Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

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Biofacticity
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Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby Biofacticity » Tue Oct 04, 2022 1:09 am

I know this has been asked maybe dozens of times already in one form or another and maybe this section is not good for this question, and most of the knowledgeable people on these forums have responded already to these type of questions. But I will be more specific here hopefully...

I really want to avoid talking about my personal situation I have found myself in, and even just writing this I worry that most will try to comment or ask further questions about this irrelevant thing or look for other solutions... so I will take a hypothetical situation....

-Let's say a guy's future depended on whether he if he could get B1 certificated by 16th January 2023, he has been slacking for the whole year and didn't go past the basics (about 700-1000 words according to Anki, can't construct any, but basic sentences or phrases, comprehension a bit higher though), that's a little over three months.

-He cannot attend physical class with teacher because of time lost for traveling.

-He has at least 4 hours a day for study available, more on weekends when he is not working.

-and potentially a budget of about 200-300 USD (or euros since they are almost the same now) to spend on study materials and other resources for the purpose of achieving this goal. (graded readers, course books, apps, italki lessons for the speaking part of the test)

-Access to internet, and no problem with German-English materials even if English is not his native language.

-At work he is in an environment where German is the predominant language used (don't know if this helps at all actually, maybe for making some vocabulary sticking better or simply by immersing in the sounds and grammatical patterns there might be a possibility of learning by osmosis, but given the short duration for the goal required I don't know if this changes anything, just thought I should mention it.)

Now my question is what is the best course of action to achieve this goal. Please be specific as possible, it would help me, the guy in this hypothetical situation greatly.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby DaveAgain » Tue Oct 04, 2022 6:28 am

    1. Try to use German at work at every opportunity.
    2. Deutsche Welle offer a number of courses, calibrated on the A1, B1 scale. Pick one, start today.
    3. If you have access to the Goethe eLibrary, they have lots of graded readers, course eBooks etc.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby BeaP » Tue Oct 04, 2022 8:25 am

Sorry if I'm repeating myself, I've said this a lot of times already, but I firmly believe that the quickest and easiest way to a CEFR certificate (like the Goethe) is a CEFR coursebook. CEFR exams contain very specific topics, situations and text types. If you have so little time, you need to focus on your goal and only learn the things that might come up in the exam. Look at some sample pages, pick whichever book you like. If you can't decide whether or not a book is aligned with the CEFR, ask in this thread. There are two crucial criteria: you need a key with the solutions, you need a lot of audio with good dialogues. My favourite coursebook is Aussichten from Klett, but it's mostly a personal choice. Try to finish the books in 3 months (90 days). One month for one level is difficult but realistic in my opinion. If you work hard and don't spread yourself too thin you'll make it.

Important: For B1 you don't need additional resources, the CEFR coursebook is enough. Believe me. At the exam you'll see the same situations, the same topics. Extra grammar workbooks, YouTube videos, applications can be more time-consuming than one would imagine. You need focus. Imagine it this way: if you learn everything in these 3 books, you'll pass with flying colours. If you remember a little more than half of the material, you'll probably pass. It's an exam, just like any other, the exam material is fixed and known. If you find it hard to work with a monolingual resource, try to find a CEFR coursebook that has a supplement or version for English speakers. But I think it's usually not necessary, as you can look up things on the internet. Use a good bilingual dictionary like wordreference, copy longer things (like grammar explanations) in DeepL. Even if you use a digital version of the book, regularly write down the answers to practice problems by hand.

Plan in advance how much time you have for one unit. If something happens and you can spend less time on studying, just read and try to understand the unit, don't do the exercises and move on. You'll come back to the exercises later when you have time. You need to reach the end of the third book by the planned date. Listen to the dialogues of these books all the time. Really, as much as you can, until you know them by heart. Whenever it's possible, concentrate. Don't just play the audio in the background. Try to recite the dialogues, go through them mentally under the shower or while doing housework. If you make a bilingual wordlist, ask a native speaker to record the German words for you as a list. When you listen to them, mentally check if you know what these words mean. If you don't remember a word, look it up on your written list. Highlight the most difficult words that you don't manage to remember even after several rounds. Look through the highlighted words every 3-4 days. I don't recommend bilingual and visual SRS because of the time constraint.

