Test DAF is one of the most famous German language exams; I myself successfully passed this exam last year, which gave me the right to enter a German university, so I am happy to share my experience with the readers of the magazine.

Who needs to take Test DAF?

Test DAF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache) is one of the German language exams for foreigners who would like to pursue higher education in Germany. Successfully passing it, together with other necessary documents, is a pass to a German university.

What is Test DAF?

The DAF test consists of four parts - listening, reading, writing, speaking. Each part is assessed separately on a five-point scale. As a rule, a score of “4” in all four parts of the test is a successful and required minimum. There are specialties in German universities that require only the highest score - “5” for admission. Some universities allow you to submit documents with C grades, but then ask you to provide a certificate with grades of “4” or “5”.

The cost of the exam in Germany is 175 euros. By the way, in neighboring Poland it costs less.

How to sign up for the exam?

Registration for the exam may be challenging due to limited availability. First, you need to decide when you want to take the exam - the DAF test is carried out only a certain number of times a year. Then on website You can register to take the exam. For example, the next exam will be on June 9, registration for it is possible from April 14, and this means that it is best to register on the first day from 9:00 a.m., as indicated on the website. Sometimes enrolling in exam prep courses will guarantee a spot on the list. Another option is to try to come in person to one of the exam centers and sign up there.

I managed to sign up for the exam myself, but it cost me a lot of nerves and worries, since the number of people willing to take this test significantly exceeds the number of available places. Out of desperation, I was ready to go to take the exam in Bavaria or even Poland. As a result, after two days spent on the site, I finally registered at one of the Berlin exam centers.

How to prepare for the exam?

There are various courses that specifically prepare you for the DAF test, but they do not guarantee success. I consider personal diligence to be the most important thing when preparing for an exam.

How I prepared for the exam:

Completed a regular C1 level course in Volkshochschule(at the “People's School” the cost of courses is much lower than in private language centers);

There I also took a four-day course on preparing to take the test (cost less than 30 euros);

I solved all the proposed sample tests for Test's official websiteDAF ;

Completed all the tasks in the textbook Mit Erfolg zum Test Daf B2 – C1;

I tried to listen to the radio more often, watch German television and read German newspapers (for example, in Berliner Morgenpost There are often various graphs, tables, statistics).

I can say from myself that it is necessary to prepare for the test, if only because of its specific tasks and the regulated structure of answers, especially for written and oral tasks. Some phrases (description of a graph, for example) can simply be learned by heart.

What tasks does the Test consist of?DAF?

Like any German language test, the DAF Test has its own specifics. For example, during the listening test, examinees are asked to listen to scenes from student life, from a simple dialogue between two acquaintances to a radio broadcast. The “Reading” section offers three texts on popular science topics. For the written part, a description of a graph or table is required, where you need not only to analyze statistical data, but also to express your opinion and draw final conclusions. Oral speech consists of seven tasks: first you listen to the task, and then answer it - somewhere you need to express your opinion, somewhere to describe a schedule, somewhere to ask for the necessary information.

The topics of the tasks in my exam were very diverse: I had to read a text about the automobile industry, listen to a radio program about the benefits of reading for children from a psychological point of view, and in the last task I had to “call” the university and enroll in a foreign language course.

Thus, in the DAF test, the emphasis is not on grammar, but on a person’s ability to understand and analyze information, express opinions, communicate with people - what is necessary while studying at the university.

When will the results come?

I took the exam in February, the results came at the end of March, the certificate was issued in April. Please pay attention to these deadlines in order to submit your documents for admission to your chosen university in Germany on time.

Have you, dear readers, taken similar exams in your country? How did you prepare for them?

Those who want to work or study in a German-speaking country will most likely have to take a language exam. One option is an exam. We have already talked about it on the pages of Lifehacker and gave some useful advice to those who are about to undergo it. However, DSH has a significant disadvantage - it can only be taken in a German-speaking country. What to do if you do not have such an opportunity? There is an excellent alternative - TestDaF. Our reader will tell you about the exam itself and preparation for it. Annie Lenny.

What is TestDaF

TestDaF is an exam that is used to assess the level of knowledge required for admission to a German university. It can be taken at certified centers around the world, that is, without leaving your own country. This is perhaps the main and very significant advantage of TestDaF.

