Goethe-Zertifikat-B2 BESTANDEN!!!

[EDIT on 08/01/2013: To anyone planning to do the B2 exam soon, please also check out my post-mortem where I examine what went right and what went wrong]

Finally got my results yesterday, and I passed!

I emailed during the day to ask when they might be available and was told that they had got sent out last Friday and that I should get the certificate soon. The email also told me that I passed with the grade "gut".

You wouldn't believe how happy I was! Well, ok, you might. It wasn't like getting married, or seeing your child be born, but it was a pretty awesome feeling. It was like finishing a long distance race. The finish line is the actual exam, the time while you await your results is like when you're recovering your breath from that final sprint, and then when you get the results, it's like when your sense of achievement finally kicks in from the run, along with the endorphins :-)

So, without further ado, here it is (personal details deleted, of course):

(Sorry it's not a scan - I don't have one available at home)

In case you can't read the scores in the image, they were:

Leseverstehen (reading comprehension): 22/25
Hörverstehen (listening comprehension): 25/25 (Lucky! I guessed one of the answers!)
Schriftlicher Ausdruck (written expression): 19/25
Mündlicher Ausdruck (oral expression): 23/25

Total: 89/100 (one point off the top grade of "sehr gut"!)


The score is a dream come true, really. It's absolutely no lie to say that I would have been completely satisfied with a pass. Well, almost completely. I prepared really hard, but I didn't expect to do so well. The reading comprehension score is roughly what I expected from my practices, and I was quite happy to get this much considering that the first question seemed a lot more ambiguous than any of my practice ones seemed, and the section that has those silly "does the author see this as positive or negative/sceptical" questions always trips me up, even when I understand the text and the question 100%. Maybe there's some special technique I'm missing with these, but who cares now :-)

The listening comprehension was a complete shock - 100% right! Well, ok, maybe not a complete shock. It all felt good except one of the 2 point questions in the first section which I missed somehow. I was glad I had practised so much though because one thing I learnt doing the test exams was to not dwell on a missed answer. If you miss it, cut your losses. If your attention is stuck on it when the next answer is said, you'll miss   more answers. I managed to avoid that.

So how did I get it right if I didn't hear the answer? Well, it's a bit crazy, but I guessed. HOW CAN THAT BE? How can you guess the answer for a fill-in-the-blanks exercise in the listening comprehension part of an exam. Well, luckily it's not context free - the question requires you to fill in some specific blanks in a timetable of events on specific dates, at different places, etc. Someone leaves a message on an answering machine, or whatever, and you have to listen to the recording and fill in the blanks with the corrections. In this case, the answer I missed was a slot where the blank was above a date. In every other place in that column, the blank above the date just had the day of the week in it. It turns out this one was no different! This meant I was able to work out the day of the week from the dates in the same column. Pretty tricky, hey?

All I can say is, never give up :-) I knew I had the wrong answer (I just wrote something random during the recording) so as I was copying my answers I had a good look at the question sheet to see if I could figure something out, and I did. Bit of a lucky break, really...

My lowest score was in the written expression, but I'm not disappointed at all. It was still a good score, after all! I think that maybe I might have got 2 to 4 of the grammatical corrections wrong (just guessing here) and so maybe my written composition got 11 to 13. No idea really, this is just pure speculation. I know I got one of the grammatical corrections in the second question wrong. Considering that I didn't really start any form of writing practice until less than 2 weeks before the exam, I should count myself lucky. NOTE: This is not enough time to practice this component! Also, I always thought I could write OK, but until you actually compose something and get a native speaker's corrections, you've got no solid foundation to base your assessment on.

The final section was probably the biggest surprise. I was worried I might not pass the exam because I felt I might not get the required 60% (15/25) on the oral exam. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. An almost perfect score in the B2 oral exam is probably the best part of all for me. The day after my exam I had a phone call from my Austrian friends with a terrible phone line, and I suddenly felt like I'd forgotten how to speak German, and I had more trouble than usual understanding them. My confidence wasn't high after the exam...

But then today I had my once a week Stammtisch at work and I felt really good. I took a minute or two to really warm up, but I felt like my understanding was better than normal and I felt confident and relaxed while speaking. I normally try to be relaxed and not worry too much, but today it just clicked better. I guess everyone has their "ups and downs" from day to day, but the results gave me a confidence boost which actually improved my speaking. It was a nice little positive feedback loop (more confidence -> better speaking -> more confidence -> etc). I know the negative feedback works just as well: lack of confidence makes you dwell on your mistakes, which are thereby amplified. It makes you hesitant, and your confidence sinks. I don't think there's a single answer to break this cycle and get into the positive feedback loop - some days things just won't feel right.

I think the most obvious answer is to start out confident, assume your mistakes don't matter and that you can do it. This isn't a new idea, but it makes sense. Your current "real" level of speaking ability at the start of any conversation will be the same, no matter what your self-assessment of your abilities on that day is. You need to accept mistakes even as you try to minimise them and don't worry about how other people perceive you. It may very well be that you're torturing your speaking partner a little (I have often felt like this in the past with my Stammtisch partner!), but you're only going to be worse if you focus on it. Be bold, and push on! I've generally been successful in applying this strategy, and it's been a real winner for me. I still stumble, I still feel silly at times, but worrying about these mistakes just doesn't help.

As the wiseman said: don't worry, be happy!

In coming posts, I hope to do a post-mortem of my learning strategies to this point, and also to talk about where to go from here. I'll need to set some more firm goals I think to keep me motivated and focused, but I also just want to enjoy the process more and more. Also, there are other languages I would like to get to at some stage, and I want to work out where these could fit in to the overall scheme. Stay tuned...

And finally, to all those still awaiting results, or who have just received them, I hope you all get the marks you know you deserve!

Bis gleich!