Just recently I've been going through more of the practice listening test material supplied by the Goethe Institute for the Goethe-Zertifikat B2 exam. I've got one more of these to go. I realised after starting one of them that I had done it once before, but I didn't remember the details enough to really help me answer anything, so it was still decent practice/checking my current level. They both went well - in the Modellsatz test, I got 20/25 for the two listening test questions, and in Uebungssatz 01 (which I had done before but forgotten) I got 23/25. I think the real reason for the difference in results is just that I was familiar with the exam format the second time. This practice is really important because, the more familiar you are with the exam format, the better you can concentrate on showing what you know. Both of these test results were with the normal time/repetition restrictions from the actual exam (the audio Goethe supplies has all the correct repeats and gaps built in already). After I do Uebungssatz03 (I wonder where I can find Uebungssatz02? Or 04??), I'll either work on the test exams from TestDaF because they are on a scale from B2-C1, or just the C1 practice exams.
I recently re-did a couple of the "level checking" tests I had done last year. Here's one of them:
http://www.goethe.de/cgi-bin/einstufungstest/einstufungstest.pl
I got 20 out of 30. I'm actually pretty sure this is close to what I got when I did it ages ago. What's going on there? In the meantime, my vocabulary has increased significantly. I know that for sure. My reading ability is up to the stage where I can comfortably and enjoyably read a significant novel (not that I understand every single word or phrase!), and I feel reasonably comfortable (not fluent) in conversations with native speakers. Both of these facets have definitely improved.
What hasn't really changed is that I still haven't gone to any structured classes. Although I've read some of a really good German grammar book (without trying to memorise it), I haven't spent much time on learning the sorts of minutia which seem to fill most courses - is it "wenn" or "ob", for example. I'm not saying this isn't important, I'm not saying that I don't care about making this sort of mistake (I do!) but I don't think they're as important as improving conversational fluency and vocabulary, and I haven't spent much time on them. Anyway, I'll check back this level in a few months and see if anything's changed!
One last bit of exam practice to mention - I did one of the "correct the mistakes" questions in the Schriftlicher Ausdruck section of the B2 Modelssatz mentioned above and got 8 out of 10. On of the two mistakes I missed was "wenn" being used instead of "ob/wann" :-) You get 15 minutes to do this section in the exam, and I did it in 8 minutes. I think that for one lunchtime soon I'll print out a few of these questions and do them all at once, because I can probably knock over a bunch really quickly.
Other than that, the focus will remain, for the next week or two, on listening test practice (at a higher level next).
By the way, all of the above have been squeezed into the few lunchtimes I've had free lately. If it weren't for lunchtime, I don't know when I would get this stuff done at all!
I'm not sure if it always works (possibly not, my german grammar is pretty bad) but when choosing whether to use ob or wenn, I ask myself if when I translated the sentence into english, is it possible to use whether? If I can use whether (regularly you can use both if and whether), I use ob, otherwise I use wenn. Of course it is probably not good to translate back into English all the time and this rule might not always work but as a rough rule of thumb it seems to work ok.
ReplyDeleteI currently learning German and really enjoying your blog. I'm finding it really motivating!
Also, you probably already know this rough rule of thumb and probably also know where it fails.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Rabbitliver. Yeah, I always remember that rule of thumb (and no, I don't know of the exceptions and/or the exact "rule") after the fact :-) The problem is making sure it occurs to me beforehand. At this stage, since it's really just for the purpose of getting those few extra points in an exam, I would settle for remembering a rule. Of course, the real goal should be assimilating the correct word from normal practice and natural examples. If I find any particularly good sources for this, I'll post them here.
DeleteSo, you're learning German too. Good for you! Where's your blog or just online log? :-) I seem from your cooking blog that you've moved to Germany. I'd like to hear more about your experiences so far!
I didn't even think to have a blog about German learning but on your suggestion, I've just started one! As you may have noticed from my cooking blog, I am very bad at keeping a blog, so perhaps it won't work out. I'll definately do a post about free resources that I've found and how useful I've found them and perhaps write something about my experience of moving to Germany with almost no German (I could order things in restaurants when I arrived and speak a little bit).
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