Here's my story of learning German starting in 1969, up until taking the exam in June of 2016. If you want to read about how I passed the Italian C2 exam without going to Italy, the page for that story is here. Here's my story about starting to learn French at 61.
You can read my comparison of the two tests here. I explain why I found the Italian test more rigorous.
Like every language I’ve learned, I had no real reason to learn German. I am not of German descent, no one in my family speaks German (or any second language, for that matter), I had no contact with German people or culture, and I really didn’t know much about the country. However, I was a World War II history buff as a young boy, and used to watch many movies about the war. In addition, I lived on a military base as a child, so I was exposed to the military at a young age.
When I got to seventh grade, I had the choice among French, Spanish, or German. Without hesitation, I picked German.
I took to German immediately. I found it very easy, and lots of fun. It was instantly my favorite subject, one in which I received top grades every year. I can still remember the first two sentences I learned in class:
Wohin geht Peter? An den See.
Wo ist Monika? Im Boot.
That was in 1969 and I was 12 years old. It’s funny how those sentences stay in your head. I wish they all would stick that easily after so many years!
For the next six years I took the regular classes in German. Nothing in particular stands out from that time. They were just normal classes you’d find in any typical school. I don’t remember studying hard, or struggling to learn vocabulary, for example. I’m sure we had homework and tests, but nothing that left a lasting impression on me. I suppose that’s because the pace of learning was rather slow. We used paper books and pencils. We listened to vinyl records of Germans speaking. No computers, flash cards, software, or telephones.
One thing I do remember from that time is the students who were of German decent did not put in a lot of effort into learning German. Of course, my sample size is very small, so you cannot extrapolate to a larger group from my experiences. I just found it odd that students of German heritage were not as interested in learning German as I was. They seemed to take the class because they had to, and not because they wanted to learn the language.
Because German was my favorite subject in school, I decided to study German as my major in college.
When I was in high school, I wanted to go to Middlebury College because somehow I had heard about their language program. As far as I can recall, I applied and was accepted, but I never actually visited the campus. For reasons that are lost to the sands of time, I wound up going to another school. That school will remain nameless for this report because I will have a future story about learning Japanese that is less flattering, and I want to avoid anyone feeling bad. For that reason I will just call it college.
While at college, there were two departments for German: the first was a language department, and the second was for literature. In the Modern Languages department, we spoke German in class. In the literature department, we spoke English in class, and all our assignments were written in English.
College was the first time I met an actual German. Yes, for the first six years of study, I was never in the same room with a native speaker. Still, most professors were Americans.
As it turns out, without realizing it, I wound up getting a degree in German literature, although I don’t like literature at all. Years later, as we were preparing to move to Japan, I threw out all my old German literature books. Some of you may remember those little yellow Reclam books. I had a bunch of them. I glanced through a few, and acknowledged that I never liked reading that material, so I’m amazed I studied it. I chuckled at all the words I hadn’t known in the past and had written the English translation in the margins. You can see how far you’ve come when you look at your old notes or textbooks. Things that used to be difficult are now easy.
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There are two stories I tell about my time at college. The first is about taking an upper level class on Friedrich Schiller. I was the only undergraduate student in the class. Before the first assignment was due, one of the grad students told me, “Don’t worry, this professor never gives a grade lower than a B.” The grade on my first paper was B minus minus, which I suppose means a C+.
The second story is during that class I felt I was in over my head. I heard the grad students say things like, “In Act I, Scene II, we first see the theme of death appear. The second time this theme appears is in Act II, Scene IV.” I thought to myself, “Wow! I did not get that at all. I don’t understand what is going on here.”
You see, I thought I was in a German class, because the reading list was all German titles. I was reading these plays in German. And it was old German to boot, not modern German. I thought to myself, I can’t keep up if I continue to read the German versions of these plays, so I will go to library and check out the English versions of the material, and finally understand what’s going on. Lo and behold, all the English versions had been checked out of the library. As luck would have it, I worked at the library, so I was able to see who had checked out these books. To no one’s surprise, the grad students had checked out the English books. I thought they were a bunch of cheaters. Of course, I was going to do the same thing. They were just faster than I was.
Only years later did it occur to me that my approach to the class was so different from theirs because for them it was a literature class, while I thought it was a German class. Yet our discussions were in English. All our assignments were written in English. So I guess they weren’t cheating, but they also weren’t reading any German.
The consequence of reading all these old plays in German was that my workload was much higher than it needed to be. However, I wonder why the professor made the reading list in German instead of English if this was truly a literature class.
Even though I went to a large school (over 14,000 undergraduate students currently), I was the only student with a German major. There were other students who were taking German classes as part of their language requirement, and there were probably a dozen or more graduate students working on Masters or PhD’s, but I cannot recall a single other undergraduate German major. The German department was small, perhaps 10 professors, so if there had been another German major, I would have met him or her. Not only that, I do not recall anyone a year or two ahead of me, or behind me. It was just me, as far as I know.
The German classes I attended were very small, usually about a half dozen or so. In one class, there were just two of us, so we met in the professor’s office. I can tell you, that is a lot of pressure, because you know every second question will be directed at you, so you better have read the material! There’s no way to hide in the back of the room and hope you’re not called on when you’re sitting 3 feet from the professor. If you cut class, the professor will know immediately, so you have to show up every time. Even worse, this was an early class (9:05 a.m. is very early for college students :)). It’s hard to be lucid that early in the morning.
In this part of the college, we also had small groups (maybe six) who were learning German. Those classes were always in German only. We read books, and had discussions, all in German. We had to subscribe to the German newspaper “Die Zeit.” If you have ever read that newspaper, you’ll know it’s quite advanced. I would generally read that newspaper with my Cassell’s dictionary in one hand.
