Autor: feischi

I passed the ÖSD Deutsch als Fremdsprache Niveau C1 in June this year with a score of 90, which gave me the rating of “Sehr Gut Bestanden”–the highest rating one could get in the exam. This is an excellent result for anybody who wants to learn the language and to settle down in a German speaking country.

This is the 5th and likely the last post of my blog series on German learning. This post is dedicated to the preparation for the C1 exam. You can find the previous posts here:

• Zero to B1: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (1) — From Zero to B1
• B2: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (2) — B2
• C1: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (3) — C1
• ÖSD C1 exam format: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (4) – Anatomy of the ÖSD C1 Exam

Although this post is focused on ÖSD C1, I am sure the methods in this post are also useful for other German exams. If you are not familiar with the ÖSD C1 yet, I suggest that you read my previous post on the structure of the exam.

(For those who prefer TL;DR, there will be a set of takeaway messages at the end of each post.)

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After finishing all the homework in the C1 book and before registering to the exam, I simulated the Goethe C1 exam at the end of the book. It didn’t strike me as particularly difficult but I think I could at best just pass the exam with a low grade. Then in January this year, before I really started preparing for the ÖSD exam, I did the official mock exam from ÖSD with time controlled. It was a disaster. I didn’t know it could be so difficult. The time was extremely tight for writing. And I was totally lost in the speaking part, which I simulated with my teacher.

Planning and material collection

I discussed with my teacher about how much time I would need for preparation. I could register to the exam at the end of March, which would leave me with 2 months of preparation time, but my teacher advised me to take the exam at the beginning of June. She helped me to clarify one thing: although C1 certificate sounds good, it should not be my primary goal. I don’t need C1 certificate. My goal should be to further improve my language skills rather than to rush to pass an exam that doesn’t serve any practical purpose for me. She suggested the methods, which I summarize in this post. Since the reading and listening parts didn’t bother me much, the focus was on writing and speaking, with strengthening of vocabulary. She also promised that with the intensity of the exam preparation I would further improve my German significantly.

As ÖSD C1 is not Goethe or other popular exams based in Germany, exercise materials are scarce. But my teacher emphasized on repetition and iterative improvement, which means I should try to get the most of every mock exam by repeating the same exercise many times. Judging by my exam result, this approach worked extremely well.

In total I have collected 6 mock exams:

• Four from the ÖSD C1 book
• The Modellprüfung from the ÖSD C1 für Jugend
• One from Klett

Writing

With every mock exam it went like this. I set aside a Saturday morning to simulate one writing exam, which includes the reading, listening and writing parts. The speaking part was left to the next appoint with the teacher. I chose one of the three topics in writing Aufgabe 2 to complete in the simulation, just like in the real exam. But the other two topics I didn’t choose should not go wasted. In the following two weekends I would practice with the other two. I tried to simulate the real exam conditions as much as possible. I controlled the time for every part. When a writing on Aufgabe 2 was done outside a simulated exam, I limited the time to 60 minutes. I wrote with a pen on paper in all the writing practices because that’s how it is in real exam.

After completing both Aufgabe 1 and Aufgabe 2 I typed the original text in MS Word and sent it to my teacher. She would correct it in the next days and return it to me. The first round was only focused on correcting the grammatical errors and improving the variability of wording and expression. Then I would try to revise the article on Aufgabe 2, with a focus on the contents and connections between paragraphs and sentences. The second version would again be sent to her for correction and improvement. After these two iterations I had an article with decent quality by C1 standard. Then came the most difficult part. My teacher asked me to memorize every article I wrote. So I printed out the twice reviewed article and spent 2-3 hours to memorize it to the extent that I could recite it from beginning to end. Here I post the three editions of the same article I have written so that you can compare the results. The first is the original writing. Second is after the correction by the teacher. Third is after my revision and the second round of correction by the teacher.

I went through the whole process on almost all the topics in the preparation materials I had collected. There were a few topics I found totally lame and couldn’t write anything meaningful about them. But I still did my best for these topics because, well, choice is a luxury in C1 exam. What if I don’t like any of the topics in my exam? In the end, all the exercises were designed to enable me to write two texts on any random subjects in 90 minutes. The structures, phrases, new words, and expressions I had learnt in the exercises became materials that I could actively use without thinking. I could focus on expressing my ideas rather than how to write this and that.

Time distribution is also critical in the exam. The Aufgabe 1 should take ideally less than 20 minutes, which leave 70 minutes for the Aufgabe 2. It would be even better if you can spend 5 minutes on proofreading in the end. In my case I could always find several basic mistakes through proofreading. I tried to keep this time distribution in every simulated exam. After several months of practice, I could write on Aufgabe 1 almost automatically since the key points were already listed.

