should be able to read journalistic articles, journalistic materials, and fiction books without any problems. As for writing skills, the student is required to be able to fill out all sorts of non-professional forms, as well as write detailed messages, essays, and personal letters.

Another important point is that German for an intermediate level requires that the student must easily enter into dialogues with native speakers and speak clearly on topics close to him.

C1 – professional

This is a serious level of language proficiency well above average, which assumes that you can fully use a foreign language not only in everyday life, but also in study, at work and even in scientific activities. Consequently, the requirements at this level are very high:

listening – understanding extended speech, regardless of its tempo and structure;
reading - understanding fiction, documentary and highly specialized texts of high complexity;
speaking – the ability to spontaneously and fluently express opinions on various issues in everyday and professional communication;
writing - the ability to logically and clearly express thoughts in personal and formal written forms.

C2 – perfect

At this stage, German comes as close as possible to the level of the native language. This means that you must freely, reasonably and logically express your point of view both orally and in writing on any topic, as well as accurately understand fluent speech and read any literature. That is, your skills must be absolutely perfect.

Now you are familiar with the main features of each level of German and can understand exactly from which position you need to start to successfully master the language. So go for it!

It's a nice day today! I finished my super-intensive German courses, took a test on the material I covered and received a certificate.

Inspiration is there, so it's time for an article on the topic :)

Let's start with the fact that I cannot be classified as an overly diligent person, so for a very long time I tried to find a magical way that would help me learn a language without cramming and super discipline, but now I can say with confidence that there is NO :) Why didn’t I learn about this before?! Like many, I started studying several times a year, bought more and more new books, stuck pieces of paper in the toilet and on the refrigerator, signed up for courses, studied individually with a Russian-speaking tutor, and in the end - NOTHING.

How to learn German? how to learn any language in general, so that the inspiration does not leave and the result is noticeable. I’ll tell you how I do this, based on my experience, and you can draw your own conclusions) I’ll tell you about language schools in Munich in the next article, I’m currently collecting material.

What stages is the German language divided into?

A1-A2- level of survival, you can talk on any everyday topics, you can read and write letters, naturally without complex phrases and specific topics.

B1- B2— level of fluency in the language. You speak on any topic and can read and write complex texts.

C1- C2— level of language proficiency is perfect.

Today I will pay special attention to the basic level A1-A2, because if you master it, then you yourself will understand how and what to do.

I am now somewhere between A1 and A2, so I plan to go through the A2 textbook on my own, pick up more vocabulary (about 200 - 300 new words) and then go to intensive courses at level B1.

1. First stage - basic level A1 and self-preparation for the A1 exam: Start Deutsch

The most difficult and most important stage, during which it is very important to develop the right learning methodology that suits you and to fall in love with the language. My main rule was not to overdo it.

I chose several types of exercises for myself, from simple to the most complex, and alternated them depending on my mood and desire.

How I did:

— after a long analysis of reviews and training materials on the Internet, I bought Inna Levenchuk’s online course on preparing for the A1 exam: Start Deutsch 1 on the website http://www.onlinedeutsch.ru/en/. This course contains 20 video lessons on grammar + homework. I watched one lesson a day, usually rewatching it several times, then did my homework.

— cramming ( yes, yes...no way without her) the most common German words, by the way there are about 1000 (they are also called the vocabulary minimum A1) In the first days, I learned about 30 words a day, the further I went, the less.

— when I was tired or not in the mood at all, I listened to audio dialogues on everyday topics: in a restaurant, in a store, in a hotel, etc. on the website www.dw.de, I can send you a direct link upon request

- a boring, but more useful activity, working with the same stories, but listening. You turn on the audio recording of the story, listen and write down the text. If it’s really difficult, you can read the text first, then listen and write

— I trained my grammar by doing exercises according to D.A.’s textbook. Listvin "Modern German", it suited me well, but it was the most boring exercise.

Use your time on the road or waiting wisely, turn on audio stories, songs, dialogues in German and just listen

— entertainment before bed was to play on the website www.duolingo.com, going through the levels, I think there was some sense left from this :)

I tried to make pen pals, but somehow it didn’t work out at that stage, probably due to my poor vocabulary.

Stage 2 - how to start talking?