In general, I enjoyed the classes in the modern language department a lot. As it turns out, I only had three, that's right, three classes that were conducted in German at my US university. Seems odd to me that a person could get a degree in a foreign language with only three classes held in that language.
If you study German, you want to go to Germany! It had been my intention all along to spend my junior year abroad. My school offered a fellowship to study at the University of Heidelberg, so I applied for that fellowship. I didn’t get it. I started to make plans to go to Heidelberg on my own when, by some stroke of good fortune, I received the fellowship. I don’t know if the original recipient dropped out, or they found more money for a second fellowship, or what happened, but I was thrilled.
The significant thing about studying abroad was I no longer had to pay tuition for my college, which was quite expensive, and which I was paying for with student loans. My tuition in Heidelberg was something like $18/semester and my stipend was perhaps $400 a month. This was doubly good: no tuition for a year, and money to spend in Europe. What a deal!
By the way, that system is no longer in place. Now students who go abroad for a year still have to pay tuition to the college, and the prices today are insane. I lucked out.
There was a visiting German professor from Paderborn at my university. He and his family were returning in the summer, and they invited me to stay with them for a few weeks before I went to Heidelberg. This was a great help. I had three weeks of full immersion to prepare myself for the entrance exam in Heidelberg. The family had two young boys, F. and C., who were nine and seven years old. It gave me the chance to activate all that passive vocabulary swirling around inside my head for the previous eight years.
The boys were my first private tutors. I highly recommend having kids teach you a language in the beginning. They gave me lots of instruction on how normal Germans speak, instead of how Schiller used to write. They were happy to have an older brother to play with all day long. I was less self-conscious trying to speak with them, and they didn’t seem to mind or notice my mistakes, because they finally had a new toy to play with. F. was the person to show me how to use that famous German toilet brush. I asked them many questions, and they never seemed to grow tired of answering them, unlike adults.
Their mother was an English teacher in a local school. She took me with her to class so I could meet German students. I went to the young ones, and she introduced me to the group. I got a big round of applause, which was fun. She asked me to sing “Old McDonald Had a Farm” with the class. I stood up in front and started to sing: “Old McDonald had a farm…” The room was silent as a tomb. When I got to the refrain, they all yelled “E-I-E-I-O.” When I started singing the next line, they were dead silent again. So all they yelled out was “E-I-E-I-O,” and I sang the rest of the song alone. At the end I received another rousing round of applause.
I went to her English class with the higher level students and I was amazed to see they were reading Shakespeare in English. That’s very tough material for a high school student in America, and here were German high school students trying to do the same thing. I spent time with some of these students outside of class, so I was able to have new tutors who were just a few years younger than I.
Only recently did it occur to me that both the mother and father spoke fluent English. I could’ve asked them anything I didn’t understand, but I never did. They never spoke any English to me either, which was good. After all, I was there to learn German, not to speak English. I was so highly motivated and intent on speaking German that it did not occur to me to use English.
I phoned the older son and the mother a few weeks ago to thank them for their generosity and to tell them how much they'd helped me. I hadn’t spoken to either for over 30 years. Frau P. told me she had assisted many students like me over the years. Only a few stayed with her family, but she had helped place over 100 students with others. We need more people like her.
I did not bring a camera with me to Germany, so I have no pictures of that year, except for those given to me by others. However, I did bring an electronic metronome I had built myself (from a design in a book by Craig Anderton) and wedged into a small cardboard box. I did not have a guitar until five months after I arrived, but I had a metronome.
Soon after I arrived in Heidelberg, I had to take a language test. I don’t remember much about the test except I had to write an essay. I don’t recall if there was an oral section or not, or if there was a listening test. Regardless, I did well enough to enroll in regular classes, instead of going to the Studienkolleg.
The classes at the regular university were boring and dry. I took a class called “The Papacy in the 13th Century,” for example. Only too late did I discover the German as a foreign language department (Institut für Deutsch als Fremdsprachenphilologie – IDF), where I should have taken most classes. I took only one class there on idiomatic expressions. I really enjoyed that class; the teacher was great. I still remember things he taught us almost 40 years later. In my view, it would have been better to skip the regular university classes and just go with the IDF.
Since I was there just for a year, I would not be taking any exams. I had to get a “Schein” for every class I participated in to prove to my college in the U.S. that I had actually taken these classes. To get a certificate I generally did an oral exam with the professor in his office.
I lived in a high-rise dormitory. My roommate was a guy who spent most of his time watching a black & white TV on his desk, with his face about 7 inches from the screen. He seemed to drink beer non-stop and smoked cigarettes he rolled himself. Once he got tanked up, he would pontificate to me about things he thought should be different. I cannot recall him ever reading textbooks or doing homework. I lived with him for one semester, then I got a single room.
I met a lot of colorful characters in that dorm, people from many different countries. Few seemed to be studious. I remember one German guy who was studying medicine. He rarely came out of his room. I assume he was studying. Or maybe he was just watching TV and drinking beer.
Because this was a German dorm, we had a beer vending machine in the lobby. No soda, juice, water, or snacks; just beer. It cost 80 Pfennige for a half liter of Hoepfner beer in glass bottles (about 34 US cents back then). There was a run on that machine every night.
When I arrived in Germany, I did not call my parents. My father called the family I was staying with after a few days to see if I was still alive. It never occurred to me to let them know I had actually made it to Europe.
I did not talk to my parents again until Christmas; the next time after that was in June. There was a phone on each floor of our dorm, but I never gave my parents the number, because I didn’t want them to call me. I wanted to be independent and make it on my own, with no help from anyone. At the time, calling the United States from Germany cost about $12 a minute, in today’s dollars. We corresponded mostly through aerograms, which were very light sheets of paper you folded together and mailed. They were cheaper than a regular letter.