Buy at least one book with practice exams. I recommend the Mit Erfolg series from Klett. In the last 2 weeks concentrate on exam techniques and if possible have some lessons with a tutor who is an active examiner. Don't choose a non-examiner tutor just because it's cheaper. Your tutor needs to know the details of scoring, the typical mistakes in preparation and performance. Ask the tutor to concentrate on the speaking and writing part. You can prepare for the other two alone. Go through the exam mentally, do the mock exams with a stopwatch. Try to mimic the exam situation, don't do the listening with headphones if you won't have them at the exam. Draw conclusions: what are your weak points, where you you lose a lot of time. Tell them to your tutor and ask for practical advice. The key of the success is familiarity with the exam: you should never be surprised, you should never hesitate about what to do. Good luck and if you feel stuck come back and ask.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby snoopy » Tue Oct 04, 2022 12:21 pm

I wrote what I would do in such a situation. Some of the points are not directly language study related but I believe are still important
  • Check the available exam appointments & the times the exam centre takes to issue the certificate. You wouldn’t want to pass the exam but get the certificate way too late. Note that there are holidays at the end of December and the beginning of January. Note that some Goethe Institute offices prepare certificates in 1 week while others take 4. This will give you your actual deadline.
  • Make a backup plan for what you will do if you either not pass or don’t get the certificate on time. This will help you to be slightly less stressed during the exam
  • Decide which test you will be preparing for as they have different formats (exam centre format + digital or paper form) – and choose the tutor and the materials accordingly
  • What I personally would do in such a situation – loan some money or talk my employer into paying for my lessons to get regular online tuition during the whole process. If it’s something very important, and you don’t have a lot of experience of learning languages on your own, and you had problems with motivation in the past – it will ease things greatly both in terms of structuring the learning process & in terms of motivation.
  • Ways to save some money – check if your local library has relevant textbooks (they probably do). Tutors also often provide the materials in digital form. For myself, I would get an extra budget & buy the books to write in them, but that’s a personal choice and preference. It might also be possible to find an experienced tutor in your native language who would be cheaper than a German native speaker. But they need to have exam preparation experience. Overall, I’d work with a tutor during the whole process, just plan more sessions closer to the exam.
  • After deciding on the budget & checking the library, I’d roughly calculate how many lessons with a tutor I can afford and have a check-in lesson to see where I stand at A1. I’d agree with a tutor that they will mostly be checking my speaking & writing, answering my questions, and preparing study materials & homework with a focus on the exam.
  • I’d set up a schedule for learning – as BeaP wrote above. Note that chapters in A1 books are often much shorter than in B1. So I’d plan less time for A1 chapters than for B1 and would check with the tutor how much of A1 I actually need to do – if you already kind of know most of it, there is no need to learn it perfectly. You’d also need to filter out exercises and details that you don’t really need – it’s often easier to have a tutor do this.
  • I’d also take as much vacation as possible before the exam and have one day off per week to avoid burnout. I’d probably not plan 4 hours per day for active studying during the workweek – if you have a full-time job that is not realistic. I’d schedule both entertainment and rest activities unrelated to learning German & some lighter activities that would advance me in German while not being very intellectually demanding
  • About extra materials – it’s a personal thing. I agree with BeaP that CERF coursebooks are enough. At the same time, I know that sometimes I just can’t see a textbook anymore but wouldn’t mind listening to a podcast during my commute etc. For this case, Deutsche Welle courses and podcasts could be good, but I’d schedule them as a ‘lighter’ part of learning, something to do after finishing the textbook plan for the day. Other helpful things for German would be Coffee Break German podcast, Easy German Youtube channel etc.
Good luck!
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Tue Oct 04, 2022 5:53 pm

Based on my experiences with studying for bar exams or training for marathons while working full-time, this is a “try easier” situation, not a “try harder” situation. By that I mean, you need to find a sustainable rhythm and avoid burnout. Don’t give 110%. You can’t keep that up for three months. Make a calendar. Figure out how much you need to do each day to reach your goal. Do that each day, and then be *done* for the day. I would design my calendars on my computer then print them out so I could have the satisfaction of physically drawing a big fat red X on each completed day. Ideally you should have a day off each week. Don’t worry, your brain will still be processing German that day! Rest is part of any good training regime! If you can, take the week before the exam off of work for your final studying push. But even then, don’t overdo it. You need fuel in the tank for the exam. Eat well, sleep well, you are asking a lot of your body during this endeavor too.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby Spaceman » Wed Oct 05, 2022 6:44 pm

To add on to Lawyer&Mom's excellent advice, I've taken a lot of professional exams in my life, and my routine was always to take the week off before the exam and travel somewhere new to study and take the exam. This both took me away from my day-to-day distractions and provided me with new and invigorating distractions. I particularly found it useful to camp out (though not the couple of days immediately before, sleep is too important then) and do some light hiking as a complementary activity to studying.

