I'm fresh out of the exam, still pending to do the speaking part tomorrow morning. So, if you have any question for me, shoot before I forget how it was like.

I wanted to write about my experience, but I found out that this, this and this pages pretty much explain the what to expect. I just have to add some specifics to CH-Basel-NSH, where I took the exam:

• Bring a pen with you. You are not allowed to answer with pencils or colored pencils, use only the pen.
• Contrary to my expectations and experience in similar exams, you are not expected to "completely fill the oval with the pencil", but rather to mark the correct answer with a cross using a pen
• You are allowed and indeed expected to mark your answers in the question's booklet. I was amazed when I saw somebody using a highlighter on the booklet.
• Practice and pay attention to the recordings, they play damn fast. In some cases you can notice the audio comes from people with strong accent, Swiss for instance
• Don't try to cover too much in the written assignment, 30 minutes are too short to do it and then do a clean copy. You are given a spare paper sheet for your notes, in which you can write with a pencil

Thats great..

what was your preparatory material?
How much effort did you put into preparation?
Did you make all courses before you plunged into B1? ( A1, A2..)

I learnt all regarding B1 in the Begegnungen B1+ book.

Afterwards I bought two excellent but rather expensive books. They can be used for self study or in a course, although you are expected to somehow have the basic knowledge, as they focus on polishing what you already know to be ready for the exam.

Mit Erfolg zum Zertifikat Deutsch. Übungsbuch mit Audio-CD

MIT Erfolg Zum Zertifikat Deutsch B1: Testbuch & Audio-CD

I'm more a self learning guy, so after I took 9 months of semi-private German lessons 3 years ago went on with tandem and studying on my own. If you have the money and time a preparation course may be worth regarding solving and timing strategies, etc.

The spoken part was not as hard as I expected. Just some informal chat with a partner, talk about a short text and then pretend to organize something together, in our case it was a trip to some fictional bathing lake.

I finally got the results from the exam. I approved with "Sehr gut" .

Congratulations! well deserved.

May I ask you how useful the preparation work for this B-1 exam was/is for you in practice ? I ask based on my experience(s) with English. I first learnt English in school in Zürich. Then and this was most important for me, intensivily for 3 months in London (3 lessons each morning Mon-Fri, 3 lessons 12am-1pm per week commerce+industry, 2 double-lessons 7pm-9pm per week of correspondence). The preparation courses for the Lower and the Proficiency Cambridge Exams were helpful but rather as additions. Talking with relatives in Texas, for example a CH-born uncle who in about 1965 had lost his command of German almost totally, was useful as I that way (1976/82/88/97) learnt about US-English.

And in which field did the preparation work help you most ? Oral comprehension ? or grammar/structure ? or vocabulary and spelling ?

An open word ! Just looked up my Cambridge Proficiency, which states
"qualified for the award of a Certificate Grade C", with "grade C" apparently a secret code of Cambridge University for whatever
at the Lower Certificate, they were a bit more open, showing
composition and comprehension = PASS
structure and usage = PASS
oral tests = GOOD
- at the end of my apprenticeship, I rescued myself from disaster, caused by a 2.0 in stenography, by excelling in English and French with 5.0 in the written sides of both languages and a 5.5 (the highest note actually available) in both oral English and oral French. I on the bottom line got an "average" of 4.2, just 0.2 above the minimum, but whatever "la guerre est gagnée"

Hi Mojado,


are you perhaps willing to sell your books for the B1 exam, now that you've passed it?
If you are I would be very interested. I live in BS too.

Thanks

I just took a basic German course and then went on by myself using different certification oriented books, well supported for frequent tandem sessions which made the learning easier.

For this exam in specific I bough the above mentioned books. The complete set consists of a) a Tests book with 5 different prep tests to measure the progress; b) A grammar book covering most of what you need to learn for the exam; c) An exercises book that leads you through situations very similar to those you'll find in the exam.

On the grammar side you almost don't need to learn things by heart, as the corresponding section is quite small and not very complex, it's mostly about being able to recognize what fits where in a sentence.

I would say that the most I got from the books was an strategy to tackle the exam. If I had taken the exam without the books it may have not gone so well.

Wollishofner- wouldn't a Grade C be just that? A, B, downwards to NG- no grade?
Took me a while to realise 6 could be the max grade. Thought everyone had barely passed with 5 out of ten or 50 out of 100! (Grade D in other words.)