Learning German

"A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is", Mark Twain wrote in one of his books. German is really not an easy language: 20 million people worldwide who learn German as a foreign language have problems with the use of upper and lower case letters, the conjugation of verbs, the tenses, the prefixes or the composite words like "Haushaltsmehrzweckküchenmaschine" (housholdmultipurposekitchenmachine).

Placement tests

You can assess your language ability with the help of a placement test. Such tests are also conducted by language course providers to separate the participants into groups with uniform language ability.

Similar placement tests can be found at the following websites:

• Placement tests from the Goethe-Institut
  http://www.goethe.de/cgi-bin/einstufungstest/einstufungstest.pl
• Institut für Internationale Kommunikation (Institute for international communication), Düsseldorf
  http://www.iik-duesseldorf.de/ctest/erlaeuterung.php3
• Klett Publishing
  http://www.edition-deutsch.de/lernwerkstatt/ctest
• A short language test
  http://www.deutsch-ig.com/deutschtest.htm
• Placement test from the Sprachinstituts (language institute) Austria
  http://www.alpha.at/DK/test_d.php

If your language skills do not suffice for the DSH-test or the TestDaF you will have to take a language course first. Courses from the Goethe-Institute abroad are especially advisable.

There are also many possibilities to learn the German language in Bochum. Below you will find a list of several language course providers.