The day before the exam should be very close to complete rest, except for 20 minutes or so of reviewing the key points (e.g. memorized phrases demonstrating knowledge of a grammatical point you don't actually understand). A hot bath before bedtime always works wonders for me when I'm stressed and nervous. I'm a huge advocate of caffeine as a performance enhancing drug, but I wouldn't advocate you mess with it much unless you have specific experience with over consuming it for similar settings.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby Iversen » Wed Oct 05, 2022 7:41 pm

The thing I don't like about study plans is that they make studying a very regulated chore. OK, if you want to have an overview over the grammar of a language then looking at the morphology section of a small language guide first isn't a bad idea - it will make it easier to understand what a more thorough grammar is trying to tell you (or what your textbook tries to serve to you one drop after the other). And if you want to speak or write a language you have to get through everything, though not necessarily to the extent that one might expect from a budding linguist - some things are more important than others. But some of the most efficient learning happens when you try to solve a concrete problem, like for instance which endings to use with "beide" with or without a substantive (I had to refresh that myself recently). Then check your grammar and invent a Google search to give you a lot of examples where you can see the rules being applied (or not).

Other areas in learning German are hard to learn from a book, like the gender of nouns. There are some rules of thumb, and then there are lists in fullisize grammars with exceptions which you can try to learn, but ultimately the main thing is to be attentive to noun genders whenever you read something or listen. So by all means make a study plan, but reserve some time outside the fixed schedules to follow hunches and to do totally random things.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby Amandine » Wed Oct 05, 2022 9:32 pm

There are two things: learning a language and passing an exam and the advice is different for the two. My advice is aimed at passing an exam only (and with the aim of passing not getting a stellar mark). I don't know German but I did the French DELF B1 in May so have some experience based on that. I assume you are talking about the Goethe-Zertifikat B1? It doesn't look too different from the DELF so the advice should apply. Although according to what I googled you need 60% to pass, not the 50% the French let you skate by with. Dang Germans.

I won't repeat good advice others have given - especially getting a textbook specifically for this exam so you are familiar as possible with the format.

1) You might be freaking out about the writing part which is indeed the hardest part normally for a learner. However, in an exam its actually the easiest to "game" and pick up easy points. I got 24/25 in writing in my exam and that is mainly due to the fact I learnt by heart large chunks of a couple of model answers for the most likely types of questions and adapted them to the specific question I got. Only about half of what I wrote came directly from this but knowing I had a strong structure I could bang out gave me a lot of confidence.

2) Do look at the rubric of how they mark the exam and give them what they want. For the French, at least half the points in the active skills speaking/writing came from things that had nothing to do with grammar and vocab. Using the right level of formality, showing you understand the question, using the right format for an essay/email/letter, staying within the word limit etc. If it asks you to describe your experience and give advice to a friend, do both parts, "describing experience" and "giving advice" - even if you do it badly you'll still pick up a point or two for following the instructions.

3) I found YouTube very helpful - there were a lot of videos which take you step by step through the French exam and I assume there will be for German too.

Depending on the peculiarities of the German exam there are probably other such tips and tricks, so find out what they are.

I would devote about half your time to general language learning strategies to get your vocab and passive comprehension up and the rest to strategies for squeezing as many marks as possible out of the exam.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby luke » Wed Oct 05, 2022 11:01 pm

Amandine wrote:I learnt by heart large chunks of a couple of model answers for the most likely types of questions and adapted them to the specific question I got.

Lots of great advice. That particular bit is quite clever.
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Re: Which study plan would you use if you had to get B1 certificate in German in 104 days?

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Thu Oct 06, 2022 1:11 am

Iversen wrote:The thing I don't like about study plans is that they make studying a very regulated chore.


When you have 90 days to pass a B1 exam a very regulated chore is exactly what you need. A textbook will give you variety. It’s not just staring at a grammar chart. I’m all for rabbit holes and randomness. I’m seven years into French, following my own whims, having fun, learning a lot but in a very uneven way. It’s a great method. Unless you have 90 days to pass a B1 exam!
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