German B1.2 Intensive Course — Personal Reflections

4 min readOct 16, 2024

With Goethe Institute Germany from 16.09.2024 to 07.10.2024

💡 Want to read more? Click here for the first part
German B1.2 Intensive Course — Courses Information & Content
or here for the Mandarin version
德文B1.2超級密集班完課心得

Personal Reflections and Thoughts

My Journey Through This Course

I was taken aback on the first day of class. Partly because it had been a month since my last B1.1 course, so I had forgotten some listening and speaking skills. Additionally, I realized my listening and speaking levels were way behind compared to several of my B1.2 classmates, who had excellent German speaking abilities, engaging in rapid and lengthy conversations with the teacher. My confidence immediately wavered. After class, I discussed with the teacher whether my level was suitable for this course. The teacher said that from her observations in class, I might be more shy and therefore spoke less, but she didn’t noticeably feel that my level was lower than others. Moreover, if I returned to the previous level now, I might find it too easy and get bored, so she suggested I stay in this class.

My own assessment was that my speaking difficulty stemmed from not fully comprehending the listening part, but for other aspects of German learning — grammar, writing, reading — I could understand totally during the class, and I didn’t really have major issues in previous levels that needed revisiting. So, I followed the teacher’s advice and stayed.

Throughout the course, I actually struggled quite a bit and often felt frustrated. This level introduced many lengthy new vocabularies, with at least 40–50 new words per lesson in the textbook, which was really challenging to digest and made reading more difficult. To be able to follow the progress in class and answer the teacher’s questions promptly, I needed to rely on Google Translate to help me quickly understand the main points. Sometimes I would also ask Claude AI to explain grammar directly to me while following the teacher’s explanations and handouts. These tools are helpful for learning.

The mentally taxing class tempo left me exhausted by the end of each session. After class until the next day’s lesson, I had to spend at least two more hours to complete the substantial amount of homework assigned by this teacher. If I wanted to review the day’s content, even more time was needed. But it really is necessary to do the homework(!!) to better understand what was taught in class that day.

Throughout the course period, every day was a cycle of “class began” → “classmates spoke so fast, I can’t understand, my level is not good enough” → “learned so many new things today, interesting” → “class ended, ah so much homework” → “(while doing homework) oh, now I finally fully understand the class content”. Although it was frustrating, the fulfilling learning progress and knowing that I was improving made me genuinely happy. It could be said that I was both suffering and enjoying the process simultaneously. Fortunately, I made it to the end, slowly moving towards my goal of establishing a new life in a foreign country.

Do I Recommend It?

I personally think that the quality of courses at the Goethe Institute in Germany is quite good. The teachers and classmates I met so far are all highly dedicated, and the classmates generally have a good level of learning performance. I would definitely recommend it.

For people who can’t participate in in-person classes — those living in more remote areas where there are no local German language schools, or for those who are working and don’t have time to attend school— I think this course is an excellent choice. However, if you have the flexibility to attend in-person classes, I personally find the learning effectiveness of in-person classes to be significantly better and would prioritize in-person classes myself. I chose to take online courses only because I couldn’t find other suitable courses in a similar time slot and had no other option.

You can also choose between intensive or non-intensive classes depending on your schedule availability and the learning intensity you can manage.

My Next Steps for German Learning

After completing B1.2, I decided to pause instead of immediately continuing with the next level B2.1 course. I want to improve my listening and speaking skills first, otherwise, the learning effectiveness of the next level wouldn’t be optimal. I had originally planned to enroll in the October B1 Exam Preparation Course at Goethe-Institut Taiwan, hoping to pass the B1 exam after going to Germany in November. However, the class was canceled due to insufficient enrollment, and other German schools also didn’t have suitable October classes for my level. Therefore, I can only seek a 1-on-1 tutor.

Currently, my German learning plan from October to November (before going to Germany) is to review the B1.1 and B1.2 courses by myself, going through the parts I didn’t fully absorb during the classes again. Additionally, I‘m looking for a German tutor or language exchange partner to maintain my language proficiency. It would be such a cool achievement if I can pass the B1 exam by the end of this year!!