My U.S. college did not arrange any accommodations or support for me in Germany. I received a letter from Heidelberg University (in bureaucratic German) saying I had been accepted, but my school in the United States did zero to help me. As far as they were concerned, I was no longer part of the university for that year.
When I flew to Germany, I had no place to live. I went to Heidelberg the first week I was in Germany and somehow I managed to find the office that rented out dorm rooms, and applied for a room. A week before classes started, I found out I had a room. In retrospect, it’s a miracle I received a room, because students used to apply a year in advance to get a dorm room. I can only assume they reserved a certain number of rooms for foreign students like me.
There was no faculty or student advisor to help me find my way around the university in Heidelberg. I had to do it all on my own, in German. There was no department where you could go and ask someone for information. There was the central administration, but they just handled things like registration.
Of all the teachers I’ve ever had for German, only one was a woman, a professor in America. I never saw a single female professor at Heidelberg University. This is in contrast to Japanese, where I’ve never had a male teacher.
Before I left the U.S., I traded an acoustic guitar for a manual German typewriter. After all, I used to type all my assignments in the U.S., so I assumed I would do the same thing in Germany. You might know that the keys on a German typewriter are different, and they have different characters, so I could not use an American typewriter (or so I thought). The typewriter I received was old and very heavy. Once I got to Germany, I discovered the students wrote their assignments longhand and did not type them.
I went to all that trouble and effort to get a typewriter to Germany I didn’t need. It was a great lesson in assumptions. No one told me to bring a typewriter to Germany, and I didn’t ask if I needed one. It never occurred to me that I could buy a typewriter in Germany, should the need arise. I wound up with a great boat anchor.
The first few months in Heidelberg were pretty tough for me. I had a lot of trouble adjusting to a new culture. I was doing it on my own, with no support. That was my decision, and probably not the smartest thing to do. In early December 1977, I met the woman who later became my wife. It’s hard to understate the impact of that event. Meeting her certainly changed the course of my life forever. She is still changing my life today.
For one thing, it guaranteed that I would continue to speak German for as long as we are both alive. When we first met, her English was not as good as my German, so we immediately spoke German to each other, and still do. No matter where we have lived, we always spoke German to each other. That helped both of us retain our German skills.
After all, conversation is the ultimate form of active recall, much better than flash cards: you never know what the next sentence will be, and you have to recall words and use grammar in real time. The combinations change constantly. Reading and listening are passive. You won't retain as much with passive activities.
Many times I have heard the complaint that when a student is trying to learn German, the Germans will immediately switch to English once you have the slightest difficulty expressing yourself. This has never happened to me in more than 16 years living in Germany. I’d like to think that’s because my German is so good, but it could not have been that good when I arrived.
Actually, I’ve had the opposite experience: when I asked Germans to speak English with me they almost always refuse.
I assumed that Germans would switch to English with foreigners because they wanted to show how good their English is. One German explained it to me a different way: he said Germans just want to be helpful, so when they notice someone is struggling with their language, they switch to English to make it easier for him to communicate.
In general, I have received nothing but admiration and goodwill from Germans for having learned their language. It seems they are flattered and pleased someone would go through the trouble to learn to speak their language well, particularly when they believe German to be a difficult language to master (Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache). Many times they give my wife the credit for having taught me so well. This gets my dander up, and she likes working it, just to tweak me. I usually rush to add that I knew German before I met her. I’m not sure people believe me though. (I was told to put in the following by my editor: P. will tell others I knew German before we met when she is in “bragging” mode.)
Germans seem to really enjoy it when I attempt to speak their dialect. I suppose it sounds like a little kid saying something cute. No, they don’t expect me to pronounce it correctly, so it sounds funny for a non local to try to use their language. It always gets a laugh.
Surprise! Not every German is fluent in English. As a matter of fact, I would say perhaps a handful of the Germans I have met are truly fluent in English, or any other foreign language. I am excluding those who are married to native English speakers, or who need to use English professionally. I’m talking about your run-of-the-mill German.
The level of English Germans speak is highly correlated to their education level. A university professor or medical doctor is far more likely to speak English then a cashier at the supermarket. Most Germans I have met over the years know a few sentences of English and perhaps some French, but they could not discuss American politics or another complicated subject in English. When I read statements such as, “All Europeans speak three languages,” I know the writer is speaking about a very small, select, highly educated subgroup of the general population.
I guarantee you the average construction worker in Germany does not speak three languages fluently. He probably doesn’t even speak High German correctly, just a dialect. Remember, most Europeans do not go to university.
Once I met my future wife, I decided to stay in Germany. I went back to the U.S. for one summer to complete my degree, then I returned to Heidelberg. I worked for the U.S. Army for the next eight years. Along the way, we got married. We moved to the U.S. for about a year and a half, then back to Germany. We stayed another seven years before we moved to Japan. That will be another story. From Japan we moved to California, where we lived for the next 20 years.
When I lived in Germany, I spoke mostly English at work, and German outside of work. Most of our friends were German, and we were involved in scuba clubs, so I had plenty of opportunities to practice and improve my German. No one in my German family speaks English, so more practice for me.
During World War II, my father was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. He flew missions over Germany. My father-in-law was an antiaircraft gunner in the German army. My dad got a big kick out of telling people this story. Yes, they did meet, and got along just fine. They were born the same year. Sometimes I think if their paths had crossed under less pleasant circumstances, I would not exist.
My father-in-law spent time in an American prisoner of war camp. Despite some terrible experiences, he did not hate America or Americans. I gave him high marks for that. He was always great to me. He even let me use his beer glass, something his daughter was never allowed to do. I tell her it’s a guy thing.
