About GoethéB1
GoethéB1 (b1goethe.com) is an independent online trainer for the Goethe-Zertifikat B1 exam and the Einbürgerungstest ("Leben in Deutschland"). It exists because the official practice material is scattered across PDFs and audio files, and because almost nobody sitting these exams is a full-time student — most people preparing are working, and they need to know exactly what the exam asks and where the marks go.
This page explains who runs the site, who writes the guides, how the practice material is put together, how the site pays for itself, and — just as importantly — what it deliberately does not do.
Who runs it
GoethéB1 is operated by Elif Yılmaz as an individual business, not a company or a language school. The full provider identification, including the postal address required under § 5 DDG, is on the Impressum. The site can be reached at hello [at] b1goethe.com, and the contact page explains what we can and cannot help with.
Who writes the guides
Liana Khapaeva writes the Goethe-Zertifikat B1 guides and the German-citizenship articles, and has done since 2024. Her working method is the reason the guides say what they say: she works through every official Goethe-Institut Modellsatz herself, so the task types, the timings, and the scoring described in the guides match what the exam actually does rather than what is generally assumed about it.
That matters more than it sounds. A lot of freely available advice about the B1 exam is out of date, or describes a different exam, or repeats a plausible claim nobody checked. When we have got something wrong, we correct it and say so — the Hören guides, for instance, previously described the whole listening module as single-play, when in fact Teil 1 and Teil 4 each play twice and only Teil 2 and Teil 3 play once. A reader pointed it out, we checked it against the official Modellsatz, and corrected it across all five languages.
How the practice material is built
Every claim about exam format, timing, or scoring is checked against primary sources: the official Modellsätze and exam descriptions published by the Goethe-Institut, and for the citizenship material, the relevant German law and the official statistics.
We do not reproduce official exam questions. The interactive practice on this site is written to match the format, difficulty and task types of the real exam — it is not a copy of it. Where a guide cites a legal requirement, such as which certificates satisfy the language condition for naturalisation under § 10 StAG, it names the provision so you can verify it yourself rather than taking our word for it.
The citizenship statistics are taken from the official annual figures and are updated when new ones are published, with the year stated on the page. If a number on this site has no date attached to it, treat that as a bug and tell us.
Independence
GoethéB1 is not affiliated with, authorised, sponsored, endorsed by, or connected to the Goethe-Institut e.V. in any way. "Goethe-Institut" and "Goethe-Zertifikat" are trademarks of their respective owner, referred to here only descriptively, to identify the examination this site helps you prepare for. Nothing here is an official exam product, and passing our practice tests is not a prediction of your result.
We are also not an immigration adviser, a law firm, or a government body. See the limits below.
What this site is not
The citizenship material is general information, not legal advice. Naturalisation rules depend on your individual circumstances, they differ by Bundesland, and they change. Nothing on this site creates a client relationship, and no article can substitute for the responsible authority (Einbürgerungsbehörde) or a qualified adviser on your specific case. Where an article states a legal requirement, it names the provision precisely so you can check the current wording yourself.
We also make no guarantee about exam outcomes. The disclaimer sets out the full limits.
How the site is funded
GoethéB1 has no advertising, no sponsored content, and no affiliate links to exam providers or language schools. Nothing on this site is placed here because someone paid for it to be.
It is funded directly by the people who use it: the guides and a substantial amount of practice are free to read, and full access to the trainer is a one-time payment of $9.99 after a three-day trial that does not ask for a card. There is no subscription and no recurring charge. We mention this on an About page because you should know what the commercial interest behind any recommendation is — ours is that the trainer is worth paying for once, which is a weaker incentive to distort advice than an affiliate commission would be, but it is not zero, and you are entitled to weigh it.
Languages
The guides are published in English, German, Turkish and Russian, with Arabic in preparation. Each version is a full translation of the material rather than a translated menu wrapped around English text. Where a German exam term has no useful equivalent — Modellsatz, Einbürgerungstest, Sprachnachweis — it is kept in German, because that is the word you will meet on the official forms.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Factual corrections to exam format, scoring, legal requirements or statistics are the ones we act on fastest, and the pages carry a visible last-updated date so you can see when they were last touched. Write to hello [at] b1goethe.com — the contact page has details on what to include.