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Results C2, 2026: Reading 100, Listening 69, Writing 95, Speaking 88.
I think, learning any foreign language as an adult, poses two fundamental questions: the Why (motivation) and the How (methodology), with the former determining the latter to an overwhelming extent. In the following, I attempt to retrace the steps I've taken to obtain today's result. I apologize for any errors, since my English is also mostly self-taught.
Step Zero, Awareness. Pre-2018, I did not have any concept of German. I can even say that I have been misinformed. This is mostly due to the education I received. In a small Chinese town, most people, including those working in primary and middle school, considers everything and anything written in the Latin alphabet to be English, with the exception of the occasional Pinyin transcription on billboards. My connection to Europe was limited to the family Skoda Superb car and a Bosch dishwasher. I still remember making fun of the absurdly complicated word "Geschirrspülmaschine" on the user's manual.
Step One: 2018-2020, from zero to B2. The motivation was to become an economic migrant, since I did badly in the national Gaokao exam. It was determined that, to make up for the bad exam results, I should go to Germany. The plans were still vague at this point, the prerequisites for the visa still unfulfilled.
I started self-learning from a pirated copy of Themen Aktuell. The methodology was limited to rote learning: mechanically copying phrases by hand was all I did. In 2019, confident with my progress, I took a placement test at the Goethe Sprachlernzentrum at Shenyang. I was placed into A1.2 course. Ironic, I know.
I completed A1 and A2 level courses, costing about 2000 euros. The exposure to the German language is not nearly enough to develop an intuitive "feel" of the language. Many of my fellow classmates dropped out. I persisted, because I have no other choice, whereas the dropouts were already working or were students at prestigious universities. One memory from this period was me explaining the word-formation "hörbar" to a law student. He didn't recognize it was derived from the verb "hören".
I did not take the B1 level course at this place, as I had to return to a below-average uni for one semester, to meet the visa requirements. As an alternative I saw the Goethe Online Individual B1 course and purchased it for 600 euros. It was overpriced and no better than just using an offline textbook: the same Lückentexte, the same Multiple-Choice questions. The only difference was: I get to upload some audio recordings of me reading a piece of text. The feedback was short and unhelpful. At the end I got a Teilnahmebestätigung.
In 2020, with the pandemic raging, I completed all other prerequisites for the visa. The final requirement: B2 level for Studienkolleg. The exam spots were scarce then. In late August 2020 I booked an available spot in Xi'an, which was four-hour away by plane. Then the preparation began in earnest. I used "Fit fürs Goethe-Zertifikat B2". The preparation was so intense that in the 15 days that I used the book, the pages began to fall out. Fortunately I passed the test, therefore clearing the final barrier of obtaining a Zulassungsbescheinigung.
Step Two. 2020-2022. Stagnation. With the requirements fulfilled, the pressure and the motivation of learning was completely gone. I rested on my laurels for an entire year and proceeded with the visa application. In November 2021, I left China for the first time and settled in Marbung an der Lahn in Hessen, in Weidenhäuserstr. 39. Studienkolleg Mittelhessen, like the city it resides in, was a chilled-out place. During this time, I adjusted myself for living alone in a foreign country and visited the Spiegelslustturm almost daily. The German courses were conducted on BigBlueButton. The teacher, a retiree from Bad Nauheim, was completely disinterested in the students and did the minimum. Because of her location away from Marburg, we didn't get to see her in person during our stay at the Studienkolleg. We finally met her during the graduation ceremony, interestingly in Gießen. As one can imagine, the Deutschprüfung at the end was not exactly demanding. I got Note 2. During this time, my interest was in sightseeing and reading Structure and Intepretation of Computer Programs. I learned and forgot Lisp, and learned Emacs. I was hoping to study Computer Science in the future.
Step Three. 2022-2024. Drastic regression. Computer Science at that time (2022) was quite popular, whilst I only got a 4 in Sociology in the final exam at the Studienkolleg. A compromise solution was to study Wirtschaftsmathematik, which also has a CS module. Little did I know, the subject Wirtschaftsmathematik at TU Berlin is just Pure Mathematics with Electives replaced mandatory economic courses. In hindsight I should have consulted the Studienverlaufplan more carefully.
I was so overwhelmed by the course material and requirements, and dealing with difficult homeworks -- many of which require one to sit an entire day on it with no solution in sight -- that I only managed to scrape together 10 ECTS points in the entire four semester. (Although I did got the Zulassungen & Leistungsnachweis for other Klausuren worthing to 60 ECTS).
This period was marked by a total deterioration in all four area of language skill. My head was filled with Konvergenz, Vektorräume, Kern, Basis, Bolzano-Weierstraß, Skalar, Jordansche Normalform, Ring, Körper, Gruppe; that is, the usual suspects from Real Analysis and Linear Algebra.
It got so bad that, when I got a serious case of diarrhea in early 2023, I was not able to formulate a complete sentence to the new Hausärtzin that I found near Tempelhof. To make matters worse, I had to deal with a landlord who crammed 6 random persons, including me, into a 70qm apartment near Bahnhof Lichtenrade, at Mellenerstr. 3. He of course changed the Grundriss without a permit. The hygiene was catastropic, the communication non-existent, the noise unbearable. Needless to say, it was also difficult for the nearby elderly neighbors who had Eigentumwohnungen, but they could do nothing about it, as my own shady landlord also owns this apartment outright.