I see two options:

— study individually in Russia with a native speaker + friends via Skype

— go to Germany for intensive language courses

For all the time I studied German, I bought only two textbooks: D.A. Listvin - Modern German, very good exercises for training basic grammar and the A1 textbook published by Hueber (more details http://www.hueber.ru), which we used in the courses

To consolidate the first stage and practice conversation, I went to intensive A1 level courses in Germany - lasting 1 month, 5 days a week for 3.5 hours. And this turned out to be a very suitable format for me, here's why:

- the teacher is a native speaker, this is the most important key to success.

In Moscow, I studied individually with an English tutor (a teacher from Moscow State University). For a third of the class we were distracted by other topics, for a third of the class the teacher explained grammar to me in Russian, and for a third we only spoke English. I went for six months, but not seeing much results, I gave up and gave up.

— the group is small, only 4 people (2 Italians, 1 American and me) I was lucky, because... I went to school in the suburbs of Munich, close to home, there are almost no foreigners here.

— almost the entire lesson we talked, as best we could :) we did exercises, told how the day went, discussed hobbies, acted out scenes in a restaurant, in a hospital, in a store, etc. I recorded all the gaps in grammar and vocabulary in a notebook and studied them at home on my own, in addition to homework.

— the form of intensive training blew my mind in the first week, but then I got into a routine and spent almost all my free time at home studying, I felt progress and it motivated me incredibly.

Stage 3: Level B1 - B2

This is already a pleasant halfway point, here you can have a little fun:

- watching your favorite TV series, only no subtitles. They greatly distract from listening.

- reading your favorite books will not be easy, but it will be very useful. You learn new words in context many times faster.

I also forgot to mention the most important thing, it is important to decide on the goal and motivation at the very beginning. Why do you need a tongue? You need to clearly understand what you want to achieve as a result. It sounds banal... but without a “reinforced concrete” goal, you shouldn’t even start...

Have a wonderful day everyone!

At the end of June 2014, a student contacted me who needed a certificate from the Goethe-Institut Start Deutsch 1 or, as it is also called, Goethe-Zertifikat A1 for the German embassy.

The certificate was required extremely urgently, by the end of August 2014. Those. in just two months.

Initial conditions:

Complete ignorance of the German language. There were attempts to learn the language earlier, but from these attempts I only had knowledge of no more than 20-30 words and the most rudimentary knowledge of grammar.
Great desire and motivation. In this case, it seems to me that it played a very important role.
Quite a lot of free time. The student was not working at the moment and had constant access to the Internet.
Lessons were conducted via Skype every day, except some weekends (almost all Saturdays were also used).

First you need to understand what level of knowledge is needed to successfully pass the exam to obtain this certificate.

Requirements for taking the Goethe Start A1 exam

How does the Goethe Institute itself formulate such knowledge?

The student must

understand simple everyday questions, instructions and messages, including texts recorded on answering machines, announcements at airports and train stations, as well as short dialogues,
understand information that is significant to you contained in short written messages, explanatory inscriptions on sign boards, and small advertisements
understand and name numbers, quantity designations, clock readings, prices,
fill out forms containing standard personal data,
write short personal messages,
be able to introduce yourself during a conversation and answer simple questions concerning you personally
be able to formulate everyday questions and respond to them.

On the one hand, this exam is the most basic one and receiving this certificate only indicates that its owner can read and understand a simple text, understand his interlocutor (unless of course he does not speak very quickly and uses simple phrases and expressions ), tell us briefly about yourself and write a short letter.

But on the other hand, the usual time to study a language to pass this exam is at least 6-8 months. Is it possible to achieve successful results in just two months? Highly unlikely.

Naturally, I informed the student about this. But she decided to take a risk. So, the training began.

A small digression.

What knowledge do you need to show in order to receive this Goethe-Zertifikat Start A1 deutsch certificate? The requirements are quite reasonable.

The exam consists of two parts.

First part

listening ( hören) - about 20 minutes
reading ( lesen) – about 20 minutes
letter ( schreiben) - about 25 minutes

Then a short break for 2-3 hours and a group interview in German ( sprechen).

Total - four parts to the exam. Each part is worth approximately 25 points with no errors.