The third option on Aufgabe 2, to write a commentary on the long article I have read in the reading part, seemed to be the most difficult at the beginning. But after I became more fluent in writing I actually liked this one more than the other two. This was what I chose in my exam. During preparation I had even devised a trick for this option. Since I always had a bit of extra time after finishing the reading part, I would use this time to mark the important information on the article and take notes. Although I must give back all the notes and exam sheet to the examiner after the reading part, I had built a mental model of the article, including what the key points were and how they could be summarized. I could also start to think about the other points I would like to write. When the exam entered the writing part, I scanned the topics very quickly. If I liked the other two seemingly easier options, I would still go for them. But in my exam the topic 3 was obviously more interesting for me. It took me maybe 10 seconds to make the decision and I didn’t read the details of the other two topics at all.

I got 13/15 on Aufgabe 1 and 12/15 on Aufgabe 2, which I think is a reasonable result for the time I had spent on writing. More importantly, the whole process had indeed improved my writing in general. I could write emails and other documents at work noticeably better and faster than half a year ago.

Speaking

For the speaking part I followed the same principle of repetition and iterative improvement. I suppose Aufgabe 1 shouldn’t be difficult to anybody above B2 level. And my job gave me some advantage on the Aufgabe 2 because I need to convince people to get things done. The Aufgabe 3 was the the most difficult and was also where I have put the most efforts.

The preparation went like this. In the first round I simulated with my teacher in class and got feedback immediately. At this round the topic of the Aufgabe was always new to me, like in the real exam. In the first three simulations I couldn’t even speak coherently for 10 minutes. The first challenge was to summarize the contents in a very short time. For that I developed my own format to note the points I would talk about. The task is but more than just summarizing. I would have to express my opinion, explain the situation in my homeland, and then talk about how I deal with it personally.

The second round is not speaking. Instead I would take my time to actually write down a complete article covering all the talking points in the speaking exam. Although this writing was not time trial, I still got to write more, which obviously should count as writing exercises. My teacher would correct the text and I revise it again for another round of correction. Then I would memorize and recite the article I have written. Just like what I did for in the writing exercise. After this round I would go for the same speaking Aufgabe again, time controlled, starting with taking notes. There is no surprise that I could perform much better after actually writing down and memorize what I would like to say. I recorded the speaking, listened to it and would do another round in the following day. With every iteration I improved my performance on the same Aufgabe. It was 3 months into the preparation I finally managed to cover all the talking points on the first trial in one go. Afterwards I skipped the writing round, just repeated the note taking and speaking 3 times on every Aufgabe. Here you can listen to the three recordings of the same presentation.

Round 1:

Round 2:

Round 3:

 

During the preparation I looked for references on the internet but ÖSD didn’t publish a lot. I compared my recording with the 2 official examples (example 1, example 2) from ÖSD. I was confident that I could pass the exam without a problem. Before the exam I registered to a preparation course for the speaking part. It was essentially a simulation with an experienced ÖSD examiner. After the simulation she said that I was really good. Maybe I could improve a bit on some pronunciations but overall I should have no problem passing the exam. The final result just couldn’t be better, 30/30.

The takeaways for C1 exam preparation

• Aim for general improvement rather than passing the exam. I am aware that very few people go for the C1 exam just because they want to improve their German. If you are reading this article, C1 is probably for you a prerequisite for something, like enrollment to a university or a certain job. The score might make very little difference as long as you pass. But the preparation itself is a very good chance to improve your German in general, and you will likely need the language skill after you pass the exam.
• Simulate the real exam. You should control the time in simulation like an examiner is sitting in front of you. Write with a pen on paper and use the same type of pen at the exam. It certainly takes longer than writing in MS Word and it is more difficult to correct. But that’s how it is in the real exam. Writing with a pen forces you to think before putting things on the paper. And since you have to write in a very tight time limit, you’d better think fast.
• Iterate and get feedbacks. If you have read this article, you should have noticed that the feedbacks from my teacher were critical in my preparation. Iteratively improving your skills through feedbacks could help you acquire the necessary building blocks for writing and speaking, e.g., vocabulary, phrases, and connectors. I have seen other exam takers trying to memorize some template sentences in the pause before the writing part started. I don’t think that would yield any good result.

I passed the ÖSD Deutsch als Fremdsprache Niveau C1 in June this year with a score of 90, which gave me the rating of “Sehr Gut Bestanden”–the highest rating one could get in the exam. This is an excellent result for anybody who wants to learn the language and to settle down in a German speaking country.