As the years went by, there were a number of changes in our families. P.’s father died, her sister died, and her mother had to go to a senior home. We would visit every year to check up on her mom, but there’s only so much you can do in a few weeks visit. In 2015, we decided to move back to Germany so P. could take better care of her mother. For the last 15 years I was self-employed, and we spent nearly 2 years trying to sell the business. That finally happened in March 2016. We moved to Germany shortly thereafter.
I noticed after moving back to Germany this time that my German skills are rusty. You would expect to them to be rusty after a 21 year absence, but remember, I was speaking German every day all those years. In the last decade or so, I’ve spent several weeks in Germany every year, so it’s not as if I had no contact with the language. Still, a few weeks a year is not the same thing as living in a country. I did not read or write much German over the years.
I had a few months to get back up to speed before I took the test on June 10, 2016.
To understand the next sections, you need to be familiar with the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) standards, which were developed in the 90s to form a language skill measurement system for schools and employers. There are six levels of language competency:
I never heard of these classifications until 2013, when I walked into a bookstore in Germany and saw them printed on the spines of some Italian books. However, it seems these classifications have become the de-facto standard for measuring language ability worldwide.
From what I’ve read, it appears you would need the C2 cert to study without any restrictions at a German university. That seems excessive to me. If I am not mistaken, in many countries, B2 is sufficient.
Even though these certificates don’t expire, I have read that some employers or universities in Germany want a cert that is no older than two years. Wow! I’d hate to have to go through the process every two years!
As part of my registration process in Germany, I had to go to the Office for Foreigners to apply for a green card (Aufenthaltstitel). Before we went there, they sent us a letter with a list of documents we needed. One request was for proof of German language skills. I had no test results to show, but we thought if we showed them my college transcript (Studienbuch) from Heidelberg University, that should be enough.
When we got there, the woman was quite surprised at my German skills. She was used to speaking English to Syrians, often with the help of a translator. It was unexpected for her to have someone with whom she could have a normal conversation. She said to me, “Your German is very good.” I gave her my standard reply: “Thank you. So is yours.” Gets a laugh every time.
We showed her my transcript and she made the lemon face. She told me that to become a German citizen or to get a German residency permit, a person needs B1 language skills. I could hardly believe it when she told me that I might have to take the B1 test, but I probably wouldn’t have to take German classes! What? German classes? I could not believe she was saying that with a straight face. She went to check with some colleagues about what to do about me, since it was obvious I could speak German, but had no documentation to prove it. For those of you who have ever dealt with German bureaucracy, you know how much they like to have an official-looking piece of paper with a stamp on it. By the time we left, it was obvious that she wanted something to put in my file, but she did NOT tell me I had to take a test.
I thought about it later, and realized it would be easier for all concerned if I could provide her with a certificate of German language skills. Yes, I could’ve taken the B1 test and be done with it. What fun would that be? I realized that if I decided to work or study or take some classes at the local university, having a C2 certificate would be an advantage. In the past, I had toyed with the idea of taking the C2 test for fun, but I didn’t think it would be this soon.
I did not know I would need some kind of certificate for my green card, because if I had, I could have taken the test in Los Angeles a year or two ago. Since moving to Germany, we have a lot of other things to do, like finding a place to live, so I was not really thrilled about having to study for a test again. On the other hand, I figured the sooner I get it over with, the sooner I can concentrate on other things.
I searched online to find out where and when the test was offered near me. It turns out that the VHS in Saarbrücken offers the test. I called them on the phone to ask for more information. The conversation went something like this:
Guy: Why do you want to take the C2 test?
Me: I went to the Office for Foreigners, and they suggested I might need a German language certificate, so I decided if I’m going to take a test, I might as well aim high.
Guy: I would strongly advise you against doing that (dringendst davon abraten). This is not just some test where you can waltz in, sit down, and pass.
Me: I do have some experience taking a similar test. I took the Italian C2 test.
Guy: You cannot possibly compare the Italian test to the German test (in a scoffing tone of voice). A German high school graduate (Abiturient) would have trouble passing this test. It costs a lot of money too. You should not take this test. You should try some practice tests online, and then decide what you want to do.
My first reaction was to get into a huff, and think to myself, “Doesn’t he know who I am? How dare he talk to me that way!” After I calmed down, I thought about it some more. I think I understand what he was trying to say, in his charming German way. He had probably seen many people attempt the test and many fail. He might have been trying to prevent me from being penniless, frustrated, and discouraged. Anyway, I did what he suggested: I tried some sample tests on the Goethe.de website. I gave P. a few of the questions to try, and she agreed that the material was not easy. However, I did not have any trouble with the sample C2 test, so I was pretty sure I would pass the real deal.
This test is not exactly an intelligence test, but it is a test of your education level. You have to be familiar with a lot of current events or higher-level material to be able to pass the test. I know many Germans who would struggle with the essay writing part of this test. They would have no trouble with the oral part or the listening test, but there are people with less education who would have trouble with the reading section as well.
Nonetheless, I found it odd that he would say these things to me. After all, we were having a discussion at normal speed in German on the telephone. That takes a high level of verbal skills, so he should not have just immediately said to me, “Don’t do it.” The other odd thing was he didn’t ask me about my education or background, or how long I’ve been in Germany, or anything to help him determine my skill level. No, he immediately said I shouldn’t take the test.
For me, having someone tell me I shouldn’t do something is great motivation. Rather than being discouraged, this actually fired me up even more. Inadvertently, he had helped motivate me to take the test. I’ll prove he’s wrong!
The other aspect that surprised me was this guy was in the office that is tasked with providing training and promoting the German language among foreigners in Germany. I found it exceptionally odd that a man working in that capacity would discourage a student who wanted to try the test. This is contrary to my experience with many other language professionals over the decades. Invariably, they are super-encouraging, positive, people who have a strong can-do attitude with their students. I was not expecting someone who had a job like that to throw cold water on my plans.
