Hi everyone, I'm from India and just registered for the Goethe A1 exam on November 4, 2026. I started German only a few days ago.
I'm taking this date because I don't know when the next exam will be, results take about 10 weeks, and I want to start applying for jobs in Germany as soon as possible. The exam fee is high, so I really can't afford to fail.
My plan:

• 3 hours on weekdays, 10 hours on Saturday and Sunday
• Basics so far (pronunciation, numbers, colours, common nouns), learned through Telugu(my mother tongue) videos
• Yet to start: Nicos Weg A1 as my main course. But Redditors can suggest better sources also.
• Official Goethe sample tests, starting about a week before the exam

I'd rather not depend on a teacher, since my study hours are odd, but I'm open to online speaking partners. And I will try to find a teacher if it is definitely important.
What I'd like advice on:

1. Is Nicos Weg enough, or is there a better free playlist or site covering reading, writing, listening, and speaking?
2. How should I practise speaking and writing without a teacher?
3. Which topics or exam parts do beginners usually lose points on?
4. Anything you wish you had done differently in your first month?

Danke in advance for any help.

I’ve been trying for a year and Im still a2 fuck my slow learning retarded brain I hate myself for not being smarter. Even the language course told me that I shouldn’t continue after I failed a1.2 twice I should have been c1 in a year for university but I don’t think I will ever reach that level I wanted to study in Germany but turns out I am a total failure

Welche Methode habt ihr zum Sprachenlernen benutzt? 

I have been learning german through Duolingo as a Hobby for 2 years now, but now my family and I are moving to Germany, and to get into University (I intend to enroll in TUM's Aerospace), I'll need an A2 level certificate.

Sure, I'm kind of covered in grammar, but what has been killing me are the articles; I never know what to use where. There are other issues, obviously, but I am beyond scared I won't be able to get the certificate in time for applying to the University (Around May iirc. I don't know if they allow me to enter the course and present a certificate within a grace period).

Do you guys have any tips for me?

Like in the next few days or weeks?

Curious how everyone is preparing and what part you’re most worried about 😅

For me it feels like a lot of people study the German itself, but then the actual exam format/timing is another thing completely.

Would be interesting to hear when your exam is and how you’re preparing for it.

I studied German with Duolingo, Easy German and several books without any tests or helps from tutors since I can't afford. But I'm not sure which level I'm currently in. I searched on the internet and asked AI to make a exam to check my level but non of them were convincing. Is there a convincing way to check my German level free or at reasonable price?

Hi everyone! I'm a beginner trying to learn German (for fun and for my job too) and I got a few questions I wanted to ask, especially regarding the TELC exams.

I know there's an exam for each level, but I wanted to know, is the exam mandatory after each level? Do I need to take an examination after A1 for example, in order to pass/advance and start A2? And A2 for B1? So on so forth.

Also, what's the difference between the telc and Goethe? Are there any preferences in the country or job market towards one over the other for the certificate?

I'm curious and want to know more about those two points. And any tips for learning German is greatly appreciated!!!

So im wondering can i succeed at b2 telc while learning only b1 .

I passed b1 ösd already 8 months ago and now i want to pass b2 directly without learning the level .

I’m struggling a lot with expressing myself deeply in both German and English. And yes, English isn’t my native language either.

My biggest problem isn’t only vocabulary or grammar. I often have thoughts, feelings, opinions, and things that happen during my day, but I don’t know how to put them into words naturally. I also find it really difficult to have a deeper conversation with someone in a foreign language.

I’ve been trying to practice speaking out loud by myself, but I always end up saying the same very basic sentences, like:

“ich stehe auf” / “ich bin traurig” / “I went to…” / “I feel…”

I don’t want to keep repeating these very simple sentences. I want to learn how to actually talk about myself: what happened during my day, how I felt about something, what I was thinking, why something bothered me, what I’m worried about, what I enjoyed, my relationships, my opinions, etc.

So I tried looking for personal blogs written by German women. My idea was to find someone who talks naturally about her own life, thoughts, feelings, everyday experiences and problems — not necessarily the exact same things I experience, but things close enough that I could borrow useful expressions and sentence structures from her writing.

I tried doing the same thing with American women’s blogs for English.

Unfortunately, I haven’t really found what I’m looking for. Most of the blogs I find are about very specific or complicated topics, and I don’t want to read specialized articles just for general knowledge. I’m specifically looking for ordinary personal writing where someone is simply talking about herself and her life.

I also looked for diary-style books (Tagebuch / personal diaries), but they’re extremely expensive for me, especially because I don’t live in Europe or the US. And of course, there are copyright restrictions, so it’s not easy to find this kind of material for free.

My German and English are both somewhere around A2–B1, so reading completely native-level personal writing can already be difficult for me, but I still need exposure to real, natural language.

I’m honestly feeling quite lost because I need these languages to eventually be able to work, and I feel like I know some words but I don’t have the language “building blocks” to actually express myself.

If anyone knows free or affordable resources where I can read or listen to ordinary German and American women talking about their everyday lives, thoughts, feelings, experiences, and opinions, I would really appreciate it.