This is the 4th post of my blog series on German learning, dedicated to analyzing the ÖSD C1 exam. You can find the previous posts here:

• Zero to B1: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (1) — From Zero to B1
• B2: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (2) — B2
• C1: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (3) — C1

(No takeaway massages in this post. If you are going to take the exam, you have to know all the parts.)

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ÖSD is the official language exam in Austria for C1 and C2 levels. For integration in Austria, which requires up to B2 level, you need to take ÖIF now (Please check this article on the language politics in Austria). The abbreviation ÖSD is a wordplay, standing for both “Österreich, Schweiz, Deutschland” and “Österreichisches Sprachdiplom Deutsch”.

There are a number of German exams in the market, Goethe, telc, TestDaF, ÖSD, ÖIF…you name it. Each one has it’s own use cases, like study, integration, or general proficiency. ÖSD exams are focused on using the language in real-world situations. In this regard it is similar to the most popular Goethe exams. However, compared to Goethe C1, the ÖSD counterpart has more tasks, takes more time to finish, and has some significantly more challenging tasks in the writing and speaking parts.

You can find the official material and Modellprüfung on the ÖSD website. In this post, I am going to analyze all the tasks with my personal experience.

Reading

4 tasks, 90 minutes, maximum 20 points, minimum 10 to pass.

• Aufgabe 1 is a standard reading comprehension: an article about a certain social subject and 5 single-choice questions in the end. The goal is to test your understanding of details. What’s interesting is that one of the options in the writing part is to write a commentary to this article. If you like the subject you can already start to think about how you would write a commentary about it. More on this in the writing part.
• In Aufgabe 2 there are 5 short texts and 10 titles. The task is to identify the key message of each text in order to assign the right title to it.
• Things start to get more interesting in Aufgabe 3, in which you “compose” a coherent article with the given materials. You get an article where 5 short paragraphs are missing. You also get 7 candidate paragraphs to fill in the missing positions. It’s a bit like a half finished jigsaw puzzle. Two of the candidates are just there to confuse you. You need to identify the signals in texts so that your chosen candidate connects the paragraphs before and after coherently.

• Aufgabe 4 is a typical text completion exercise with 15 blanks. It’s always exactly one word missing in each blank. The missing word could be a verb, noun, preposition, pronoun, anything. It’s a test of vocabulary and idioms. If you can’t recall a word or an idiom, or if you don’t know the right preposition after a verb in the context, there is little chance you can guess the right key. The maximum score of this task is 5 but an experienced examiner told me that it’s almost impossible to get all the blanks right.

I scored 19 out of 20 in the reading part. I am pretty sure the 1 point I lost is in the notorious Aufgabe 4.

Listening

2 tasks, ~40 minutes, maximum 20 points, minimum 10 to pass.

• Aufgabe 1 is a standard listening comprehension with 10 single-choice questions. You hear a radio program twice, in which multiple people talk about their research or opinions. You may encounter various accents, talking speeds, styles, and background noises.
• In Aufgabe 2 you hear a presentation twice to fill in 10 missing blanks. The grading is not focused on grammar in this task, meaning that some errors on the form of a word, like singular/plural, tense, and word ending, are tolerated. As long as you get the word right you get the point.

I scored 16 out of 20 in the listening comprehension. Although listening is normally my stronghold, I am not surprised that I lost 4 points here. The listening material for Aufgabe 1 in my exam was very difficult, which has got some fellow exam takers complaining afterwards. It has even surprised our examiner, who confirmed after the exam it was new to her and it was a difficult one.

Writing

2 tasks, 90 minutes, maximum 30 points, minimum 7 points on each task and a total of 15 points to pass.

• Aufgabe 1 is an email complaint. You receive an email about a dispute that is usually a result of your own error, like delay of payments, missing deadlines and so on. Your task is to reply the email to explain the situation, suggest a solution, and eventually minimize the loss. The points to be addressed in the reply are already given in colloquial form as notes to the original email. Formality and tone are important in your reply because the goal is to convince the other party and solve the problem. For this task there is no minimal number of words. 100-150 words are enough. There is also no time limit other than the total 90 minutes for both writing tasks. But per my experience you should spend a maximal of 20 minutes for this task in order to leave more time for the Aufgabe 2.