I ordered test prep books, and started with daily practice to prepare for the test.
Every day I would transcribe newscasts from Euronews. They have short video clips with transcripts, so you can verify your work. I’m a big fan of transcriptions. First, it’s a good way to practice writing, then be able to verify the results. Second, it gives you practice listening to fast spoken text to see if your comprehension is up to par. Third, you might learn new words along the way. I would transcribe half a page or so, maybe 30 or 40 seconds, of newscast every day.
I started on one of the most difficult books of grammar questions I’ve ever tried. I probably got 95% of the answers wrong. The book was far more difficult than the test itself. Maybe this is the way the test used to be, before they dumbed it down. Here are some sample sentences. Replace the words in italics with the words in parentheses:
These are sentences you will rarely, if ever, hear in a normal conversation. And no, I’m not going to give you the answers!
One challenge when using these types of books is they typically give you just one possible solution. However, there are frequently many ways to express the same idea. I would verify some of my answers with P., and she told me that my answer was grammatically correct. However, it was not the answer in the book. I worked through over 120 pages of this book. I found it very frustrating, and would not recommend it to others. This book really put a damper on my enthusiasm. As it turns out, on the actual test, there are multiple possible correct solutions to the grammar questions, so they are not as strict in real life as they were in this test prep book.
I had two other books with a few sample tests per book. I wanted to save them until the last week before the test, so they would be fresh in my mind when I went to the actual test.
I wrote essays almost every day, and P. corrected them. I can tell you, we spent a lot of time verifying grammar online, because even she could not remember some specific grammar rules. After all, it had been over 40 years since either of us had studied German grammar in school. If you don’t use them frequently, you will forget the finer points. We used Duden online to answer questions.
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In the last two weeks, I would do oral presentations standing in front of P. The first two times, she could not stop giggling. She also had difficulty coming up with questions to ask me about the material, which is why they provide the questions to the examiners in the real test. Nonetheless, the more presentations I did, the less she giggled. In every case, I would start my digital stopwatch when I began speaking so I could quickly glance down and see when I reached five minutes.
I bought a copy of the news magazine “Der Spiegel,” which I read aloud. I did this to help practice pronouncing words that were not part of my daily vocabulary. I read every article in the magazine, just to refresh my memory about topics I had not read about for many years.
I have to say, I lost my enthusiasm for test preparation as the weeks went by. Maybe it was just everything else that was going on at the same time, or maybe because I really wasn’t worried about passing the test, but I found myself less enthusiastic about the whole process than I had been when I prepared for the Italian test. I did not maintain the same intensity for the last month. I wouldn’t say I goofed off, but I did not obsess about practicing for the test.
To reduce my workload, I stopped adding new flash cards in Italian & WaniKani (online kanji flash cards), and stopped all other Japanese and assorted flash card decks a week before the exam. I still studied Italian and kanji every day, but added no new cards.
I increased the number of essays I wrote, and I did at least one oral presentation every day with P. She grew tired of all these additional duties.
This is when I did all the practice tests from the test prep books. I did the listening tests, wrote the essays, and did presentations in front of P. Some days I would write two essays. Just like a marathon, the concept here is to peak just prior to the time when you need to perform a skill. This is the same thing I did with the Italian test.
Because I have driven into Saarbrücken in the morning and gotten stuck in traffic, I decided to take the train to the test site. The train is much more relaxing than driving. I wanted to make sure that everything would go smoothly, so two days before the test, I did a test run. I took the exact same train I was planning to take the day of the exam. I then timed how long it would take me to walk from the train station to the test center. I went inside and took a look at the rooms so I would have a mental image of where I would be during the test.
This was probably all unnecessary, but I wanted to give myself every advantage. The goal here was to minimize stress and eliminate surprises on exam day.
In the announcement for the test, it stated the test starts at 9 a.m., but we should arrive 15 minutes earlier to complete our registration. This made me chuckle. Why didn’t they just write, “Please show up at 8:45”?
On this particular day, there were just two groups to be tested: A1 and C2. There seemed to be about 10 or 15 people for the A1 test, and four of us for the C2 test. This was good news and bad news. The good news is, I avoided having to pay the additional €40 test fee for groups of fewer than four participants. The bad news is I had to wait longer to do my oral test.
Besides me, there was a 49-year-old Dutch guy, a 44-year-old Russian woman, and a 42-year-old French woman. The proctor collected our phones and put them in a box. We did not get them back until the test was over. We all had to produce IDs to verify our identities. We received a number of answer sheets, which we had to fill out with our name and date of birth. It seems nothing in Germany works without your date of birth. We received scratch paper, which we had to return before we left the room.
The proctor read us the test instructions. The room was pretty hot and stuffy, so she opened up the window. Unfortunately, there was a construction site directly below that window, and the noise was bad, so she quickly closed the window again. This made the room rather uncomfortable.
The first module is the reading test. This is 80 minutes long. The first assignment is to read a two-page text and then answer 10 multiple-choice questions about the text. Unlike the Italians, the Germans give you an example sentence to show you how to respond to the questions. In my case, the first text was about online universities. This is supposed to take 25 minutes. There are four possible answers to each of the 10 questions.
At the start of each section, I started my digital wristwatch timer, so I could keep track of how much time I had left for each assignment. This is something I also did during the Italian exam. Every time I started my stopwatch, the proctor shot me a suspicious glance, to make sure I wasn’t cheating.
You have 20 minutes for the second assignment. Here you have eight statements that must be inserted into a roughly two-page text in the appropriate order. There is a paragraph, followed by a blank space, then another paragraph. You have to insert six answers into the correct spaces. Two answers are incorrect.
