Learn German With Practice Tests on My Path

A classroom gives you explanation, a peer, and a teacher who can hear you hesitate. An official exam gives you a certificate with someone else's name on it. A practice test on My Path gives you a third object: a sitting you can repeat at one CEFR band, on one written skill, with a review step that is built in. That is not a replacement for the first two. It is the part most people skip, and it is the part this product is for.

This is the walkthrough. The bank itself is General German — about 576 items, four skills, CEFR A1 to C2 — described as a product in German practice test: CEFR A1 to C2. Grammar, reading, and vocabulary each have a skill article if you already know which cell you want.

What you are looking at on the hub

Sign in and open Education. Education is the exam-preparation shelf of My Path. It is not IQ, and it is not the personality tests under For Me. Two shelves exist: Practice first, Exams second. General German is a Practice card, with General English, General French, General Spanish, General Math, and Math Kangaroo. The Exams shelf has no live German paper. Official and school-leaving products that are off stay off; Abitur is not available here.

On the German card the level axis is labelled Level, and the values are CEFR A1 through C2. That word is Level on purpose. Maths cards say Grade. Do not look for a grade 8 German paper. Pick a band.

You also pick a skill or a topic when you want the sitting to be about something nameable. The four skills are vocabulary, grammar, reading, and writing. There is no listening and no speaking. The topic filter is a closed list. Unset, you get the mix for that band and skill. Set, you get a thinner slice. You cannot type a wish into an empty search box and have the bank invent items.

Step 1: pick Level

Pick one CEFR band. The product will not mix bands in a sitting. If several levels get selected, one band is rolled; they are not blended. That is the same design as grade bands on the maths side — why grade bands matter in practice — and it is the difference between a score you can act on and a score that averages A2 comfort with C1 failure.

If you have a recent course placement or an official result, start there. If you do not, start at the band you can read a paragraph from without a dictionary on every line, then sit a 10-item paper. Brutal: drop a band. Comfortable with time left: try the band above as a visit. Live where misses are informative.

Do not pick C1 because it looks like the serious choice. A C1 sitting you cannot finish is not ambition. It is a noisy measurement. You can always sit C1 later, as itself, when B2 reading and B2 grammar are stable.

Step 2: pick skill or topic

If you already know the gap, set the skill. Grammar when endings and word order fail. Reading when you lose the thread of a passage. Vocabulary when the stem is not there. Writing when you want production-adjacent items rather than recognition only.

If you do not know the gap, leave the skill wide for one sitting, or sit two 10-item papers in different skills at the same Level. The worse score is the skill to train. A single mixed sitting can hide a grammar hole behind a reading gift.

Topic is the finer filter. Use it after the skill is chosen, when mastery bars or a review pile have named a slice. Using topic first, with no skill and no honest band, produces a sitting that is still better than nothing and still worse than a named cell.

Step 3: 10, 20, or 60

Size is 10, 20, or 60 questions. Default is 20. That default is the right weekly object for most people: long enough to be a real sample, short enough to review the same day.

Use 10 when you are finding a band, when you are probing a skill you might not keep, or when you have ten minutes. Do not use 10 forever because it is easy to finish. A 10-item score bounces. A 20-item score you can compare across weeks.

Use 60 when the cell is already the right cell and you want volume — typically vocabulary or grammar at a band you can already work in. A 60-item reading sitting is a long time in a chair. Choose it because you have the time, not because a larger number looks more like an exam. None of these sizes is an official paper length. They are practice sizes.

Step 4: timer, feedback, navigation

Timer is off, relaxed, or exam mode. Off is for learning the item type and for the first sitting at a new band. Relaxed puts a clock in view. Exam mode is pressure. Reading and timed grammar change under exam mode; if your next real test is timed, sit exam mode on purpose, not only when you feel confident.

Feedback is immediate or review at the end. Immediate: you see the result after each item. End: you see it on the review screen. Immediate is slower and better while a rule is forming. End is the cleaner measurement. If you switch every sitting, you will not know why the score moved.

Navigation is free or forward-only. Free: you can move, flag, return. Forward-only: you go on. Flag for review in either mode. Skip with "I don't know" rather than stalling. A skip is a pile on the review screen. A five-minute freeze on item 4 is a sitting you resent.

Set these before you start, then leave them still for a week if you want comparable scores. Change one variable when you have a reason: you are ready for a clock, or you want to see whether immediate feedback was carrying you.

