Cavesa wrote:I totally agree about academic background being important. In my DALF C2 (my German is really low now, but I hope to get to the C levels one day), I was so grateful for having a good general education and having "remade it" in French. It solved the whole "what should I write/say about this issue?" and left me more brain power just for thinking of "how to write it". It gave me the vocabulary (never underestimate sci-fi btw), and it gave me the overall idea of how to argument for or against the issue at hand.
Exactly! The more life experience one can draw on, the better. It's neat that even sci-fi helped you with the DALF C2
Cavesa wrote:I would be very interested in your heaps of postmortem stuff! Do you have experience with the B2 exam too?
Sure! I passed the Goethe-Zertifikat B1, B2, C1, and C2 exams. I did the B exams on a whim, registering right beforehand, just because I was curious about where I stood, and so I actually didn't formally prepare for them and was scarcely acquainted with the format beforehand. That would be my first piece of advice: Know the format like the back of your hand and practice every piece of B2-Zertifikat material you can get your hands on.
But I doubt most people are as foolhardy as I was in that respect. Specifics in addition to that:
* To do well on the grammar-correction sections, one not only has to have a firm grasp on the grammar, but also a keen eye for mistakes, naturally. I would've prepared better for this by reading more real-life internet forums in German on random topics where the writing is more casual and errors abound -- video game forums, health questions, complaints about a particular electronic product -- and interrogating myself about the authors' mistakes. Why is this wrong? What would I have done? (e.g., there should have been a comma before the author started this Nebensatz; this preposition takes the Dativ, not the Akkusativ)
* The bit where you have to listen to a conversation and note important details can certainly throw you for a loop if you don't feel so comfortable with listening comp. I would have prepared more for this by listening to German news radio and noting rapidly the "who, what, when, where, why" of a story as it is reported. They'll speak more quickly on the radio than on the exam CD, so it's a good sort of overachiever practice. It's important to train the ability to pick out the details rapidly and accurately.
* When it comes to the oral presentation sections: First, Redemittel are important. Get used to practicing and prefacing your statements with the things all the test books provide, like, "Ginge es nach mir, ..." Have two or three that you can fall back on without batting an eyelash, both to express agreement as well as to object or to turn the conversation in another direction. Also, don't forget that the activities for this section ask you to address your partner, not the exam proctors.
Time and time again during class or during the exam, I watched my interlocutor as he/she completely forgot that I existed and turned toward the two proctors to present his/her topic to them, when in fact the task was to present the topic to the other test-taker. Of course, this happened totally due to nerves on the part of my partners. So, master your nerves enough to ignore the proctors completely and pretend like you're just having a nice chat with your partner!
* As for the writing, one of my teachers told us that one of the most common mistakes in writing at the B-level is wanting to show off, mixing registers, and therefore producing something rather awkward and unidiomatic. He told us to avoid trying to sound fancy just to show that we had learned a verb like "erörtern" the previous week, and instead to write very simply, very clearly, but also very correctly. Conjunctions and connectors are really important. The letter/Stellungnahme/etc. doesn't have to contain million-dollar words, but it should have a couple of appropriately deployed Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen. It's most important that what is used be used accurately and with confidence. True of any level, of course.
That's what comes to mind off the top of my head. If you have more specific questions, I'm happy to oblige
I hope one day to sit the DALF C2 in French as well, though that's a long way off... you and Prohairesis are good inspirations there!