About this point in the test, the proctor gave me a ballpoint pen to fill out my answer sheet. The instructions state you must use a blue or black ballpoint pen. I was using a fountain pen. In fact, I had checked in advance, and the instructions say you cannot use a pencil. I’m pretty sure fountain pens were not included in the instructions because virtually no one uses one nowadays. At the first break I asked her why I could not use a fountain pen. She told me the rules state it must be a ballpoint pen. I pointed out that fountain pens also use ink, so I could not erase my answers, which was the purpose of the “no pencil” rule. She would not budge.
Since she took away the chance to use my favorite pen, the one I had been practicing with, (BTW, fountain pens are much smoother to write with than ballpoint pens), during our first 15 minute break I went out to the shopping street, and found a stationery store. I bought a smooth-writing rollerball pen to use for the rest of the test. It still wasn’t a ballpoint pen, but I was sure the proctor wouldn’t know the difference.
I was not surprised that the proctor challenged me on the fountain pen, because I know how Germans think about rules. As a backup, I actually had a true ballpoint pen in my backpack, but I did not want to use it, because it’s harder to write with. My fountain pen is also thicker than a regular pen, which makes it more comfortable for me to hold. Here's a picture:
The third reading assignment is similar to the second, in that you have a text that is about a page or so in length, and you have to insert paragraphs in the correct order. Again you have eight paragraphs, but two of them are incorrect. There is a text with a paragraph, then a blank space in which you have to insert the correct paragraph, and then a new paragraph. In my case the text was about a person buying a home in East Berlin. This section takes 25 minutes.
Assignments two and three are very similar. The difference is in #2, you have to insert sentences into the text, while in #3 you have to insert paragraphs.
For the fourth assignment, which takes 10 minutes, you receive four detailed job ads. There are eight statements, and you have to assign the correct ad to each statement. For example, they’ll be a statement such as, “This job has a salary.” You have to read the four announcements to see which one fits. Of course, there is no line that says, “Your salary is X.” That would be too easy! There will be something like, “Positions in this organization will be remunerated.”
My score on this module was 76, which was my lowest score. Passing is 60.
We had a 15 minute break after the reading test.
The total time for this module was 35 minutes. There are three assignments. The first assignment is 10 minutes long. You hear the text only one time. The good news here, in contrast to the Italians, is that they gave us two minutes to read the questions before the audio started. During that time, I went through the statements and underlined key words such as, “always,” “never,” “everyone,” and so forth. These are the words that can trip you up when you’re answering the questions on the fly. There were five short audio tracks played on a boom box, and each of them had three questions, to which we had to respond yes or no. You have to answer the questions while you’re listening to the text, because there is no pause between the audio tracks.
The second listening test is five minutes long. This section is a dialogue between a man and a woman. You hear the text once. There are six statements. You have to decide if the opinions expressed in the audio were those of the man, the woman, or both, on the fly. It’s pretty tricky. One person will say something like, “Chocolate is great.” The second person will say, “That’s what my mother used to say. We used to eat chocolate all the time.” Now, did the second person agree with the first person or not? Well she didn’t disagree, but she didn’t say, “I agree.” She said, “My mother used to say...” You have to decide immediately if she has the same opinion or not.
The third part of the listening test is 20 minutes long. Unlike the other two sections, we heard this track twice. It was about 10 minutes long. Once again we had two minutes to review the ten questions before we heard the text. Another advantage on this section: there were only three possible answers to each question.
At the end of the module you had two minutes to transfer your answers from the test booklet to the official answer sheet.
My score on this module was 93.
By this time I had a splitting headache, which I almost never get. During the second 15 minute break, I went to a pharmacy to buy aspirin. I’m pretty sure my headache came from the stifling conditions in the test room.
When I came back from the second break, the proctor informed me that I could use my fountain pen after all. She had verified that the instructions do say only “no pencil.” That was good, because I wanted that pen for the next module.
This module was 80 minutes long. First, there were 20 minutes for the grammar section. This appears to be an area where the test was dumbed down in recent years. There is a text with statements that you have to rewrite using a word they give you. For example, you might have a sentence that says something like this: “The man who wore the black hat was a dancer.” You will then see the word “worn” and you’ll have to rewrite the sentence using that word.
Part two was writing a 350 word essay within an hour. There were two topics to choose from, plus two books you could write a report about. These books are listed on the website in advance; you read them before the test. You don’t know exactly what the test assignment will entail, but at least you know it’s going to be about that book. Your assignment might be to describe how the author’s childhood affected his views of marriage as he grew older. I decided not to read either book, because I thought it would put me at a disadvantage. I would have to recall the author’s words in the test room. There would likely be a right and wrong answer. I would have to buy and read one or two books – more work. On the other hand, the normal essay subjects would just be something I could write about without having any prior knowledge, or where there’s a correct answer.
The downside of my system is you only have the choice from two themes for your essay, instead of three, or possibly four, if you read both books. In my case, both topics were pretty uninteresting for me, so I picked the least unpleasant of the two, which was about early childhood education.
When I did this section during the Italian test, I wrote the essay twice: once on scratch paper, and once on the answer sheets. As I wrote here, that was hard, and I almost ran out of time. When I had practiced at home doing the same thing with German, I ran into the same problem. Therefore, I jotted down a few notes, then wrote my essay. I counted all the words to make sure I got close to 350. I think the final tally was 340. I used up almost all the time again. Strange how much longer in takes on the real test than in practice.
If I ever do a test like this again, I will double space my essay. There were enough answer sheets, and it gives you the opportunity to make major corrections when reviewing your work. As it was, I had to cram changes into the margins or the lines above.
