I passed the Goethe Zertifikat B1! Some thoughts and tips on what worked (and what didn't).
Twelve months ago, I decided to start self-learning German with the aim of taking an official language exam at some stage. I hadn't studied German in five years and had forgotten most of what I had learned in high school.
Three weeks ago, I took the Goethe Zertifikat B1 and passed with an average grade of 93.5%!
I was really happy with my results, especially considering that I didn't have much feedback from native speakers and had to do most of the work on my own. Although there's still a lot for me to learn and improve on moving forward, I figured some of you guys might benefit from my experiences of preparing for and taking the test. I'll break it down section by section.
Lesen: 97/100
Since I spent so much time learning on my own, I spent a lot of time - probably too much, in fact - reading textbooks and other German material. As a result, I felt that Lesen was one of the easier sections to prepare for. Sometimes, though, it was difficult to find material that was "just right" for my level. A lot of learning material I found was too easy, while a lot of novels were too hard. (To my A2/B1 self, newspapers were completely incomprehensible!) I tried reading Michael Ende's "Momo", but struggled on a lot of very specific words that were beyond B1. At the moment I'm reading "Emil und die Detektive", which is a fair bit easier and was probably the right level all along. In the end, I think I made do by reading as many texts from various B1-level textbooks as possible, although graded novels or similar would have been nice. (Suggestions for early B2-level texts are always welcome!)
The reading exam itself was pretty straight-forward, although there were always tricky questions designed to make sure that you're awake and thinking. There was one question in particular where the three options they gave were all okay, but none of them were great... I picked what I thought was the best option, but that was probably the one where I lost that mark. Also keep in mind that they do expect you to recognize some higher-level grammatical concepts in texts - I spotted both Konjunktiv I ("sei") and some present participles in my reading exam.
Hören: 77/100
Hören was always difficult for me, so I knew from the start that Hören would be the hardest part of the exam. I mostly practiced by watching YouTube videos and listening to the radio and the occasional podcast. Even then, though, good podcasts that were interesting and easy to understand were hard to come by, and at times I had to turn the radio off since the news was just so depressing! Above all, I found that listening practice is only really effective if you're actively thinking about what's being said and whether you understand it, rather than passively listening to something in the background while you're doing something else.
The listening exam was hard, not just for me but for the other people taking the exam as well. There was one text in particular where they had two girls chatting, and they sounded so similar that it was hard to work out who was who... and by the time I figured it out, I had already had to guess three or four questions. They only played the text once, too, so that was a bummer. :/ The rest of the part was okay, some curve-balls here and there, but nothing else too dreadful. (Keep in mind that in every Goethe B1 listening exam, including the practice exams, there's always "that one guy" who speaks Hochdeutsch with a really strong Swiss accent that you've got to decipher. Thankfully, in my exam he only turned up in a two-mark question at the beginning, which was fairly straightforward.)
Schreiben: 100/100
Schreiben was kind of difficult to practice, since I had little to no opportunity to get feedback from any native speakers. The best I could do was do practice questions and mark myself really strictly at the end. My aim was to write while being pretty much 100% confident that what I had written was correct. To get practice, I used the Goethe practice exams and a book called "Fit fürs Zertifikat Deutsch B1", which by the way is actually a FANTASTIC book for pretty much all the sections. Seriously, I probably would have failed the exam without that book.
In the exam, I probably had a bit too much fun with the writing... I think I have a tendency to get carried away in my thoughts, and start writing very freely and spontaneously but without thinking about whether my writing is correct or not. As a result, I was very surprised that I got full marks in this section. I would advise anyone doing the exam to not do what I did, and be very cautious - only write something if you're absolutely sure it's correct. Not sure whether that reflexive pronoun takes dative or accusative? If you can't work it out, think of another way to say the same thing, or try saying something else. Also make sure you proofread and check for silly errors (e.g. writing "das" instead of "dass").