• Aufgabe 2 is an essay. You can choose from three topics of different styles for this task and for each one there are specific points to be covered. You should write at least 250 words. However, for a good score you should target 350-400 words, which means about 500 words in total in 90 minutes. 
  • The first topic is a report (Referat) on statistics. You should write about the following points: summary of the statistics, interpretation of the information, situation in homeland, and personal opinion. This variant seems to be the easiest and most straight forward to write about. At least that’s what I thought at the beginning. Just use some template sentences and it’s done. But as my preparation progresses I growingly found writing summary of statistics rather boring. And if the topic is not interesting, it’s still difficult to cover the other three points.
  • The second topic is an opinion piece (Stellungname) on a short text. You have to address 4 points: summary of the text, argument about the pros and cons, personal opinion, and situation in homeland. I have found this one the most annoying since the beginning of preparation. The text is short and the summary has to be shorter. It’s often difficult to distinguish the argument and personal opinion. If I have clarified the pros and cons of a certain policy, my opinion should be clear. I often struggle on point three because I have already expressed my opinion in point 2.
  • The third topic is to write a commentary (Commentar) on the reading comprehension article you’ve read at the beginning of the exam. The logic is that although it’s a long text, you’ve read it already. The points to be covered are summary of the article, personal opinion to the information, the situation in homeland, and what should one do to deal with it. To summarize a long article in such a short time in the exam is very challenging. At the beginning of my preparation I thought I would never choose this one in the actual exam. But after some practices it turned out that the topic is more important than the form of writing-the more interesting the topic, the faster I can write, and fewer mistakes I make. This is the option I eventually chose in my exam.

I got 25 out of 30 points in writing, in which 13 on the email and 12 on the essay. This is an acceptable performance given how much efforts I have put in this part during preparation.

The three parts above-reading, listening, and writing-make up the schriftliche Prüfung, which is done in one session. This means you will have to sit there for almost 4 hours, with some short pauses in between. That in itself is a challenge to stamina and concentration. Do pack some snacks before you go.

Speaking

3 tasks, ~40 minutes including preparation, maximum 30 point, minimum 18 points to pass. Tasks are not graded separately.

The mündliche Prüfung is carried out in a separate individual session, which normally takes place in the week following the schriftliche Prüfung. Different to Goethe C1, you are the only exam taker in the session with two examiners. You get 20 minutes to read the material and prepare your talking points for all 3 tasks. Then you need to talk for about 20 minutes. The 3 tasks are set in different scenarios and require different talking styles.

• Aufgabe 1 is an apology over telephone. Usually it’s about a missing appointment. After apologizing and clarifying the situation, you should try to convince the other party, played by an examiner, to agree with an alternative solution. The conversation is formal. During the call you and the examiner look in different directions.
• In Aufgabe 2 you need to work with a colleague to choose one of two given pictures for a newspaper or magazine article. In your preparation time you should have already chosen one of the pictures and the examiner will play your colleague who prefers the other one. Since you are playing colleagues you address each other per du. The conversation goes at a relatively fast pace with arguments back and forth. For this you should not only prepare the arguments for your choice, but also try to think from the perspective of the other party and prepare your counter arguments.
• The Aufgabe 3 is a presentation. You get three pieces of information on a sheet of paper: a set of statistics, a short text, and a long text. All the information is on the same subject but from different sources with sometimes conflicting messages. You have to cover four points in the presentation: summary of the given information, personal opinion, situation in homeland, and what you would do personally in dealing with the subject. You should talk for about 8 minutes and leave some time for questions and discussion. It’s a formal presentation that starts with greetings and ends with thanks. This task is in my opinion the most difficult of the whole ÖSD C1 exam, although I heard that more people fail the writing Aufgabe 2 than this one. Time is extremely tight and you have only one go. The goal is to cover all points while making as few mistakes as you can and speaking as logically as possible. You may stumble occasionally but you need to reorganize your words quickly. This one really tests your language fluency. Mistakes are tolerated to a certain extent, but you can’t make too many. On the other hand, if you are thinking about grammar and word order all the time you won’t be able to focus on the content of your presentation, which will in turn lead to more stumbles. ÖSD has published two videos examples of the mündliche Prüfung: example 1, example 2. 

I scored 30 out 30 in the speaking part. Not a single point is lost. I was (ironically) speechless when I saw the score. I have certainly made a few mistakes during the exam, but who doesn’t? It’s German.

Next post: ÖSD C1 preparation

That’s a summary of the ÖSD C1 exam with my personal experience. I am more than happy with the 90 points I got out of this difficult exam, but the result didn’t come automatically from the C1 course. My german teacher has guided me through some very specific trainings to both prepare me for the exam and further improve my language skills. The preparation of ÖSD C1 will be the topic of my next post.

I passed the ÖSD Deutsch als Fremdsprache Niveau C1 in June this year with a score of 90, which gave me the rating of “Sehr Gut Bestanden”–the highest rating one could get in the exam. This is an excellent result for anybody who wants to learn the language and to settle down in a German speaking country.