The exam is held six times a year. Works are checked within 6-8 weeks in Hagen, Germany. This point is worth considering when choosing an exam date: make sure that you have time to receive a certificate before the deadline for submitting documents to the university expires.

Please note that you cannot use any aids during the exam. A passport and a black or blue pen are all you can have with you.

Tasks

1. Reading.

Three texts of varying difficulty with 30 tasks. Running time: 60 min.

2. Listening.

Three audio recordings with 25 tasks. Completion time: 40 min.

3. Written speech.

One written assignment. Running time: 60 min.

4. Oral speech.

Seven speaking tasks. Execution time: 30 min.

results

Examiners' work is graded on a three-level scale (corresponding to levels B2.1 to C1.2 on the European Council scale).

If you have a 5 (TDN 5) on all points, as I did, then your level of knowledge is even higher than required. This gives you the right to apply for any specialty, including language.

TestDaF level 4 (TDN 4) allows you to study at universities in Germany. However, some language majors will not be available because they require TDN 5 in at least two points.

You can do the same with TestDaF level 3 (TDN 3), but your choice will be significantly limited. Most likely, these will be technical specialties or those in which training is conducted in English. More detailed information about this is usually posted on university websites.

How to prepare

TestDaF tasks are very similar to Modeltest and require the examinee to have a good language base. Everyone knows how to develop it: read, listen, speak and write in German, choosing current topics.

Personally, I practically did not prepare for the exam: having the education of a translator, I simply “ran through” Modeltest tasks from a book. But I can say that it is very important to understand the logic of the test itself. During its implementation, you will probably need the ability to gather yourself in a stressful situation and correctly calculate the time. You should not rely on memorized topics - the ability to think logically comes first. If you know how to understand information and convey it to your interlocutor, separate the important from the unimportant, compare different points of view and build an argument, this will greatly facilitate your task.

Among other things, the skill of describing pictures and graphs may be useful to you. For example, I had a task to describe the operating principle of a hydroelectric power station and the paper recycling process :)

In some cases, it doesn’t hurt to use your imagination and ingenuity. I was convinced of this while completing one of the oral assignments: I had to call the professor and ask to reschedule the exam date. Without being taken aback, I blabbed something about my sister’s wedding (which, by the way, I don’t have). Speak, speak and speak again, without forgetting about grammar.

Recording your progress on oral assignments can be an additional stressor. The situation is complicated by the fact that the examinees speak in parallel. I was lucky: I took the exam alone. Despite this, all TestDaF took me about five hours. It is difficult to maintain concentration for such a long time, so during breaks it is good to treat yourself to chocolate, nuts or fruit. And most importantly, believe in yourself, then everything will definitely work out!

What it is

TestDaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache) is a German language exam for foreigners who would like to pursue higher education in Germany. Like many other similar tests, it includes four blocks: reading, listening, and writing and speaking. The exam is held six times a year in accredited training centers around the world and is checked centrally at the TestDaF institute in Hagen. The original version of the test was developed in 1998-2000 specifically on behalf of the German academic exchange service DAAD.

If you successfully pass the exam, the certificate opposite each of the four parts will indicate the degree of language proficiency on a three-point scale: TDN3 (approximately corresponds to the European standard B2), TDN4 (somewhere between B2 and C1) or TDN5 (respectively, C1 and above) . It is believed that the TDN4 level in all parts of the exam is sufficient for admission to a German university. But there are also exceptions. Thus, those wishing to study German studies and medicine are often subject to more stringent requirements - you must be an excellent student and have a TDN5 level in all four sections. But you can apply for some programs using TDN3. Therefore, it is better to check in advance on the website of the university you are interested in with which German certificate you can be enrolled in a particular specialty.

How to take it

The Test DaF exam lasts 3 hours 10 minutes, excluding breaks, the length of which may vary slightly between centers.

The first block - “Reading” - takes 60 minutes. During this time, you must complete tasks of three difficulty levels. The first step is to select suitable advertisements from newspapers for students seeking internships. On the second, read the text and choose the correct answers to the questions that follow it - using the “multiple choice” system. The third task is rightfully considered the most difficult because of its special logic. It needs to characterize the statements following the text as “true”, “false” and “those about which nothing is said in the text.” As you might guess, the last two categories often cause confusion, but if you get the hang of it, you can also learn to distinguish them from each other.

