Home → Blog → German B1 Syllabus: Complete Topic Break...

👩‍🏫 Kritika Rai 📅 13 Aug 2026 ⏱ 11 min read

B1 is the level most people actually need. Study visas, permanent residence applications and most Ausbildung placements all ask for it. It is also the biggest jump in the CEFR ladder, because B1 is where you stop translating from English in your head and start thinking in German. ## What B1 means in practice At B1 you can handle most situations that come up while travelling in a German-speaking country, describe experiences and events, and give brief reasons for your opinions. You are not fluent. You are independent. ## Grammar covered at B1 **Konjunktiv II** — the subjunctive. Polite requests (*Könnten Sie…*), hypotheticals (*Wenn ich Zeit hätte…*) and advice (*An deiner Stelle würde ich…*). This is what separates B1 from A2 more than anything else. **Passive voice** — both present and past. Essential for reading anything official, which is most of what you deal with in Germany. **Relative clauses** — joining sentences with *der, die, das, dessen, deren*. Your writing stops sounding like a list once you have these. **Adjective endings in all cases** — nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Tedious to learn, and unavoidable. **Connectors** — *deshalb, trotzdem, obwohl, während, seitdem*. These carry the logic of an argument and examiners look for them. **Verbs with prepositions** — *sich freuen auf, warten auf, denken an*. There is no rule; these are memorised. **Indirect speech** — reporting what someone else said. ## Vocabulary themes Work and job applications. Health and the doctor's surgery. Housing and rental contracts. Education and training. Travel and transport. Media and technology. Environment. Relationships and social life. Money and banking. Bureaucracy — *Anmeldung*, *Krankenkasse*, *Termin*. Expect to be comfortable with around 2,400 words by the end of B1. ## The exam sections **Lesen** — 65 minutes, five parts. Blog posts, ads, opinion pieces, instructions. **Hören** — 40 minutes, four parts. Announcements, conversations, radio pieces, interviews. **Schreiben** — 60 minutes, three parts. A personal email, a forum post giving an opinion, and a formal message. **Sprechen** — about 15 minutes, in pairs. Planning something together, presenting a topic, and responding to questions. Each section is scored separately. At Goethe you can pass sections independently and retake only the one you failed, which is worth knowing before you panic about a weak area. ## How long it takes From A2, plan on four months of regular classes plus daily practice. From zero, B1 takes around ten months including the earlier levels. People who try to compress this usually stall at B1 because the grammar load is genuinely heavier than anything before it. ## The honest difficulty A1 and A2 reward memorisation. B1 does not. You are asked to produce language, not recognise it — to give an opinion and justify it, in writing and out loud, under time pressure. Students who coasted through A2 on vocabulary lists tend to hit a wall here. The fix is speaking hours, not more vocabulary.