PflegelingWhat is actually on the Deutsch B1·B2 Pflege exam
Most people book this exam knowing one fact about it: it is the one their Anerkennungsstelle accepts. Then they sit down and discover it is not a general German exam with hospital words dropped in. It is a professional-communication exam that happens to be in German.
Everything below follows the examining body's own Übungstest 1 for this exam. Formats change — download the current Übungstest from the official site before you book, and check the numbers again.
One exam, two certificates
The "B1·B2" is not decoration. You sit one exam and it is marked against both levels: your result can be a certificate at B2, a certificate at B1, or no certificate at all.
Five subtests are scored — Hören, Lesen, Sprachbausteine, Schreiben, Sprechen — and they combine into three results: Hören/Lesen/Sprachbausteine together, Schreiben, and Sprechen.
The rule that decides your certificate
- Sprechen is a gate. Below B1 in Sprechen and you receive no certificate, however well you did on paper.
- B2 certificate: B2 in Sprechen and B2 in at least one of the other two results (Hören/Lesen/Sprachbausteine, or Schreiben).
- B1 certificate: B1 in Sprechen and B1 in at least one of the other two.
Read that twice if you are the kind of learner who is strongest on paper. You can be B2 in reading, grammar and writing and still walk away with B1 — or with nothing — because the spoken part did not reach the level. Speaking is not the part to leave until the last fortnight.
The written exam — 1 hour 55 minutes
Hören — 25 minutes
| Part | What you hear | Task |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Four telephone messages | 4 multiple-choice, each played once |
| 2 | Everyday conversations — ward round, handover, talking with patients and relatives | 5 true/false and 5 multiple-choice |
| 3 | A team meeting | 6 multiple-choice |
| 4 | Different opinions on one topic | 3 matching |
What is scored: whether you extracted the actionable content — who, what, when, what changed. Train yourself to keep listening past a word you missed. Stopping to decode one word costs you the next three sentences.
Lesen and Sprachbausteine — 60 minutes for both
| Subtest | Part | What you read | Task |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lesen | 1 | E-mails, understood in outline | 4 matching |
| 2 | A Pflegeplanung | 5 matching | |
| 3 | Mixed texts — package inserts, circulars, legal provisions | 6 multiple-choice | |
| 4 | Semi-formal information texts | 3 true/false | |
| Sprachbausteine | 1 | Connections within a report | 8 matching |
| 2 | Professional vocabulary in a report | 10 multiple-choice |
The two subtests share one 60-minute block, so time management is part of the test. The Sprachbausteine are the cheapest points on the paper — they are pure trainable pattern: the connectors that hold a report together (weil, da, obwohl, nachdem, bis, sodass) and the professional vocabulary that belongs in it. Do not spend so long on the reading texts that you arrive at them with four minutes left.
Schreiben — 30 minutes
This is the part most people prepare for wrongly, so read it carefully: the exam does not ask you for a Pflegebericht. You choose one of two tasks:
- Aufgabe A — Aufnahmebericht. You are given a filled-in Anamnesebogen (an admission questionnaire: mobility, communication, orientation, hygiene, nutrition, the lot) and you turn it into a connected prose report. You must use all the information on the form, and add plausible detail where it helps.
- Aufgabe B — Biografiebericht. The same job from biographical notes: where the resident was born, the family, the working life, how they came to be in care.
About 120–170 words, in 30 minutes, written on the answer sheet. It is marked on four criteria: Aufgabenbewältigung (did you cover the task), Kommunikative Gestaltung (does it read as a connected report), Korrektheit, and Wortschatz.
Turning a table of ticks into flowing German is a specific skill, and it is learnable in a fortnight of daily practice. The Pflegebericht you write on shift is a different document — still worth mastering, and we cover it in its own guide — but do not walk into the exam expecting it.
The oral exam — about 16 minutes
Taken in pairs, with 20 minutes of preparation beforehand in a separate room. Of the 20 minutes in the exam room, roughly 16 are the conversation and 4 are the examiners conferring. Two examiners: one talks with you (the Interlokutor), one only watches and marks (the Assessor).
- Teil 1 — experience and opinions, about 6 minutes. You speak from a task sheet with pictures, then answer the examiner's follow-up questions. This is the one part whose content you can genuinely prepare: your training, your ward, a situation you handled.
- Teil 2 — Kurzvortrag, about 6 minutes. A short presentation, chosen from two offered tasks, from a sheet of keywords and pictures — then follow-up questions.
- Teil 3 — discussion, about 4 minutes. A controversial topic with sample statements on the sheet. You discuss it with your partner; the examiner steps in only if the conversation stalls, so a silence is your problem to fix, not theirs.
Five criteria are marked: Aufgabenbewältigung, Aussprache/Intonation, Flüssigkeit, Korrektheit and Wortschatz. Note what that list contains: pronunciation and fluency carry real weight, and — given the certificate rule above — this is the subtest that decides everything.
Five things worth practising deliberately
- Rückfragen. "Habe ich Sie richtig verstanden, dass…?" Checking is the safety behaviour the exam exists to test, and it buys you thinking time in Teil 3.
- Separating what you saw from what you concluded. "Die Patientin gab an, dass…" versus "Die Patientin ist…" — this runs through both the written report and the speaking.
- Register switching. Dekubitus to a colleague; "eine Wundstelle, die durch langes Liegen entsteht" to a worried daughter.
- Repair, not silence. Correcting yourself mid-sentence scores better under Flüssigkeit than trailing off.
- Politeness under pressure. Konjunktiv II — könnten Sie, würde ich vorschlagen — a lot of credit for a small amount of grammar.
The four courses in Pflegeling
The exam sits at the end of a path, not at the start of one. Pflegeling runs the whole path in 56 chapters:
| Course | Chapters | What you learn | Why this level |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | 13 | Introducing yourself, greeting a patient, the body, the ward and the people on it, times and the shift plan | The ground everything else stands on |
| A2 | 13 | Symptoms and pain, appointments and the doctor's visit, the pharmacy and medication, your workplace, everyday patient conversations | The level named for the Anerkennungspartnerschaft visa route |
| B1 | 14 | Shift handovers, doctors' orders, documentation, conversations with relatives, mobility and prophylaxis, conflict on the ward | What recruitment programmes such as Triple Win expect before departure |
| B2 | 16 | Care planning, emergencies, the Aufnahmebericht and Biografiebericht, the Kurzvortrag and discussion, Sprachbausteine, ethics and law | The certificate level for professional recognition |
A realistic eight-week plan
- Weeks 1–2: one full mock under timing — the whole thing, speaking included. Do not skip it because you "aren't ready": that is what it measures.
- Weeks 3–5: speaking every day, because of the certificate rule — record yourself, one Kurzvortrag and one Teil 1 answer per session. Alongside it, one Aufnahmebericht or Biografiebericht every second day, corrected.
- Weeks 6–7: Sprachbausteine drills for the cheap points, plus listening at full speed. Rehearse your professional-experience answer until it is boring.
- Week 8: a second full mock, then rest. Cramming vocabulary in the last three days has never moved anyone a band.
Pflegeling ships eight full mock tests — two per level — scored per skill with the same banding, so the picture you get in week 1 is the picture the exam will give you. See how it works.
Nagbibigay ang Pflegeling ng pagsasanay sa wika at pangkalahatang gabay. Hindi ito legal o immigration na payo, at hindi rin medikal na payo. Nag-iiba ang mga kahilingan sa bawat Bundesland at nagbabago sa paglipas ng panahon — laging kumpirmahin sa Anerkennungsstelle na hahawak ng file mo. Hindi kaugnay ng anumang examination body.