A Goethe B1 certificate offers you many opportunities in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Maybe you want to study in Germany and attend a pre-university institute, maybe you want to live and work here, or maybe you have lived in Germany for many years and now need a certificate for your residence permit.
Whatever your motivation, you have decided to prepare for the Goethe B1 exam. You probably feel quite confident in reading, listening and maybe speaking, but for the written part you need some help.
This guide will give you tips on how to properly prepare for the written part.
How can I practice my writing skills for the exam?
To improve your writing skills, you can do the following:
- Inform yourself about the type of texts you need to write in the exam
- Do some research for exam examples
- Look for writing exercises and practice writing texts
- Get a professional tutor who gives you feedback
The most important thing is practice. You’ll only get better at writing if you practice. Also, it’s very helpful to get a professional tutor who corrects your texts and provides you with feedback and tips, how to improve and what topics you might need to revise prior to the exam.
What texts do I need to write in the exam?
You can download the model test offered by the Goethe Institute on their website and check all the exercises. I’ll give you a short summary of the exercises for the writing part:
- informal e-mail to a friend
- statement / personal opinion about a topic
- semi-formal e-mail to a tutor / boss
Each of the texts needs a proper form and language style. It depends on the function and the recipient. That means, to whom are you going to write the text. Writing to a friend has to sound different than writing to an authority figure.
If you want to know how to write according to these contexts, get my collection of „Redemittel” (useful phrases) with information about form and language style.
Where can I find exam examples?
If you do some research on the internet, you’ll find several exam examples. On youtube, there are some online classes where teachers explain step by step how to write a text for parts 1, 2, and 3.
Also, on different blogs, people publish texts for exams. But keep in mind that these are only examples! In your Goethe exam, you’ll have to write your own text. Learning these texts by heart doesn’t make any sense. However, it’s very helpful to get an idea of how it should look like.
You can also check out my „Sample Texts for Goethe Exam B1″ with 5 examples for each exercise.
How can I practice?
You’ve come to the most important part: Practice!
It’s time to create content now and practice writing for each exercise type. Therefore, you can use the exercises in the Goethe model test, exercises you’ve found on the internet, or even create your own sample exercise.
You can also get my collection of exam exercises, with or without getting my feedback.
How do I get feedback for my texts?
The last step is probably the most efficient step if you want to improve your writing skills – getting feedback.
When you finished your text, it’s hard to correct all the mistakes you did without any kind of feedback. Also, you don’t know if you wrote according to the expectations of the Goethe Insitute.
Therefore, I highly recommend getting professional feedback from a German tutor. After getting feedback and corrections for your text, you’ll be more confident and more conscious when you write your next text.
As a professional German tutor, I offer feedback and corrections for your texts. Get my collection of exam examples, and I will get in touch with you via chat or email. I’ll create a folder on google drive for you where you can upload your texts. I will leave feedback and corrections for it, and give you some tips about what to revise before the exam.
We’ll communicate asynchronously, so you don’t need to schedule a class with me. You can write and see my corrections whenever it fits in your schedule.
To sum up, there are many ways to get ready for the writing part of the Goethe exam. I hope the article was helpful for you and I’d be greatly happy to work with you!