It is slightly embarrasing that after 6 years having a German partner and a year being in Munich, I can still barely speak German. My reading and writing are (arguably) better.
I now associate learning the language to the richness of my life. But it has not always been like this.
Passing the exam
I just about passed my Goethe B1 exam in November 2019 in London after self-studying with smarterGerman on and off for a year.
I did not know how bad I was with grammar until I re-took B1 courses whilst in Germany. Thus, now to think of it, I probably managed this by taking an exam hack course and being an exam machine (thanks to the training in Malaysia earlier in my life where education is about passing exams).
TLDR: If you feel like you are struggling in daily life in German, but you also want to get a certificate, I would not hesitate to say the exam is actually not as difficult as you think with some exam hacking preparation.
Moving to Germany
I moved to Munich in October 2021. This meant 2 years of no practice or immersion (apart from the few days in the Bavarian village with my partner’s family) since my B1 exam.
It should not be a shock (but it sadly was) that I hardly spoke or understood much when I arrived. I expected that being here would somehow awaken the memory somewhere in my brain, but it had not.
I could barely understand the short news stories on the S-Bahns and trams screens. I was (am) scared to speak. My stamina to consume German (text or audio) was bad, only about 5 minutes.
TLDR: Can you go around Munich without speaking much German, if you are in an English-speaking work environment? Sure. I had people in the same industry as I am (software) telling me so (“5 years in Germany and I don’t speak German”, even proudly).
(But I needed more than surviving in Germany. Integration is important for me. So I continued on with my German learning journey…)
Increasing stamina
“Stamina” is a concept that I have not come across much in my German learning journey, so I put emphasis on it here. It means how long I am able to consume German, either listening or reading, without feeling tired or bored.
The self-paced course had been the only opportunity where I paid attention to German. It was cut up into chapters with clear goals, as it should. I started with a new self-paced course in B2 around April 2022, half a year after I moved to Germany. The texts were much longer, the vocabulary was much harder, and I just could not focus more than 5 minutes after a day of work.
Taking the B2 self-paced course was a great failure, so I decided I need to try the old-school way and signed up to Volkshochschule (“VHS”, adult learning centres provided by every council in Germany) for an evening, online intensive course. It was 3-hour x 3 times a week in weekdays x 7 weeks, for half a level (B1.1 and B1.2).
I actually really enjoyed this format, because homework-aside, it was 9 hours of listening, thinking and paying attention in German (up for debate whether it was active or passive listening…).
By the end of the 14 weeks, I can now go through about 45 minutes of self-paced work in German before needing a break. I find this an amazing aspect, as it meant that I could pick up learning German in my preferred format and time, and still get somewhere without feeling frustrated. For example, I can prepare for Deutsch Gym sessions, or actively listen to Deutsche Welle’s Langsam Gesprochenen Nachrichten on the go.
Grammar
I passed the B1 exam without knowing much apart from the basics of Nominativ/Akkusativ/Dativ, present and past perfect. I believe it was my deliberate choice to not get hung up on grammar then, as my goal was to pass the exam and that people understand what I said when I do speak.
It was not until I took the VHS course that I realised I should have known about Genetiv, Futur I, Konjunktiv II, Passiv, simple past tense (Prätaritum), and some other stuff, and learning them had been tremendous help for me to read, for two reasons.
Firstly, despite popular belief that Genetiv and simple past tense are not that important in the beginning (because all German teachers believe that Genetiv will die out in 100 years, and simple past tense is less used in spoken German), they are still widely used in written form, e.g. the news and children’s book are mostly in simple past tense, whilst Genetiv are also frequently encountered. Most importantly, I was not thrown off by them because they do not follow the grammar that I already knew and get confused.
For example, the name of an annual event in Munich is called “Lange Nacht der Museen”. Without knowing Genetiv, “der” just looks strange af, as it is used for masculine nouns in Nominativ, but at the same time Museum is a neutral singular noun, and Museen is plural. This confusion went away once I learnt Genetiv.
Secondly, learning grammar helped me distinguish the intention of the sentence much better. For example, wird on its own, plugged into translation, means will.
- I could have guessed that “Das Bier wird getrunken” meant “the beer will be drunken”, but no, it means the beer was/is drunk (Passiv). It already happened, not future.
- I could have guessed that “Das Auto wird kaputt” meant “the car will be broken. Wrong. It means “(Someone believes that) The car is broken” – Futur I.
What next?
I just started a new job in Munich where everyone still speaks English, but unlike my old job at Thoughtworks, most of my colleagues are German and there is definitely much more German going around day to day. I joke that this is finally like my German lessons but in real life.
So I don’t know yet, whether to continue with a VHS course (where emphasis would be learning more grammar and expanding vocabulary), or improve on speaking based on what I already know, as with B1 level, I should be able to discuss simple things with I could/would/should etc.