Step 5: sit it like a sitting

You will get written items. You will not get audio. You will not get a speaking partner. If the item is a passage, read the passage. If it is a sentence completion, complete the sentence you see, not the English sentence in your head. German word order will punish that translation habit, which is useful, because the sitting is allowed to punish it.

Do not screenshot every item into a notes app during the sitting. That turns practice into archive. Flag instead. The review screen is where notes belong, on the items you actually missed.

If you are using this next to a class, sit after the class has introduced the material, not as a first exposure to a brand-new construction. Practice tests retrieve. They are a poor substitute for the first explanation.

Step 6: review, then retry wrong

The review screen shows the score and splits correct, wrong, and skipped. This is the point of the product. Look at the wrong pile. For each miss, name the failure in one line: wrong band, unknown word, case, verb position, or I answered from the topic instead of the line. If you cannot name it, that is still information — you need a slower sitting or a lower band, not a pep talk.

Retry wrong is the default next click. Same items, another pass, while the miss is fresh. That is retrieval. Retry flagged is for the items you were unsure about. Full retake is a new sitting at the same settings, or a reset after you change settings. Use full retake for comparison. Use retry wrong for learning.

AI gap analysis is available if your plan includes Education and you have tokens. It is a summary of the sitting. Read it after the wrong pile, not instead of the wrong pile. A fluent paragraph about "word order" does not place the verb at the end of a weil-clause. You do.

Mastery on the hub will move if you sit the same cell often enough. Per-topic bars, complexity 1–5, topic master at 80%, streaks if you show up. Badges exist and are light. Do not organise the week around a 7-day streak. Organise it around one named cell.

How this differs from a classroom

A classroom can hear you speak, correct a pronunciation, notice that you have understood a joke, and set pair work. My Path cannot. If your goal this semester is oral fluency, you still need a human or at least audio. This bank will not pretend to be that human.

What the classroom often cannot give you is volume at one band with a clean retry loop. Homework is mixed. Group pace is mixed. You can sit in B1 for a year and never get a sitting that is only B1 grammar. The practice test is that sitting. Use class for explanation and production with a person. Use My Path for the retrieval you can do alone, on the written skills, without waiting for Wednesday.

If you have no classroom, you can still use the bank, but you need another source of input — reading, a coursebook, a tutor, anything that introduces forms before you are tested on them. A practice test is not a syllabus.

How this differs from an official exam

An official German exam is a credential. It has a date, a fee, a handbook, often listening and speaking, and a body that is not us. My Path is not affiliated with the Goethe-Institut or ÖSD. We do not offer their papers. We do not offer Abitur. A score on General German is a score on our items at the band and filters you chose. You cannot submit it as the official result.

Use an official mock, from the official provider, when you need format. Use this bank when you need extra written volume at a CEFR band without pretending the sitting is the certificate. If you only ever sit our papers, you will be under-prepared for the parts we do not have — audio, oral, the exact task types of that body. If you only ever sit official mocks, you will be under-practised, because there are not enough of them to learn from. The combination is the point.

Sister languages, same loop

If you are maintaining more than German, the loop is identical on General English, General Spanish, and General French: pick Level, pick skill or topic, pick 10 / 20 / 60, set the timer, sit, retry wrong. The banks are separate. A B1 German score is not a B1 Spanish score. The habit is what transfers.

Education as a whole is described in Education on My Path.

Plans, because the hub will not open the bank otherwise

Education is Student or Monthly. For Me and Around Me include none. Signup grace does not include Education. Student is €9.99/month with no trial; the CTA is Get Student — €9.99/month. Monthly is €19.99/month with a 7-day trial at €1.99. GBP and PLN mirrors exist. Student versus Around Me is a side-by-side choice at the same price, not a promotion ladder: Student trades the Around Me features for unlimited Education. More detail: the Student plan.

Sittings themselves are the entitlement. You do not pay per German paper.

A first sitting you can finish today

General German. Level = the band you can name. Skill = the one you suspect is the gap, or unset if you truly do not know. Size = 20. Timer = off. Feedback = at the end if you want a measurement, immediate if this is your first time with the item type. Sit it. Retry wrong. Stop. That is a complete use of the product. Tomorrow you can turn the timer on, or sit a different skill at the same band, or do nothing except not mix levels.

Open Education and run that loop. See plans if you need Student or Monthly to start.