testmydeutsch · exam research

What German oral examiners actually ask

We took 73 fully recorded oral exams from YouTube (telc, Goethe, ÖSD, DTZ; A2 to B2, about 18 hours) and tagged every single thing the examiner says. 1,125 examiner turns. This is the source list, and the short version of what came out.

27%concrete example / tell me more about that
20%openings (tell us about yourself)
13%callbacks to something you said earlier
11%go deeper on what you just said
3.7%opinion + why
0.9%hypotheticals (what would you do if…)

The part everyone drills for (opinions, counter-arguments, hypotheticals) is under 6% of what examiners do. Most of the exam is the examiner following your thread and asking for detail. Full analysis, level differences and what it means for your preparation: read the article (also in Deutsch, italiano, français, español).

Why we did this

The AI examiner in testmydeutsch is built on these recordings. It follows your thread and asks for concrete detail most of the time, comes back to things you said earlier, switches areas when a topic runs dry, and keeps opinion and hypothetical questions to the small share they really have. The form of its questions is borrowed from real examiners, not textbook phrasing. You speak, it transcribes, and afterwards you get a CEFR-based assessment of what you actually said. Free right now, daily limits, no card.

Try a full interview with the AI examiner

The 73 exams

Tagged with a language model, spot-checked by hand. Level = as stated in the video. Some videos are demonstrations rather than real candidates; the shape of the results is consistent across all three exam bodies. Take exact percentages as approximate.

A2 (27 exams)

B1 (26 exams)

B2 (20 exams)

Full tag counts (n = 1,125)

Questions about the method, or want the per-level counts? The article has the level breakdown; for anything else, [email protected].