German — Exams
An unfinished German clause is audible, because the verb that would have closed it never arrives.
Goethe and telc put you opposite another candidate, TestDaF hands you a microphone, DSH hands you a text and then questions you on it. All of them want German assembled correctly while a clock runs. Here you can sit the same tasks on a Tuesday evening, as often as you like, with nobody keeping the score but us.
Six tasks, six different ways of running out of time before the verb lands.
A structured talk from notes
Goethe B2 hands you two topics and fifteen minutes to prepare, then wants an introduction, a middle and a conclusion out loud. Notes hold the argument. They do not hold the endings, and the endings are what go first.
Holding a line in discussion
Teil 2 at Goethe and telc is an argument with a second candidate: state a position, take the objection, concede the small point and keep the big one. The German that goes wrong here is the subordinate clause you start and cannot finish.
TestDaF, and nobody in the room
Digital TestDaF gives you seven tasks, one recording each, and a timer that ends the answer for you. There is no examiner to read, no partner to slow down for and no way to begin again. The silence is the part to practise.
Presenting a text or graph
DSH and TestDaF both make you turn a short text or a set of figures into speech: what it shows, what stands out, what follows from it. Reporting verbs, comparatives and the passive all arrive at once.
Planning something with a stranger
telc B2 ends with a task you cannot complete alone: plan an event, split the work, settle on a date. It is graded on negotiating in German — suggesting, hedging, agreeing — not on the plan being good.
Questions you wrote no notes for
At DSH and in Goethe C1 the examiner picks one claim out of your talk and asks you to justify it. A prepared minute can be memorised; the justification has to be built on the spot, word order and all.
Every fault here has a name in German grammar, and the notes use the name.
The partner corrects while you are still speaking. Afterwards you get the count: which structures failed, how many times, and an exercise built from the worst of them for next time.
- Clauses begun with weil or obwohl and then rescued as main clauses, because the verb was still owed at the end and the thought had moved on.
- Cases chosen a beat too late — dative after mit, nach and bei, and the adjective ending that shifts with the article in front of it.
- Prefixes that never arrive: the an of anrufen dropped, or the wrong one landing at the end of a long sentence.
- Sie sliding into du under pressure, and written Präteritum turning up in a place where speech takes the Perfekt.
- Silence where a German speaker would have held the floor with doch, eben or halt while the sentence was being built.
- Time spent on the task against time spent apologising for your German, which examiners count as neither.
Start with ten minutes
Nothing to book, and a written report at the end of the first session.
Try 10 minutes freeOur number, not the board's
Nothing here is affiliated with the Goethe-Institut, telc, ÖSD, the TestDaF-Institut or the university that runs your DSH, and the score a session produces belongs to this site and nowhere else. It tells you nothing about the grade an examiner will give you. Task formats are revised from time to time as well, so take the current Prüfungsordnung from the board before you rely on any detail above.