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📉 My Weakness Assessment

Where I am in German A1 right now, what my weakest points are, and what to prioritise. Based on everything covered so far, I am at early A1 / A1.1 — not a complete beginner anymore.

🇩🇪 My current level

Area	Current level	Assessment
Vocabulary	A1.1	🟢 Good foundation
Basic verbs	A1.1–A1.2	🟢 You know many common verbs
Conjugation	A1.1	🟢 Generally good
Word order	A1.2	🟢 One of your stronger areas
Articles	A1.1	🟡 Still developing
Cases	Pre-A1/A1.1	🔴 Major gap
Sentence formation	A1.1	🟡 Can form simple sentences
Questions	A1.1	🟡 Needs more automatic practice
Negation	A1.1	🟡 nicht/kein needs work
weil sentences	A1.1	🔴 Not ready yet
Reading	A1.1–A1.2	🟢 Good when vocabulary is familiar
Writing	A1.1	🟡 Communicates, but makes grammar/spelling errors
Speaking	Unknown	We intentionally haven't tested it
Listening	Not assessed	We removed it

🔴 My biggest weaknesses

1. Articles + cases — probably my #1 weakness

I frequently know the noun but am not yet automatically controlling its article/form.

For example, I've produced things like:

and:

I am beginning to encounter:

• mein
• meine
• meinen
• sein
• seine
• einen
• etc.

This will become much more important as we move through A1.

2. Verb conjugation, especially irregular verbs

My regular verbs are becoming pretty solid:

But irregular verbs still cause problems:

I wrote:

I also had:

So I understand the concept, but the correct forms aren't automatic yet.

3. Spelling and German special characters

I often know the word but type it incorrectly:

This isn't necessarily a conceptual grammar problem. A lot of it is retrieval/orthography.

I need repeated exposure until:

become automatic.

4. Natural word order

Interestingly, this is becoming one of my strengths.

I've correctly produced:

So my understanding of verb position 2 is developing very well.

I'd actually say word order is currently ahead of my article/case knowledge.

5. nicht vs kein

This is another weakness that we've already seen.

For example:

rather than:

I'll need to learn this properly, but don't worry about mastering it yet. It's exactly the sort of thing we'll build through A1.

6. Building longer sentences

I can currently make simple sentences:

But when I add multiple ideas, errors increase:

Eventually I'll want:

That requires several things working simultaneously:

• capitalization
• verb conjugation
• possessive article
• weil
• infinitive
• word order

That's A1 → A2 territory, so we're not going to rush it.

🟢 My strongest areas

I actually have several good signs.

I understand patterns quickly.

When explained:

I immediately started producing:

That's a good sign.

I don't just memorize isolated words

I've started combining them:

That's exactly what I should be doing at A1.

I can understand familiar reading

I got the Day 3 reading questions essentially 5/5 once we kept the vocabulary within my learned material.

That's encouraging.

⏱️ How many hours do I need?

This depends on what is meant by "A1."

For solid, exam-ready A1, a reasonable target is roughly:

I don't need to spend all of those hours doing grammar exercises. They should include:

• vocabulary
• grammar
• reading
• writing
• listening
• speaking
• review

Based on current progress, roughly 30–45 effective study hours worth of A1-level material is still needed before I'd be comfortably around solid A1.

For A2, considerably more — roughly another 150–200 focused hours after reaching solid A1, depending heavily on consistency and how much listening/speaking I do.

At different daily study times

Daily study	~40 hours
30 min/day	~80 days
1 hour/day	~40 days
1.5 h/day	~27 days
2 h/day	~20 days

But there's an important caveat:

I should not simply chase hours. My biggest bottleneck is automaticity, not exposure.

I need to repeatedly retrieve:

• der Bruder → die Brüder
• mein Bruder → meine Schwester
• ich schlafe → du schläfst → er schläft
• heute lerne ich...
• nicht / kein...

until I don't have to consciously construct them.

🎯 Assessment right now

If I had to give a rough score:

Not because I "know only 40% of German," but because A1 requires several skills to become reliable, and we've intentionally not developed listening/speaking yet.

My biggest priority should be:

1. Articles/cases
2. Verb conjugation
3. Spelling
4. nicht/kein
5. Longer sentences

And I would not start pushing A2 grammar yet.

I'm doing the right thing by building A1 systematically first.