I noticed the Russian woman was writing furiously the whole time, up until the end, when the proctor said to her, “You have to stop right now and give me your answer sheet.” She must’ve written a very long essay.
This is the only module scored in Munich, which is why it takes a few weeks to receive your results. All other modules are scored where you take the test.
My score on this module was 80.
The last module was the speaking test. Unfortunately for me, I was third in line, which meant that I had to wait over an hour to begin. The proctor told me to come back at 2 p.m., so I went for a walk through Saarbrücken. I arrived back in time, but they were still not ready for me, so I had to wait twenty minutes longer.
Finally, it was my turn to prepare for the oral test. You have 15 minutes to do so. There are two sections: first, a monologue, during which you have to speak for five minutes on one of two topics. After the monologue, there is another five minute discussion with the examiner, for a total of ten minutes. I was happy to see one of the topics was, “Do people need to spend more time doing nothing?” As a person who recently stopped working, this was right up my alley.
The second part of the oral exam is a five minute discussion on one of two topics with a pro and contra position. You have to pick which topic, and which position, you want to defend. Once again, I was thrilled to see a custom-made topic for me: is it good that English is the de facto standard language in scientific literature. I took the pro position.
I did not need the full 15 minutes to prepare my thoughts on these topics since they were so easy. As I was sitting alone in the room with the proctor, I decided it would be a better use of my time if I warmed up my speaking skills, so I started to chat with her. We had small talk for about five minutes or so about the local area. That was more useful than going over my notes once more.
At long last the door opened, & I entered the second room where two examiners were waiting. One was the man who asked me all the questions and was my conversation partner. The second was a woman who was the observer. Even though P. had told me many times to slow down and to speak clearly during our practice sessions, I realized after the fact that I did neither during the test. I talked way too fast and I probably used a lot of slang and colloquial expressions when speaking with examiners.
I did not stand up to speak nor did I start my digital stopwatch before I started speaking. The situation did not lend itself to that plan. I did not look at my notes once.
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Something curious: as part of the oral exam, there is a two minute introduction, during which the examiner asks you a few questions, wants to know how long you’ve been in Germany, why you’re learning German, etc. In the instructions it states this period will not be used as part of your evaluation. That’s impossible. As soon as you enter the room, the examiners start evaluating you. The male examiner was a music fan and we spent a minute chatting about the Rolling Stones and New York City, so I quickly felt at ease.
During my monologue about needing more free time in life, I rambled on about working too hard in America, always being connected to the Internet, etc. He asked me a few questions, we chatted some more, then it was time to discuss the second topic.
At this point, I could tell the male examiner had already made up his mind about my skills. He seemed to be in a hurry to finish my session. He correctly guessed which topic I would pick, and which position I would defend, so we launched right into discussing English as the language of science. We spoke pretty quickly, and of course I contradicted him and refuted his point, which was written down for him as part of the test procedure. In other words, he did not have to create discussion points for the test; they already had been provided to him.
Another interesting aspect to the German system: as soon I left the room, the two examiners decided on my score. This is a great advantage compared to the Italian system. Why? Because the two people in the room are going to be swayed by non-verbal cues like body language, your confidence, whether you’re smiling, nodding your head, etc., all things I tried to do. Because there’s no record of what I said, they were left to go by their impressions. If you talk fast enough, they might miss some of your mistakes. In contrast, the Italians recorded my oral presentation, then sent it to Siena for evaluation. That person could rewind and listen to my presentation three times to hear exactly what I said. There would be no body language, no smiling, or any other non-aural information to help the evaluator judge my speaking skills. It was strictly my recorded words.
When I received my certificate, I was surprised to see I had received a perfect score on the speaking section. I didn’t think Germans gave perfect scores for anything!
After the test, I spent the next eight hours mentally going over what I should have or could have said in that session. I had trouble sleeping the night after (not before!) the exam because I kept reviewing the oral presentation in my mind. I was still thinking about it the next morning when I woke up. I did the same thing when I took the Italian test. I don’t know why that is, since the test was over & there’s nothing I could do about it, and the examiners had already decided on my score within two minutes after I finished.
When we wrapped up, I got my phone from the box, and left. By that time it was 2:45. I had been at the test center for six hours.
By mistake, a letter for a neighbor landed in our mailbox. P. went to put the letter in his mailbox. Because his mailbox was rather full, she moved some mail around to make room for the letter we had received. By pure coincidence, she happened to notice the return address on an envelope sticking out the top. It was from the VHS.
My certificate was in there. It seems it had been sticking out of the mailbox for several days. I assume the neighbor would have eventually brought it to our house, but P. found the certificate by accident. It’s a good thing. The Germans are very particular about replacing the certificates, and of course, it costs money. In the accompanying letter they say to only give out copies and not let the original out of your hands.
P. gave me the envelope, and I opened it. As is typical, she was more excited about the results than I. My first reaction was, “What? Only 76 on the reading module?” She immediately read me the riot act and said, “Look, you got 100 on the speaking section!” Yeah, but only 76 on the reading. Much to my chagrin, this is actually a lower score than I got on the Italian test (80%) for the reading module. There is no way my Italian reading skills are better than my German. I attribute the difference to the tricky German test. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. :) (On second thought, it occurred to me that I have been reading Italian daily for almost four years, but I haven’t read a lot of German in decades, so perhaps my Italian reading is better.)
Maybe because it’s the second time I’ve gone through this, or maybe because I was just tired from all the stress of the last few months, but I did not have the same sense of elation or accomplishment at seeing my results from the German test as I did from the Italian test. But I still took my certificate to a shop to be framed.
Another reason is the Italian test was a goal I worked on diligently for eight months or so. The German test, on the other hand, was something I just threw into my busy schedule because it was available. I did not stress so much about passing this test, because my German skills are much greater.
