TL;DR: A student's journey to passing the B1 German exam in just 14 days of preparation - what worked, what nearly didn't, and what this says about intensive language learning. >B1 in 14 Days - II

It's been done, but only by someone who already had a strong foundation and used extremely focused, structured study methods.

>B1 in 14 Days - II SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM'FOR UPDATES I had plans to launch a new B114 project near the end of 2016 but when Justin contacted me and convinced me that he'd be able to repeat the success of the first project, I thought why not see, what can be done without much preparation. Justin knew a bit of German but his actual German was rather a hindrance then of help with such an ambitious project. I made no promises to Justin and also told him that I wouldn't have the time I had back then with Ewelina but his spirit remained unbroken. So we met daily for about 30-40mins and he had 30mins of daily conversation lessons with a conversation trainer of mine (I don't hire those anymore these days because Deutschgym (aff link) does a much better job for a lot less money) and the rest is on him. I expected him to study for at least 9 hours per day according to my instructions and to stay away from any drug or party-related sleep deprivation. This was a serious undertaking for all of us. We found a school that offered a TELC B1 exam on the 4th of March 2016, exactly 14 days after his arrival here in Berlin and travelled over 1000 km by car just to get here. This shows exactly the kind of dedication that I sought in a participant and I was hopeful that we would make immense progress in just two weeks.

UPDATE [04.03.2016]

Justin has written the exam on the third of March 2016. We are now waiting for the results which might take up to six weeks (that would mean latest by mid April 2016 we should know more).

UPDATE [25.03.2016]

The results are here.'Justin passed his B1 exam after just 14 days preparation with flying colors. Hut ab und Herzlichen Glückwunsch.

UPDATE [01.04.2024]

8 years later I'm considering another project of a similar nature as the one above. I'll teach one participant for one full month in which they'll work with my state of the art German online courses for 8 hours per day and we'll see how far they'll come. The main difference to the B1 in 14 days projects is that we don't just aim at hacking the B1 exam. This time it's all about depth and quality. I estimate that we'll cover A1 and A2 in that time and that it will have an immense impact on the participant's motivation to continue their German studies on their own. If successfull, I'll continue this project by up to 2 more months, if possible with the same person, if not with a new one but then with lowered requirements. If you want to find out more check out this YouTube video of mine and make sure to subscribe to not miss out on this very interesting project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9c0Oyixqis&t=1s

UPDATE: As of May 23rd Salma has passed her A1 exam easily after just 19 days of working with my A1 German Beginner's course.

Don't worry if you don't have this much time to study German. Even 3x 20mins per week will do the job if you are persistent enough. If you need a bit of support I can only recommend that you check out my courses which do a fantastic job at providing a crystal clear structure, explain everything in easy to understand English and help you practice all necessary skills completely on your own thanks to their intelligent use of simple to use software (all free respectively included). Try it for free and feel it first hand.