Analysis & Strategy

This time there is no shortcut. You’ll have to listen to 5 short texts and decide whether the given information is correct or not. This can be difficult but a few strategies can make your life a lot easier.

Tips and Tricks

1. Practice without headphones as in an exam you won’t have any either and by then you’ll be used to a rather mediocre sound quality.
   
2. Try to sit in front of the examination room. The sound quality will be much higher in row one than on the other side of the room.
   
3. Don’t try to understand everything. During practice try to focus on the verbs and the subjects so that you can quickly figure out what is going on and who is doing what.

Strategy

1. In the break after the instructions, quickly highlight seemingly important words. Don’t think too much while doing so.
   
2. Be aware of negations (nicht / nie / kein-). They change the meaning of any sentence into its opposite.
   
3. You will most likely hear most of the keywords from the tasks but they might be used in a different context (pay attention to the “langweilig” example from No. 42).
   
4. Words to look out for are auch (=also), aber (=but), sondern (=but), wenn (=if), ob (=whether) as those can change the meaning of a sentence significantly.
   
5. After doing the listening comprehension in a sample exam analyse your mistakes by listening to the audio again. Now that you know the correct answers you might be able to hear them in the audio.
   
6. If that doesn’t help, read the transcript that comes with every sample exam and try to find the correct answers there.
   
7. And if you did manage to do so, listen to the audio again (without the transcription please) until you hear the correct answers.
   
8. If a text is very difficult you can repeat this 2-3 times but after that you should just move on.