The second block, “Listening”, lasts 40 minutes. It also combines three tasks. In the first, you will have to listen to a dialogue from university life - for example, a student calling his teacher with a request for advice. The second excerpt will most likely include an interview with an education expert. The third part contains a short scientific report. After listening to each passage, you will have to answer several questions in writing (spelling errors in this section will not be taken into account) or mark the correct statements with crosses. The peculiarity of this part is that the first and second tracks can be listened to only once, and the last - twice. Therefore, the ability to quickly catch key information and make legible notes in a hurry will come in handy here.

For block "Written speech" 65 minutes are allotted, five of which are allocated specifically for familiarization with the task. Applicants will first have to describe the presented schedule (it is advised to plan a maximum of 20 minutes for this), and then convincingly state their position on the topic under discussion. First of all, it is the ability to logically express thoughts and clearly structure the text that is assessed here, and not spelling and punctuation (although the number of spelling errors should not go off scale either).

In the “Speaking” block, in half an hour you need to complete 7 tasks of increasing difficulty. If at first the participant may have to enroll in a student choir over the phone, then later he will have to argue his opinion about German migration policy. An important psychological point is that all this time you will have to turn not to the interlocutor, the teacher, but directly to the computer, which records everything said. You need to speak into the microphone clearly and loudly, while trying not to be distracted by your neighbors taking the exam. This factor should also be taken into account in preparation. Plus - there is very little time for thinking here, as in life. So the typical advice for passing this part is: develop your own system of abbreviations for quick notes.

How to register

You can sign up for Test DaF online by filling out an application on the website and paying for participation by credit card (in the Russian Federation, the cost in different centers varies, but is approximately about 130 euros). The confirmation of registration you receive must be printed, signed and brought to the exam along with your ID. Registration is for a limited time, starting approximately 8 weeks before the exam and ending 4 weeks before the exam. Since every year there are more and more people wishing to go to study in Germany, it is recommended not to delay registration. Moreover, the deadlines within which you can sign up for one of the exams in 2014 are already

TestDaF(Test Deutsch als Fremdsprache) is a German language exam for foreigners who want to study at German universities or receive a certificate recognized by all German universities confirming their knowledge of the German language. TestDaF is developed and tested at the TestDaF Institute in Hagen, and is carried out worldwide in almost 80 countries, in licensed, i.e. officially recognized examination centers.

The exam results are assessed on a three-level TestDaF scale:

• TestDaF level 5 (TDN 5)
• TestDaF level 4 (TDN 4)
• TestDaF level 3 (TDN 3)

These levels correspond to levels B1 to C2 on the European Council scale.

If you have achieved TDN level 4 in each of the four parts of the exam, you can freely begin your studies at universities in Germany (as long as you meet the remaining subject and legal requirements, of course). If you have reached TDN level 5, this means that you have very good knowledge of the German language, which is even higher than the level required to start university studies.

To study at some German universities in certain specialties, knowledge below the TDN 4 level in all parts of the exam is sufficient. Each university has its own admission procedure; when submitting an application, you need to find out what TestDaF results are required at the corresponding university for your chosen specialty. Some universities post information about this on their Internet portals.

You can take the TestDaF at one of the licensed test centers in the country in which you live or at one of the 170 test centers in Germany. The exam is held several times a year.

All exam topics and tasks are taken from various areas of higher education, because... The exam is designed for all applicants, regardless of the chosen specialty.

The TestDaF exam consists of four parts:

Reading

In this part of the exam you must show that you are able to understand written texts from various areas of higher education. You must complete tasks that require understanding of general content and details, as well as implicit, that is, not directly expressed information. You will be offered three texts of varying complexity, with different tasks and relating to different genres of writing (short messages from university life, a newspaper and magazine publication and a scientific article).

Listening

In this part of the exam you need to show that you understand oral texts with topics and language typical for high school. In total, this part of the exam contains three oral texts: a dialogue from everyday life at the university, a radio interview with 3-4 participants, and a report or interview with specialists. These texts vary in degree of difficulty and type of tasks.

You are given tasks that require understanding of the general meaning and details, as well as implied, implicit information.

Written speech

In this part of the exam you need to show that you are able to write a coherent, structured text on a given topic. In the first part of the text you need to describe statistical data presented in the form of a graph or table. In the second part, you should state your point of view on the topic under discussion.