25 points * 4 = 100 points. This is exactly the maximum you can get if you pass all four parts of the exam perfectly and do not make a single mistake.

But, besides the absolute maximum, there is also a minimum.

So, the certificate is issued and the exam is considered passed even with a fairly low 60 points. This is the minimum number of points from which a certificate is issued. The number of points is less than 60 – the exam is not passed.

In the case of the student, she needed the certificate itself, even with the lowest score, i.e. even 60 points. 59 points - failure and failure, 60 points and above - success and victory. Considering the very tight deadline, the chances of getting even these 60 points were very small.

For example, already during the exam, my student got into a conversation with the same applicant for a certificate and found out that she was already taking this exam fourth time! Those. three previous attempts were unsuccessful.

Strategy for passing the Goethe Start A1 exam

There are quite a lot of materials on the Goethe Institute website that tell you how the exam is conducted and what tasks are provided. Naturally, these tasks are test tasks and the exam itself will be different, but similar.

Therefore, after discussing these materials with the student, a learning strategy was developed for successful completion.

Section Hören (Listening)

The student listens to the text twice, and then marks the correct option, in his opinion, in the provided answer form.

There are a total of 15 questions in this section, with four questions having two answer options and the rest having three answer options.

Those. the chance of giving the correct answer even by accidentally crossing out one of the answer options is 37%.

But, nevertheless, this particular section was considered the most difficult to pass and obviously a failure. Why?

It’s all very simple – you can’t teach someone to understand speech in another language in two months; this is only accessible to those with an ear for music and excellent memory. Very often, students who take this exam complain specifically about the hören section. Allegedly, the sound quality is poor and this is what prevents speech from being understood well. But the reason is completely different - lack of practice. Your brain is not yet accustomed to German speech and any interference prevents it from correctly understanding the information in it.

Therefore, this particular section was classified as secondary in training. But still, he was given enough attention. However, work here was carried out approximately from the end of the first month, because Before this period, the student did not have a sufficient vocabulary.

As soon as the vocabulary appeared, classes began on the following practice:

The teacher reads the phrases slowly, 10 phrases for each lesson.
The student gives a translation.
Each subsequent lesson, the speed of pronouncing phrases increases, new phrases are added to the new lesson, but some old phrases are left. It turns out to be a hodgepodge in which the student receives old, learned information along with new information.
For independent work, the student listened to test dialogues from Goethe’s website, which were offered as examples for the A1 exam.
As additional homework, the student listened to educational videos I selected from Youtube with subtitles. (Example below)

Section Lesen (Reading)

In this section, during the exam, the student is given a text and certain statements that need to be marked as true or false.

Here we needed to memorize words.

The program for Android was very useful - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.forteamwork.dfc.a1

This program is a set of flash cards with words that you need to know specifically to pass the Start A1 exam. About 1300 words.

The learning plan was as follows:

First week – we learn 20 words every day. Naturally, fewer words remain in memory, but we do not reduce the intensity.
Second week – we learn 18 words every day. Then every next week we lower the daily plan by two words.
In the sixth week we reach the target of ten words a day and this level is maintained until the exam itself.

Ideally, the student should have learned about 900 words, the real result is about 600-650 words. Which, theoretically, should have been enough to pass the exam.

Additionally, the student used the program I proposed for memorizing words Anki (http://ankisrs.net/)

This program is available for both phones/tablets on the Android operating system, and for iOS (Iphone/Ipad), and even for PCs.

The program is convenient because it allows you to create individual dictionaries for each student and monitor their progress (via the online portal - https://ankiweb.net/)

When studying, I paid special attention to learning basic, root words.

Those. do not immediately learn long words, for example the word - Sehenswürdigkeit (landmark), but be able to break it down into separate components and teach them first of all.

sehen - to see

würdig – worthy

Example No. 2. Bahnhof – train station

Bahn (road) + Hof (yard)

Additional tasks for this module are texts from Hueber Verlag textbooks with a gradual increase in text complexity.

This section was quite easy and it was here that one could gain much-needed points. It’s a completely banal cram and getting at least 17 points out of 25 is quite possible.

Letter (Schreiben)

In this section, the student is given the task of writing a letter on a given topic.