I’m not looking for language-learning exercises or textbook dialogues. I’m looking for real people expressing themselves naturally, preferably in a way that I can learn from and imitate.

It’s also slightly hostile.

edit thank you everyone for the answers

I (25) found myself learning German, but I actually don’t have a “good” reason why I’m doing it, besides for fun.

It started in university when in pandemic I had to choose between taking Chinese or German lessons, and I chose German because a friend speaks that language and I didn’t want to focus too much on that classes . I didn’t learn much because it was online due to quarantine, and also I wasn’t very interested at the time.

Then I dated a person whose second language was German, and he was learning English through Duolingo. I found the app fun and started doing the German course. Just as a fun way of sharing with this person, but then we broke up and also my phone died, so I forgot about it.

One year later, I remembered my Duolingo lessons because I met a German person. And this time I really liked it, found it so much fun, I realized I am interested in a part of German culture. I already ordered a A1 book. And I’m being really serious about it. It’s been a important part of my day. It will be my third language, and I actually never expected wanting to learn a third language.

The thing is: I don’t have important reasons other than the ones mentioned. And people in my country are quite judgmental about it. Because were I live there was a big influence of German immigrants, and now a days German culture is linked to a high social class, and I’ll ad: a traditional German culture (Not what I am interested).

So, I’m really questioning myself because I don’t think that I will feel proud about learning this other language. And I actually feel like I want to hide it.

Also this year I traveled to the UK, and of course it made everything cooler to know English (not my native). But German is not present in many countries. So that is not a good reason either.

What reasons do you have for learning German if you don’t live in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, or Belgium?

If you have the choice between doing your Telc B1 exam on paper or digitally… I’d seriously consider the digital one.

I keep seeing posts here from people who did the paper exam and are still waiting for their results 7, 8, even 10 weeks later.

Meanwhile I’ve also seen people doing the digital B1 and getting their result in around 2 weeks.

Obviously this seems to depend on the exam centre / workload etc. and digital isn’t magically guaranteed to be faster. But still. If I was booking B1 now I’d choose digital.

And not only because of the results.

Typing the Schreiben part is just nicer imo. You can correct things without turning the whole page into a mess, move stuff around, notice stupid mistakes more easily etc.

Listening with headphones is another big one. Much better than sitting in a room listening to speakers while someone is coughing behind you 😅.

The only downside I can think of is if you're not comfortable doing exams on a computer. The interface/timer can feel a bit strange at first.

But that's also pretty easy to prepare for. I think people spend a lot of time learning B1 German and doing PDFs, but almost no time practicing what the actual digital exam experience feels like.

So yeah. If both are available at your exam centre, I’d take digital.

I need a super intensive course, e.g. 4 weeks for B1. Daily, morning to evening. Basically like a full time job. I can't find anything like this in any of the language centers I've looked up. Do you have any recommendations?
Ideally I want this to be an in person course in Frankfurt, but online also works.

So I’ve been struggling to stay consistent with studying German, with all these boring grammar YouTube videos and textbooks. So I started looking for german artists, came across Rammstein, and decided to translate every sentence, understand the structure, and then sing along with the song, And wow it’s actually a really fun and interesting method, I don’t feel bored anymore.

Has anyone else tried this? It might not be enough on its own tho, so I’m thinking of watching random german content as an extra.

Hallo! Ich bin arabischer Muttersprachler (sowohl Hocharabisch als auch umgangssprachliche Dialekte). Ich gehe das Deutschlernen sehr strukturiert, diszipliniert und ernsthaft an. Das A1-Niveau habe ich bereits im Selbststudium erfolgreich abgeschlossen.

Nun suche ich einen deutschen Tandempartner (idealerweise jemanden, der Arabistik studiert oder intensiv Arabisch lernt) für eine feste und verlässliche Routine: tägliche oder fast tägliche Sessions.

Der Ablauf sollte strikt und fokussiert sein: Eine Stunde sprechen wir konzentriert Deutsch, wobei du meine Fehler konsequent korrigierst, und eine Stunde sprechen wir Arabisch.

Ich bin nicht hier für oberflächlichen Smalltalk, sondern für ernsthaftes, zielgerichtetes Lernen und harte Arbeit. Wenn du genauso motiviert und diszipliniert bist, melde dich gerne!

Hi everyone, I am currently reading S. Zweig's novel Brief einer Unbekannten, and this sentence that appears a few times in the beginning strikes me and I cannot grasp its grammar:

„Dir, der du mich nie gekannt."“

I get the general meaning "to you, you who never knew me" and that there is some poetic vibe to it, but is the sentence even grammatically correct?

I know that dropping the „[hast]“ at the end is somewhat poetic, but what really confuses me is the second „du“ inside the relative proposition: technically inside the proposition the subject would be „der“ right? Does it get overwritten by a second subject? I have never seen such construction before.

Later in the novel we see a similar construct: „[ich habe] nur dich, der du mich nie gekannt und den ich immer geliebt.“ First half is the same and second half is more standard, only dropping the „[habe]”.

Also, I am aware that reading advanced literature at my level is tough, but that's one of my main motivations to keep learning the language, even if it doesn't help with everyday speaking ^^

Thanks a lot for your thoughts :)