I personally consider Steve Jobs to be one of the greatest oral speakers. His key tip was: rehearse, rehearse and rehearse—with the phrases you want to use in your presentation.
This made me think to myself, “Hey, why don’t I create a phrase bank to prepare for German oral exams?”
Here are some of my phrase banks for German oral exams, grouped by category. I’ve based these categories largely on the Goethe-Zertifikat oral exam rubrics, but you can mix, match and adapt them to any exam you’re planning to take.
Remember to take note of the different ways of saying “you”. You should use Sie for formal situations, such as asking your examiner questions, and du for informal situations, such as role-playing a conversation with a friend with the examiner. We’ve listed both forms below in all our phrases.
For many beginner and lower-intermediate German oral exams, you’ll need to demonstrate that you can get by in daily German life. You may be asked to role-play a conversation in a store or some other German public place. These questions and phrases will help.
For the most part, you should avoid using the du form in this context, as you would want to speak respectfully and formally with strangers.
At the intermediate stages and up, you’ll need to prove that you can discuss a topic coherently, support your opinions and address counterarguments. The Goethe-Zertifikat B1 exam, for example, requires a brief presentation about an everyday topic.
Many German oral exams will ask you to make plans or negotiate with another German speaker to demonstrate flexible conversation skills. Separable verbs are very useful here.
This connector is used to reinforce facts and express direct speech as indirect. It’s very handy when you want to express your personal opinion. This again displaces the verb in the second clause to the end.
Now that you’ve learned 59 key German oral exam phrases, it’s time to see how you can prepare for your exam.
Familiarize Yourself with the Exam Format
This is the first step to ensuring that you’ll be calm and confident on test day. You’ll know what to expect, how to present yourself and, most importantly, your preparation will be focused and relevant.
If you’re taking an oral exam in an academic setting, your teacher or professor will likely explain the scope of the test, even if it’s just the basics. When you’re studying, be sure to adhere to that structure—time yourself, discuss certain topics in the order your professor specified, leave your notes somewhere hard to reach—anything to imitate what you’ll actually be experiencing on test day.
With official German language tests, you may need to do a little bit of research to know the test structure. However, it’ll be easy to find.
For example, there’s tons of information about the popular Goethe-Zertifikat exam online. You’ll see that the A1 (beginner) level exam has a basic question-and-answer format, and you’ll need to speak for about 15 minutes. However, the C2 (advanced) level exam requires you to deliver a presentation and respond to counterarguments, also within 15 minutes.
Memorize Words Smarter with Word Maps
Once you know the format of the test, you’ll know what vocabulary topics would be best for you to study. Word maps are an incredible tool to avoid those long, uncomfortable pauses while speaking.
That’s because word maps make it easy to memorize a lot of related words at once. That way, you can be fully prepared for any topic you need to discuss in your German oral exam and handle anything that’s thrown at you during the test.
They’ll also help you get more use out of the phrases you’ll be preparing to use in your oral exam. If you have a wide range of nouns, verbs and adjectives to work with, you can easily swap them in and out of your German phrases, adapting them to specific situations.
The beauty of this technique is that you can be creative within a framework. Check out my examples below, where you’ll see that I’ve organized words both by theme (work) and part of speech.
Success in a German oral exam isn’t just about the words and phrases you use. It’s also about your body language, eye contact and overall demeanor. These are key aspects of your speaking skills.
That’s why it’s important to practice speaking German in front of a mirror. Here’s what to look for:
A confident posture, sitting up straight but calm and relaxed.
Hands folded on your lap, not in your pockets.
Eye contact with the examiner.Eye contact is a big deal in general in German culture, and more so in German oral exams. Not looking at the examiner and speaking while looking down is considered a mark of low self-confidence.
Watch and Listen to Native Speakers
When practicing for the exam, listening to native speakers can continually improve your skills. You can listen to the phrases listed in this post in action by looking for them on audio resources like YouTube and podcasts, as well as learning programs like FluentU.
FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.
You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.
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You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used. If you see an interesting word you don't know, you can add it to a vocabulary list.
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