In preparation for this section, much attention was paid to typical phrases that are used in a business letter - greetings, farewells, apologies, thanks. Again we cram, teach, memorize.

For the sake of simplicity, it was decided not to use articles in writing in cases where the student is not sure of their correctness.

As an additional task, the student rewrote simple test letters in order to develop a beautiful handwriting, which may be useful for the exam, on the one hand, and on the other hand, allows you to unload your brain for a while, freeing it from cramming. In addition, some students have better visual memory, and writing words down with a pen often helps them remember the word better.

Please note that in tasks on Lesen you may come across letters. This is a ready-made template for your own letter on Schreiben! Just change the phrase a little and voila!

Interview (Sprechen)

Also quite interesting and good section. What's good about it?

a) The previous three sections are assessed based on the answers on the answer sheet. It looks like this:

All your personal qualities, appearance, behavior, etc. are of no importance. You put a cross on the correct answer and then the computer quickly, automatically and ruthlessly determines the correct and incorrect answers.

b) The Sprechen section is conducted by a living person, who determines the level of your knowledge. In the vast majority of cases, teachers do not set out to fail you and, with a small number of mistakes, they can give you those points that are so necessary for obtaining a certificate. Unlike Hören, if you don't understand something, you can ask again (Wie, bitte? Wiederholen Sie bitte noch einmal). The teachers speak slower than the announcer, and also you will speak with other students and their speed/pronunciation is much easier to understand.

c) A significant part of the interview is a brief summary of your biography - profession, hobby, personal life. All this can be prepared in advance, memorized and spoken with feeling, sense, placement and good pronunciation. This is elementary and the funny thing is that few people do it. My student performed the longest pre-learned text; all the other participants, apparently, were hoping for an impromptu performance.

d) In addition, cards with a specific topic are given. Here's an example. Topics usually rarely change, and standard phrases are also suitable here that will help you say a few words on virtually any topic.

Preparation for the Goethe Start deutsch 1 exam – general information

Grammar

Only basic knowledge of pronouns and their inflections and verb inflections were given.

Irregular verbs are only the most common ones.

Times – Präsens, Präteritum, Perfect And Future I. All other times were not considered due to lack of time. By the way, in the exam itself, other tenses are essentially not used.

Basic knowledge of reflexive verbs and verbs with a separable prefix is given.

Case declension is basic; almost no adjective declension was considered.

Pronunciation

From the very beginning, emphasis was placed on correct pronunciation, especially of letters with umlauts, diphthongs, long vowels, and words ending in –er.

For control, simple texts were used, which the student read aloud.

A standard answer sheet was printed and the student was given two test versions to ensure that she was completing it correctly.

Contact coordinates.

Like other languages, German also has levels. Which are assessed by a single European system.

Assessed: listening comprehension, reading, speaking and writing. In fact, all simple language knowledge is assessed in 3 levels with two sub-levels: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.

Now let's look at each of the steps in more detail.

All levels of German:

First stage level A1 where everyone who has just started learning German is located, i.e. This survival rate

Assumes that you have limited knowledge of the German language. You already know a small number of initial words and understand very simple or partially understand simple phrases in slow speech. You can ask your interlocutor simple questions: Where are you from? Where do you work? etc. When reading the text in German, it remains incomprehensible to you. You can recognize in the text only a few familiar words that you have learned before.

Level A2:

Assumes that you already have the basic concepts. You understand what is being said in simple individual phrases. Find out frequently used words in statements. You can already tell about yourself, talk about popular topics such as shopping, work. You already understand short texts in German and can write simple short messages.

Level B1:

You already know what most TV current affairs programs are about. Speak in simple and coherent language on topics that are familiar to you. You can briefly explain your life goals and views. You can write simple texts on topics that are familiar to you.

Level B2:

You understand the content of most TV series and films. All news and reports about current
events. You can communicate fluently with native speakers. While reading, you understand articles and messages as well as modern fiction.

Level C1:

Very good knowledge of German. You understand all television programs and films almost fluently. You will be able to express yourself spontaneously without searching for the right words. You understand large complex non-fiction and fiction texts. You can present complex problems in detail in reports, letters, and essays.

Level C2:

Your knowledge is at the level of native German speakers.