This weekend I celebrated the 10th anniversary of my arrival in Austria with some Sturm and Spare Ribs.

 

It seems fitting to continue my blog series on learning German on such a special weekend. This is the third post, dedicated to my experience of learning at the C1 level. You can find the previous posts here:

• Zero to B1: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (1) — From Zero to B1
• B2: How to Pass German Language Exam C1 in 10 Years (2) — B2

(For those who prefer TL;DR, there will be a set of takeaway messages at the end of each post.)

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Goal and pace

Passing B2 was the most significant milestone in my years of language learning. It was enough for me to feel mentally integrated in the country. But it was far from enough in terms of language proficiency. I could at best understand 90{840e912940eb4b79c4d4e6ee8975fa558e4980526d4eeeae973264fe817bfadc} of the details in meetings, and with some efforts, make people understand what I wanted to express. From my employer’s perspective I was qualified, which means they wouldn’t pay for my German course anymore. So I asked my German teacher if I could continue the private course with her on C1 level if I paid by myself. At that time I had already developed a good working relationship with her. We agreed on the terms quickly and started in May 2016.

My goal this time was first of all to further improve my language skills. C1 certificate was not a legal or professional prerequisite for anything I would like to achieve. The course was therefore completely voluntary. We didn’t even set a finish time. The general agreement was 1 session per week and 2 units every session. In reality with all the vacations, business trips and other interruptions we actually only had 37 sessions in 1.5 years, or 74 units until we finished the C1 book. Besides, I have to admit that I was under less pressure to learn German now. The intensity was much lower than the B2 level and this actually made the learning more enjoyable.

Learning for C1

In my experience there wasn’t much of a learning method to speak of at C1. It’s just a matter of more practice, more topics, and broader vocabulary. From my German teacher there was one suggestion that worked very well during my C1 course: the whole learning process should be guided by me rather than by the teacher. At B2 level I knew what I had to improve and what I wanted to learn. Now I could also control my pace. I focused on the vocabulary and writing because I had enough listening comprehension and speaking at work. During the week, when I was in the mood, I would work on vocabulary in the morning and other homework in the evening. Weekends were reserved for writing. Every time we met she asked me to first tell an interesting story that happened since our last session. She would also tell me some interesting events from her side. This would usually lead to random chat. Sometimes when I was too tired or the topics were interesting we could even talk for more than an hour without opening the book. I have always valued this kind of chat with the teacher because it required a significantly broader vocabulary than what I usually use at work. Since I could finish most of the homework by myself, the actual course part was a chance to get feedbacks and understand the difficult grammatical phenomena and nuances in expressions. We would discuss the questions I collected from the homework and read selected texts laud. If I wrote something I would also read it so that she could spot the errors and suggest possible improvements. She would bring extra materials from time to time. Sometimes just fun articles, sometimes upon my request targeted exercises like Konjunktiv I.

Although I was not in a hurry this time, I could still get frustrated because it seemed impossible to get everything right. Once I asked the teacher when and how I could master the verb + prep. combinations. She said, 30 years. It was obviously not very encouraging. Then she said it’s normal. And I have been learning with her for more than a year, I will need only 29 years from now. I take this as the second most important piece of advice on my journey with the language. It’s a life long quest I have willingly accepted.

As the course progressed slowly but steadily, there were noticeable signs of improvement at work. Half a year into the course I have started to work with some colleagues in Germany, who had no idea of my history with the German language. We have communicated in German since the beginning. Once I was having a conversation with a German colleague and an English-speaking colleague. When the English-speaking colleague left the conversation briefly, the German guy almost immediately switched to German because only two of us were in the conversation. I regard this as a sure-fire sign of accepting me as a German speaker.

The takeaways for C1 level

• Language learning is a lifelong mission. At any stage there is always a chance to improve. With things like preposition, word genders, and Konjunktiv I, the only way to really master them is years of observation and reflection.
• Do your homework. There is always more. I usually finish 10-15 pages of homework between two sessions. I used Erkundungen Deutsch als Fremdsprache C1: Integriertes Kurs- und Arbeitsbuch.
• Get a good teacher and build a good relationship. Private teacher is probably the best choice for C1. I say probably as I don’t have experience with group courses at C1 level. But it’s hard to imagine getting enough individual feedbacks from group courses.

The course was finished in November 2017 and I was very inclined to do the C1 exam. In the next post I will present a thorough analysis of the ÖSD C1 exam.

Update 1: For discussion you can also check the Reddit discussion thread.