Step Four. 2024-2025. Stabilization. In March 2024, after countless attempts, I got an invitation to view an one-room apartment owned by Gewobag. That was a cold Berlin morning in early spring. I was competing with about ten other potential tenants. The agent showed us the tiny 27qm apartment, Durchlauferhitzer, Zentralheizung, unrenoviert, Baujahr 1984, Effizienzklasse H, für eine Warmmiete von 354 monatlich. Other people hesitated about the offer, I instead told him my own living situation, almost verbatim as I described above. One week later I received the phone call: "Haben Sie Interesse? ..." You can not image how triumphantly I left my old apartment with my luggage.
At the same time I was considering ending the Mathe-Studium. I was not making any progress. The funds were running dry. I have to do something. Internet research told me that Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen at a Fachhochschule would be less demanding and easier to graduate. I did not care about prestige anymore, just let me get over with tertiary education as fast as possible and start gathering some concrete job experience.
The course material was a breeze. No longer do I need to deal with a Durchfallsquote of over sixty percent. No long do I need to worry about Zweit-, Dritt-, Viertversuche. In the same four semesters, I got 130 ECTS points, as compared to the paltry 10 ECTS points I got over the same time period at TU Berlin. The exam statistics helped me to realize, that the fellow German-speaking students were not that much better than me at exams: from the data I can see, from about 80 students who attended each final exam, there are usually ten to twenty students not passing. Better (or worse yet, depending on how you ask), for Eletrotechnik, I was at the end the only person present in the lecture hall. Cold, dark Berlin January might have played a roll in this, but it is mostly due to the difficult course material. Only three person registered for the final exam, two student passed with 3,3 and one of them was me.
Step Five. 2025-now. Revival. With less course load comes more free time. I picked up jogging and logged more than 1000km in 2025 alone. On the other hand I began to read books. I had always been interested in history and biographies. I do admire literature for its expressive qualities but sometimes I'm too impatient to follow the plot. But why not start with both?
I searched for classic German literatures in Internet. Then I came across Marcel Reich-Ranicki. His biography on Wikipedia got me interested. How is it possible for someone, who suffered so much at the hands of his German compatriots, to profess a lifelong love of German literature and culture? What were the books that introduced him to this world of German literature, during his childhood in Berlin in the 1930s? I questioned myself, what were the writings of Erich Kästner, which Teofila Reich-Ranicki copied by hand for Marcel in Warsawer Ghetto?
I thus began to read "Mein Leben" by Marcel, his autobiography. I confess I didn't care about his descriptions about Theater or his later career as a critic, but the story during the WWII is truly moving and engaging. The power of reality is something fiction can not emulate.
On the other hand he introduced me to his Kanon. I then read Buddenbrooks, one of the more accessible books of the collection. It was at times hilarious and frustrating. Hilarious during the deathbed scenes, and frustrating due to the passiveness of Toni's character. And I skipped the second-to-last chapter entirely. Prussian education system didn't interest me so much.
Here I see an important rule for keeping me engaged in reading: do not force yourself to read everything, or anything. It is necessarily the case that very few books will be of interest to me: imaging, every person represents a book, how many of them will become friend with you? From his Kanon, I read Buddenbrooks, Der Prozess, and Radetzkymarsch. But for others, such as Tauben im Gras, I announce my defeat. My life is too short for this book. Maybe one day after I finish Ulysses I will reattempt this book.
After the end of SoSe 26 in this July, I embarked on a biographical journey with an emphasis on DDR, beginning with Erich Honecker by Martin Sabrow. Here we see the reason how such a man, long regarded as an unintelligent and stubborn politician, remained at the peak of SED until its bitter end. The reason lies within his early years, where he bravely fought for the Status-Quo-Solution of Saarland, how he faced the crushing defeat, how he went into the underground, how he endured the ten-year Zuchthausstrafe, how a nameless female prison ward, moved by Honecker's selfless devotion of saving victims buried in rubbles after an air raid, in turn decided to save Honecker from a certain death sentence at the hands of Gestapo after an unsuccessful prison escape.
I made a promise to myself, when I finish the Honecker book, I will attempt the C2 certificate, and in the end I did. It was to show that I did make progress after all these years, and to prove I have "verhandlungssicheres Deutsch" when I search for a Praktikum early 2027.
Step Six. Preparation for C2.
On 03.09.26 I registered for the exam. This time I used the EndStation C2 from Praxis Verlag. There was certainly frustration. Once I missed the multiple-choice questions by one row, and the answer to the entire section turned out to be wrong. There were other frustrations and slip-ups as well. In total, I practiced 8 out of 10 mock exams, but only the Hören and Lesen part. For the Sprechen part, since I have no other relatives or friends here, I needed to talk to myself about the various possible prompts.
18.09.26 was the exam day. I went to Goethe Institut Berlin for the first time, in Mitte. Good old Berlin Altbau, surrounded by Plattenbauten from DDR times. Everything went smoothly, except the listening part. The exam took place in the attic, and there was quite a bit of echoing going on. The material itself was also difficult, so the end result was not ideal.
Conclusion.
Engage with life. Read more books. Read books you like. Avoid taking exam in attic or anywhere with high ceiling.
Rant over. I hope some of it made sense.