Hey, I took and passed the German CLEP - 79. But well I am German and I missed one question because I got distracted by someone freaking out in the testing center
What I can tell you about my personal experience from the test is the following:
The listening section I would imagine rather difficult without the proper knowledge, you need a pretty broad vocab, the grammar is not as important as you might think.
Most of the questions make the impression, they are taken out of the things tourists would say. "Tim fragt Steffi :In welche Richtung ist der Bahnhof?" (Tim asks Steffi: In which direction is the train station) And the question would go something like this(all options in German)
(A)"Moechte Tim wissen, ob Steffi den Bahnhof sucht?" (Does tim want to know if steffi is looking for the train station?)
(B)"Hat Tim Interesse mit dem Zug zu reisen?" (Is tim interested in traveling with a train) --
Yes he is
Then theres C and D. So as you can see mostly they will not ask for a "translation" or restatement of the question as "Fragt tim steffi wo der Bahnhof ist?" (Is tim asking steffi where the train station is?) They wont make it that easy.
The answers that are correct are more along the line of this string of thought --> if tim is asking for the location of the train station, what will he probably intend to do with this knowledge, not just go there, but much rather "he intends to travel, etc".
The multiple choice type is basically the same as the listening. They will give you a sentence "Sebastian lebt in Muenchen und will den Sommer in New York verbringen"(Sebastian lives in Munic and wants to spend the summer in New York). The Question-Answer section would look like this :
"Wenn Sebastian nach Amerika reisen moechte braucht er" (If sebastian wants to travel to America he will need :
(A) Eine Zugroute (A train rout)
(B) Ein Auto (A car)
© Eine Karte von Europa (A map of europe)
(D) Ein Flugzeugticket (An airplane ticket)
Some of the questions are very ridiculous, but if you just miss some of the important vocab for some of the questions even deduction skills wont do you any good. For this question if you recognize "Amerika" in the question and realize that "Muenchen" is a city in Germany, you only have to know "Flugzeugticket" to find the obvious answer.
I cannot really give you any learning advice, only my insight of this test. I was raised Bilingual, so i did not really have to "learn" any of the two languages.
What my father did to learn German, he read the newspaper specifically the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)" maybe you can google it.
This is about the hardest thing to read in German, it is even to much for some Germans (if they are retarded uneducated people).
BUT if you can read and understand half of what is going on in the "FAZ" I guarantee you, you will score at least a 65 on the test, if not, I will pay for your Clep fees
P.s. If you want to know anything else, or maybe chat !in german! i'd be glad to help. My email is
maxpowell90@yahoo.de
P.s.s. Its just until may 5 I wont have any time, I got a Statistics and Macro Eco Final Mon/Tues and I will try to CLEP (and miserably fail) College Algebra. I gotta try before this semester and with all my finals I had know time to study and i am so lazy as it is...