German | A1 Listening

Hello, this is Eren! I am starting to do listening practices in order to keep my abilities balanced in the language. I you read in my blogs I have finished A2 grammar and for a while I am learning B1 grammar. It is harder than I thought actually but I keep moving🥴 Anyway, let me tell you about my experiences with German A1 listening...

First of all, I can truly say that doing listening exercises in different languages are generally harder than you planned. I was quite panicked about what I was going to do in my first exercise. But this is, of course, a matter of discipline, unfortunately. In other words, even though I’m working on B1-level grammar, my overall German is still at about the end of A1 level. Although it takes a long time to improve in every area, when you stick to it with discipline, you get to experience the joy of knowing a new language. I motivated myself this way when I couldn’t understand a thing during my first listening exercises. I listened to some questions over and over again. I broke down the sentences and words. In fact, I made progress like this for the first few days. Over time, I realised that I had begun to grasp the general meaning of the sentences, even if only roughly. This improved steadily, and eventually I went from getting 5 or 6 correct out of 15 questions to getting at least 13 or 14 correct out of 15. What’s more, this process took about two and a half weeks. Of course, whilst the A1 level certainly made things easier, I believe I reaped the rewards of having practised that listening exercise every single day. So I can say with confidence that if you’re on the same journey as me, there’s absolutely no need to worry. All you need to do is make this part of your daily routine and aim to be better than you were yesterday. Of course, this isn’t possible every single day. But I can say with confidence that anyone who knows their own capabilities can take a step forward and reach my level.

Additionally, pausing the video to read the question and noting down unfamiliar words in my notebook—categorising them as verbs, adjectives or nouns—also played a significant role in my progress. Before I knew it, a week later I recognised most of the words that came up in the A1 listening exercises, and sometimes I didn’t even need to open my notebook.

If I were to give you one piece of advice on this matter, it would definitely be this. If you’ve read this far, thank you all. Even though I don’t have many followers, it makes me happy to know that my friends and those around me read my posts. And if there are any of you reading this who don’t know me, we’re getting to know each other through this now :) I’m now moving on to the A2 listening exercises, and I know I’ll face these challenges at every level. However, I don’t think there’s anything I can’t overcome if I make these exercises a daily habit. See you in my next blog posts – take care!