Und jetzt? — And Now?

What B2 is, what C1 asks, and what to do next

This is the end of year two, so it should be honest about where it leaves you rather than flattering about it. B2 on the Common European Framework means you can hold your own. You can follow a complex text in your own field, take part in a discussion without either side slowing down much, argue a position, and deal with the written German that an ordinary life in Germany produces — a contract, a Bescheid, an insurance policy, an employment reference. Year two of this course was built around exactly those documents, which is why it went to the tax office and the works council rather than to a museum. Lena's summary is fair: arbeiten, streiten und lesen. What B2 does not mean is comfort. You will still be tired after three hours of German, still lose a fast conversation in a loud room, still reach for a construction and find the wrong one. That is normal at this level and it is not a sign that something was skipped. C1 asks for more of the same rather than something new, and this is the most useful thing in the lesson. There is very little grammar left: the passive, both subjunctives, the participial attributes, Nominalstil and the particles are the structural core of the language, and you have met all of them. What separates C1 is quantity — a much larger passive vocabulary, stamina across long texts, speed with reduced speech, and sensitivity to implicit meaning and register. None of those is taught. All of them are accumulated. On certificates, since they matter administratively. The Goethe-Institut, telc and ÖSD examinations are the common ones, and TestDaF and the DSH are the university route. Which one you need depends entirely on what you need it for: naturalization generally requires B1, though the rules around it have changed more than once in recent years, so check the current ones; university study normally requires roughly C1, as DSH-2 or TestDaF at level 4; and many employers ask for nothing at all and judge by the interview. Sit an exam if a form requires it. Do not sit one to find out whether you can speak German, because you already know. What actually to do next, in order of how much it will help. Read extensively — one book, chosen because you want to read it, finished rather than studied, and then another; this is the single highest-value activity at B2 and the one Lena names. Listen daily, and at this stage prefer unscripted speech to news bulletins, because lesson 93's reductions are the gap. Write something a person answers, which is what a language exchange or a Verein mailing list gives you. Speak badly on purpose: the learners who get past this level are the ones who keep talking while getting the endings wrong. Year three of this course takes exactly that route. It is not a new syllabus of structures — two years and a hundred and four lessons have given you those, and the register — but a year of living in the language at C1: a co-op apartment and a tenants' association, a Verein, local politics, books and theater, longer texts and longer conversations. Ich drücke dir die Daumen, as lesson 101 would put it. Bleib dran.