How I got the Goethe Zertifikat B1 in 9 months from ground zero

Hi guys, we all know how difficult life is right now

… with the covid-19 pandemic. None the less, while waiting and hoping things get better, I’ll share with you how i got the Goethe Zertifikat B1 in 9 months.

September 2018 marks the date when I heard of the German alphabet for my very first time, so then began my German language classes at the Goethe institute Yaounde in Cameroon at the A1 level.

Me living in an environment where French and English are spoken officially, and never German, just makes it very hard to master German. Sad right, so I had to look for ways to help speed up my German language learning and mastery.

My German is not perfect yet, I still got much work to improve, and with a little more classes I guess I will be good to go. But at least, I can have a great conversation in a normal pace with native Germans. So, I would give you some of the tipps I use to help me in my German language studies.

Tipp 1: YOUTUBE became my best of friends

There exist thousands of youtube videos to help build up our German vocabulary, grammar and communication in the overall. I downloaded tons of these videos especially vocabulary related videos, so I could know how to call most objects and everything in general. The different verbs conjugations and their use in sentence construction were correctly done during lectures. So, that was good to go and was not a major problem.

Tipp 2: The Library

Luckily for me, my school, the GOETHE INSTITUTE JAUNDE has a wonderful library and an online platform with thousands of books and magazines of all types which are perfect tools to boost, speed up and practice German.

It is true I did not spend so much time as I wanted to in the library, this because I had to manage time between my job and the language classes. So guys, spend as much time as you can in any library providing German language literatures. It is worth it.

Tipp 3: SPEAK SPEAK AND SPEAK GERMAN !!!

You will never know how bad your German is until you start talking. Only upon speaking do we get corrected and learn.

What I love the most in this learning process is the speaking part, because it is the living proof of the theory assimilation and skill growth.

We only get better upon being corrected.

So guys, speak out your German as much as you can, and especially during lecture periods so your teacher can correct the mistakes, and then you become better.

Helpful links online:

www.goetheinstitut.de

www.deutsch-perfekt.com

YOUTUBE: deutsch lernen mit der DW

I hope my tipps would be of help to you. Or maybe, tell me of other tipps which could help us get better in the comment section.