Oral speech

In this part of the exam you need to show that you can use spoken German in various situations of university life. This part of the test consists of seven tasks with different levels of difficulty. Here are a variety of situations from university life to which you must respond adequately, for example: take part in a conversation between two students, describe a graphic image, express an opinion or hypothesis on a certain topic.

To prepare for the exam, we recommend classes with online tutors at home! All the benefits are obvious! Trial lesson for free!

We wish you success in passing the exam!

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Many of the portals and advertisement sites are replete with offers of tutors, in which one of the main advantages of the candidates is the fact that the foreign language will be taught by a native German speaker. Let's figure out what this means for foreign language learners at different levels...

To begin with, of course, it would be nice to turn to these levels, analyze what they are and how this scale is interpreted within the framework, however, we will leave these points as “homework” and immediately move on to purely practical issues of teaching a foreign language.

When starting to learn German from scratch (level A1), it is important for a person to master as soon as possible the rules for reading individual letters and combinations, to learn the most important features of German pronunciation, etc. It would seem that the medium should be an ideal source for reproducing sounds, words and sentences, but in reality, in addition to ideal pronunciation, just as significant is the teacher’s ability to give concise and clear instructions and recommendations and his ability to create support, including those, associations with which will allow the learner can quickly master the pronunciation of a new language.

Another obstacle to mastering correct pronunciation can be the regional peculiarities of the pronunciation of the native German speaker himself. There are over 40 dialects in German-speaking countries, which can be a problem even for the Germans themselves:

Adapting to them will subsequently take 1.5-2 weeks, but mastering a dialect (or even its notes) as the basis for the functioning of a language can jeopardize all subsequent work on a foreign language and the possibility of realizing a person’s planned plans. The cases presented above are, of course, somewhat far-fetched, but very clear.

Moving further (levels A1, A2), people will certainly have to deal with vocabulary, the precise identification, first of all, of the main meaning of which will become the basis for the correct use of units in speech. Fixing and assimilating an incorrect (non-basic) meaning at this stage of learning leads to difficulties in working with the language, the cause of which the native speaker may not be able to establish. It will be even more difficult for him to draw parallels with his native language when explaining the peculiarities of the use of lexical units like:

zu+hören Dat. “to listen to someone (someone’s words)” or an+rufen Akk. decomposition "to recruit someone";

Heute mache ich das lieber/besser . "I'll do it better today." (with b O more pleasure / better quality);

• Sie hatte nicht...freie Zeit . () « She didn't have much free time.»

The same applies to grammatical phenomena, where simple knowledge of the accepted norms of one education system allows you to easily explain their subtleties (levels A1, A2), for example, word order in (Germans emphasize parts of speech in a completely different way), and in the future (levels B1, B2) clearly distinguish between structures and analyze the nuances, for example: , . After all, there are cases when students, presenting in class material learned with a non-native tutor, with their precise explanations and examples delighted native-speaking teachers, who often do not think about such things, limiting themselves to statements like “ Das ist halt so.» (« Well, that’s how it is (historically)."). But lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the functioning of phenomena in the learner’s language is a serious obstacle to their rapid and high-quality mastery of a foreign language.

As for listening, hearing speakers today, even being thousands of kilometers from Germany, Austria or Switzerland, is not a problem: one alone presents so many materials that you can work with them 24 hours a day, smoothly moving from level to level (levels A1- C1). But without reaching a decent level of speaking (dialogue and monologue speech) and writing (at least level B2), communicating with a native speaker will be difficult, and due to differences in culture, mentality and individual characteristics, sometimes even painful.

In addition, one should take into account the fact that the speaker, as a rule, coming from a country with a higher income level, evaluates his usual activities an order of magnitude higher (from 25 EUR per lesson) than a non-native teacher does, even if the latter offers a wider range of services: free first lesson, placement of educational materials on, use of, extended support via Skype, etc. Therefore, a student of a foreign language should always take a closer look at what components the so-called Unterrichtseinheit (UE - educational unit of time) offered by his future teacher has.

Summarizing all of the above, it can be argued that only students who want to reach levels C2, C1, and sometimes B2 will have the real (greatest) benefit from working with a native German speaker. At all levels below, it is preferable (and even highly recommended!) to work with a teacher who speaks the student’s native language at a level not lower than C1...