Resources for German A1 Exam Preparation

March 26, 2020

On 06 March 2020, I took German A1 examination at Goethe Institute Singapore. One week later I received the result and I am very pleased. My overall score was 95 out of 100 which falls under ‘sehr gut’ (very good) grade.

Resources

These are some resources that helped me tremendously:

  • Textbook (Studio D A1) — thanks to my girlfriend, Dhyana, who gave me this book. Really helped me to practice a lot! Without this book, I would not be able to get a good grasp of German grammar. This book is important to me as I can focus on preparing the vocabulary and concepts that will be tested on the A1 exam.
  • Coffee Break German — the best podcast to learn German in my opinion. It starts the season 1 with simple German grammar concepts and in season 3, the hosts discuss a longer, more advanced text. I have tried to look for other German podcasts but so far it is the best that I can find. The advantage of a podcast is that I can listen to it almost everywhere, anytime: while travelling to work or even cooking.
  • Duolingo — it is a great app to build your vocabulary. However, the vocabulary contained in it might not be specific to A1 level. Given the limited time I had, I wanted to focus on the core vocabulary list for A1 level. So nearing the exam period, I stopped using the app and just focus on A1 exam material.
  • German.net — here I practiced my reading comprehension further. I wrote down almost all the short articles that I read and annotate each word.
  • YouTube — Easy German, Nicos Weg and German with Anja.
  • Goethe A1 German word list — nearing the exam, I spent a lot of time memorizing this word list.

Fortunately, my girlfriend is also learning German. She helped me to rehearse the speaking section of the exam. It significantly helped me during the exam as I could formulate appropriate questions/answers more quickly on the spot.

Exam Format

Some would say this is the most important part of the preparation and I would totally agree.

In order to do any exam well, we need to know the requirements of the exam. Luckily, Goethe Institute provides some sample exam questions for free!

I paid close attention to the requirements of each section and learn from the sample answers.

Hope the resources above can be beneficial to you.

If you want to learn German by joining a German class, that is even better. You will learn from experts who know how to score in the exam really well. One downside of learning German or other language on your own is that you may miss certain requirements in the exam.

Good luck and have fun learning German!