It's also extremely helpful to have a bunch of phrases that you can use and adapt for specific questions. For example, in responding to the opinion piece in Teil 2, I always wrote something like "Ich bin mit ......s Meinung (nicht) einverstanden" at the very start, so the examiner knew straight away what my opinion was. For Teil 3, I had a bunch of prepared reasons why I couldn't attend some event, such as "Meine Mutter ist plötzlich krank geworden und ich muss sie im Krankenhaus besuchen", or similar. Same idea for Teil 1. "Lieber ......, schade, dass du nicht zu meiner Party hast kommen können..."
Sprechen: 100/100
I was equally surprised by my speaking result, especially since I had had virtually no speaking practice with a native speaker before the exam! (I did spend a couple of days with a German friend of mine where we agreed to speak only German to each other, but that was it.) Like Schreiben however, preparation was key. I practiced as many practice examples from the Goethe and "Fit fürs Zertifikat" as I could, and even made up some of my own examples for lecture topics (Teil 2 of the speaking exam). Again, I found it very useful to have a few expressions prepared ahead of time which I could use and/or tweak if needed.
The Speaking exam itself was okay - kinda fun, actually. There was a moment at the beginning where I had a blank and stuttered for a few seconds, but then picked it up again and everything was fine. (Just for the record, I do that in English sometimes as well when I have to give a presentation!) Again, I found myself speaking without thinking at times (e.g. using "sodass" when I probably should have used "damit" or "um ... zu"), and again I recommend that you don't do this - like Schreiben, it's better to say something simple and correct than to try something complex and get it wrong. That said though, I was very pleased with my speaking result :)
Some resources
Just to finish up, I thought I'd add a quick summary of the resources I used in my self-study:
Goethe practice exams - These are very useful and will help you get used to the format of the exam. Make sure you do all of them - both the "Erwachsene" and the "Jugendliche" versions, if you can.
Fit fürs Zertifikat B1 - Get a (current!) copy of this book. Seriously, do it. It's immensely useful and has a lot of practice exercises for all the parts of the exam.
Memrise/Anki - Vocabulary was the real foundation of my language learning. I had learned a lot of the grammar concepts back at school, which came back fairly quickly thankfully and only needed a little review. Once your basic vocabulary's up to scratch and roughly B1 level, I would highly recommend going through the official list of Goethe Zertifikat B1 words and making sure you know every single one of them. Even if you never have to use "das Portemonnaie" ever again in your life, it might turn up in the exam so you need to know it.
Rocketbeans.tv - These guys are fantastic. They're mainly a gaming channel, but they also do podcasts, talkshows, gameshows, and so on. Plenty of listening resources that I actually found engaging and fun! In fact, the only reason why I knew what "aufbewahren" meant in the reading exam was because I came across it while binge-watching Pokemon Let's Plays on RBTV. (Again though, make sure you're actively listening and checking you understand everything - I wish I'd done more of that when watching RBTV.)
Deutsche Welle - Some of the stuff here is okay, but I never found anything here that really stood out as fantastic for me. I did spend some time doing their "Deutsch Interaktiv" course, but some of the topics were a bit dry and they included some weird vocabulary that I've hardly seen since - "vorbeugen", "das Verdauungssystem", "der Behördengang", usw. They even did a part on words beginning with the letter Q... In the end, I just moved on to some other resources that were a bit more motivating.
Textbooks - I didn't use a single textbook, but rather a whole bunch of them, mostly for vocab. Studio 21 actually looked decent when I glossed over it not long before the exam - it covered some interesting topics and had a useful assortment of reading texts and grammar practice. I also used some vocab lists from Optimal B1 and Schritte International 5-6. Optimal was okay, but I didn't find it quite as thorough or as interesting as Studio 21 in the end.
At the moment I've kinda started on B2... I got myself a copy of Aspekte Neu B2 which I'm steadily working through. As someone who's just finished B1, B2 seems like such a long way away. But I'll get there, eventually :) Hopefully this was useful to some of you, and if you're taking the Goethe B1 exam in the near future, good luck!