 German Language Level C2 Certificate.png)
My father died in February. Four days later I tore the meniscus in my left knee. I have been in constant pain ever since. I haven’t been running or working out. This has caused me to become somewhat grumpy, and to have a short fuse. In addition to all the stress from selling the business, packing, and moving 6,000 miles, then trying to reestablish ourselves in a different country, I’ve been dealing with the knee pain. I’m sure this did not help me prepare for this test, because I was not motivated to study.
The Germans do things differently than the Italians (who would guess?). In Germany, if you pass all four modules on the same day, you get a certificate like mine. If you pass three and fail one, you get four pieces of paper: three certificates for the modules you pass, and a letter of participation for the one you fail. You can repeat any failed module, but you will not get one certificate for all four modules: you will have four certificates, all of which are valid. That means there’s really no time limit on when you have to complete all four modules. In Italian, you get one certificate for all five modules if you pass them all within one year (that would be three attempts). You only have to repeat the modules you fail. Otherwise, you have to start over. So the Italians are stricter about this than the Germans!
Another odd tidbit: only the B1 and C2 tests have individual modules. A1, A2, B2, and C1 have complete tests only. Each B1 module costs €50; each C2 module costs €75. The complete B1 test is €130 and the complete C2 test is €220.
It seems that like the Italians, Germans think statistics on these tests should be a state secret. The most complete stats I could find were for 2014.
In that year, about 387,000 Goethe-Institut tests were taken. This is not the same as the number of people, because one person could take a test multiple times or take multiple tests. There were about 95,000 A1 tests (25% of the total), 29,000 B2 (8%), 11,000 C1 (3%) tests and 9,000 C2 modules (2.3%) taken. The Goethe-Institut does not publish stats on how many people passed these tests or how many individuals these numbers represent.
The country with the most tests taken was Greece (48,500 tests), followed by India (38,200), Italy (33,900), Cameroon (13,000), Turkey (11,800), Morocco (11,700), Vietnam (8,500), and Korea (7,800 tests taken). There was no number for the United States separately, but there were just under 6,000 tests taken in all of North America in 2014. This is the lowest number of all continents and sub-continents. As you would expect, Europe had the highest number of tests taken.
In 2015, over 435,000 tests were taken worldwide. Of those, around 10,000 were C2 modules. There can be up to 4 modules per test. The Goethe-Institut wrote me that 74% of people who took their test prep course passed the test. Sounds like marketing for the Institut. They would not tell me how many people took their course.
I noticed that my performance on the tests was not as good as it is in daily life. Even though I didn’t have a lot riding on the outcome of the test, I still wanted to do well and get good scores. I found I tended to second-guess my answers. When I did the practice tests, I would breeze through the answers without thinking twice about whether or not they were correct. The same thing with the essays: I would scribble something down in 10 minutes or so, not overthinking every line. Yes, I did make more mistakes that way, but it was not stressful.
During the test, a different part of my brain seemed to spring into action. My concentration was at 100%. I found it hard to finish the assignments within the allotted time because I kept checking and second-guessing whether my answers were correct. I suppose you call this “pressure.”
This leads me to the conclusion that these tests probably are a very good indication of a person’s language skills. It’s possible some people will do better on the test than in real life, but I would guess that that percentage is very small, let’s say 5%. I think most people have some kind of jitters or anxiety before such a test, particularly if there is much at stake. For example, what if someone needed this exam for admission to a university or to get a job? That person would have greater pressure to do well. In my experience, you cannot “fake” your way through these tests. You have to be well prepared. For that reason, if a person does pass one of these proficiency tests, I would rate that as a more valuable piece of information than speaking to him or her casually.
When I did the practice exams my scores were usually in the 90% range, and it would take me just a fraction of the allotted time to complete them. Why could I not maintain that same calm and ease during the actual exam? I don’t have an answer. As I wrote, I’m sure many other people do the same.
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I’ve experienced similar things playing guitar. There are songs that I can play flawlessly when sitting alone in a room. It’s much more difficult to play flawlessly when there is a crowd in front of you with distractions, noises, movements, things that increase your cognitive load, as it’s called. The same is true with a language proficiency test. It’s a stressful situation, so doing well under pressure means you’d probably do even better in lower pressure situations.
When people self -rate themselves at a certain level of proficiency according to the European standards, I am disinclined to believe them (Dunning-Kruger effect). Particularly Americans I have met have a tendency to vastly overrate their foreign language abilities. I have met many who say, “I am fluent in X,” but they only know a few sentences. Likewise, if I were to self-test on a sample language proficiency test online in the comfort of my home with no pressure, it seems likely to me that a person could easily overestimate his abilities, because it’s only a practice test.
I wonder how many people will go through the trouble or expense to take such a test. It is not easy or fast. You might have to travel a great distance to take the test. It might be financially difficult to do so. You might have no compelling reason to take the test, as was the case for me when I took the Italian test. Still, I am a greater fan of these tests now than I was a few years ago, when I didn’t even know they existed.
It’s true that there’s a skill or art to taking tests, and some people are better at this than others. For me, it’s fun, a challenge, something to measure myself against (although this was less true for the German test. I just wanted it to be over.). As I wrote, the fact that there was no pressing reason for me to need a good outcome meant I could be more relaxed about the process than others, yet even I felt some pressure. I can imagine that some people might have weeks of sleepless nights, or panic & anxiety attacks before such an exam (P. is one of them.). If you struggle before the exam, it strengthens my argument: if you can overcome your fears and pass such an exam, it means you are probably even better in everyday life. Hence, the exam is a good measure of skills.
You can read about my path to taking the Italian C2 test here.
You can read my comparison of the two tests here. I explain why I found the Italian test more rigorous.
Here's my story about starting to learn French at 61.