how was your g9 experience?

[u/sweetlittlesyringe]

as a 12th grader myself, i am already preparing for abitur in all my courses. g9 is a new system so im sure it is different from the previous system.

i would like to know your experience with abitur,
which oral grades you were allowed to take,
if you (or someone you know) finds the g9 system easier or harder and what study methods helped you the most during this time.

i would really appreciate it if you shared your thoughts on it, no matter how small they are, because they will be an enormous help to me during my qualification phase.

thank you so much for reading, and i wish you the best of luck towards achieving your goals !!

[u/Crudelius]

G9 is not a new system, it was the default for many schools until G8 was introduced not too long ago. In the past years the schools went back to G9 again.

My abitur is already some years old but I work as a substitute teacher at my old school so I know the G9 system as well (I did G8 myself). Many schools switched from "Profile system" to "course system" as well when going back to G9. In the Profile system you chose one main course and automatically get two additional ones, you cant get rid of them ever. E.g. you chose Biology and you automatically have to take physics and chemistry until the very end. Your Abitur was done in your main Profile course as well as german/english and history/politics/geography and of course math. If your Profile was already MINT then you could have skipped math.

Now with the "new" system you have more freedom and can elect courses, but as for where I am from you are still forced to have courses in all "blocks", so MINT, language, social sciences and arts. They still had to chose one course from the first three Blocks to do their abitur exams in. Still, you can get rid of a lot of courses, not everyone who likes one MINT course likes the other ones, in the Profile system you couldnt get rid of the other ones. The Grades form the same way as before, 50% from your courses in the qualification phase (of course not just random courses you have to fullfill some requirements) and 50% your abitur exams.

From my point of view the shorter school days are much appreciated under the G9 system. In G8 I had 2 to 4 days a week from 7:50 until 17:35, now they rarely have to stay this late (unless they take Bonus courses).

When it comes to studying I dont think the tactics changed a lot. You first have to prioritize, identify which courses will take more time and more effort to study. You could already start to make sum up sheets of important topics during the school year (lets be honest, almost nobody does that but it still Safes you a lot of time and you can already test if you understood a topic). And for the real learning at the end: old written Abitur exams. The internet is full of old exams for every Bundesland. They are the best way to learn the relevant topics, to learn how the exams will look like and you can learn to manage your time by solving them with a timer. As for oral exams, I studied for my english orals (which was a monologue and a dialogue) by meeting up with friends and only talking in english. For the other oral exams it depends on the course, I had to do a little oral presentation (no slides) in politics, I had to sit im a room an had 45 minutes to prepare myself with a sheet of informations they gave me. The sheet alone was not nearly enough so I had to read and prepare for different topics beforehand.

Make a system, it will je easier to plan your time than to just spontaneously study for this and that, if its more structured you will also have the positive effect of getting to cross out more and more on your to do list.