lingioCourse · Deutsch A1 · 16 chapters, 100 lessons
Learn German from zero with the Deutsch A1 course by Lingio.
Lingio's Deutsch A1 course runs 16 chapters and 100 lessons in a fixed order. All the material is organised to follow what is taught in Goethe-Institut A1 classes and the Netzwerk A1 coursebook.
No card. Chapter 1 is a complete unit on its own, not a sample of one.
- Lessons
- 100
- Chapters
- 16
- Quizzes
- 116
You want to learn German, but courses elsewhere are expensive.
An A1 German course elsewhere costs between 1.5 and 4 million Rupiah, and the timetable is fixed. Meanwhile, you want to learn German from the basics on a flexible schedule, from anywhere. That is why we built the Lingio Deutsch A1 course: a way to start learning anytime, anywhere.
Nine learning stages in every lesson.
- 01
Ziel
What you will be able to do by the time you close the lesson. One sentence, no jargon in it.
- 02
Kontext
Where this is happening and who is in the room. Two lines, so the conversation is not floating in space.
- 03
Dialog
The scene. Every German line has its English directly underneath, always showing. There is no button to press to reveal the translation, because sitting there decoding is not the exercise.
- 04
Entdecken
Questions about what you just read, before any rule has a name. Look at Ich bin Nina and Ich bin Lisa. Which little word turns up both times? You spot the pattern yourself, which is why it stays.
- 05
Verstehen
A quick check that you followed the scene, not only the grammar sitting inside it.
- 06
Erklärung
The rule. It opens by saying what the thing is. Then the table, then examples, and the examples are lifted word for word out of the dialogue you read four minutes ago.
- 07
Üben
Practice on the pattern while it is still warm.
- 08
Und du?
One sentence about your own life using what you just learnt. It goes to the lesson's discussion, where other people's sentences are already sitting.
- 09
Merken
Four or five lines worth keeping. The part you would screenshot.
What is new is what a Modalverb does to the sentence. It almost never stands alone. It teams up with a second verb, and that second verb is the infinitive, the dictionary form ending in -en: putzen, kochen, lernen, arbeiten. German splits the two verbs and sends them to opposite ends of the sentence. That split has a name: the Satzklammer, the sentence bracket.
Here is how the bracket works. The Modalverb takes position two, where every German verb has stood since chapter one. The infinitive drops all the way to the end. Everything else, the object, the time, sits in the middle, held between the two verbs. Read a German sentence to its last word, or you find out too late what the person actually has to do.
| Position 1 | Modalverb (Pos. 2) | Mitte | Infinitiv (Ende) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ich | muss | heute die Küche | putzen. |
| Ich | kann | gut | kochen. |
| Ich | will | heute Deutsch | lernen. |
| Jonas | muss | im Krankenhaus | arbeiten. |
| Nina | kann | nicht | putzen. |
This is the lesson itself, not a summary written for a sales page. It is also the exact lesson that made us throw the first version of this course away: the old one told you where to put the Modalverb and never said what one was.
All 16 chapters, and what each one gives you.
A1 is not a vague feeling about your level. It is a specific list of things you can do in German, and this is where every one of them lands. 4 of the 16 are Plattform chapters: no new grammar, a workshop that sorts everything you have met so far by type, a vocabulary round-up, a piece of reading about life in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and a can-do checklist that sends you back to the exact lesson when the honest answer is no.
| Ch | Chapter | What you can do at the end | The grammar it teaches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Ankommen | Greet people, say who you are, say where you are from and what you speak, count to twenty, spell your email out loud | Verbs and how they change, ich and du, sein, statements against W-questions |
| 02 | Freunde, Kollegen und ich | Talk about hobbies, name the days, make a plan with someone, say what you do for work | Irregular verbs, yes/no questions, der die das, plurals, haben and sein |
| 03 | Stadt, Wege, Jahreszeiten | Name places and buildings, ask what something is, get around town, ask for directions, months and seasons | ein and eine, the negative kein, the imperative with Sie |
| 04 | Plattform 1 | Everything from chapters 1 to 3, sorted and checked against a list | Workshop: sentence types, where the verb stands, all the articles, Nominativ finally named |
| 05 | Guten Appetit! | Food and meals, plan a shop, get through a conversation in a supermarket, say what you like and what you want | Akkusativ, the verbs that take it, mögen and möchten |
| 06 | Alltag und Familie | Tell the time, describe your day, talk about your family, say what you have to, can, and want to do | Possessives, the Modalverben müssen können wollen, and the Satzklammer |
| 07 | Zeit mit Freunden | Free time, dates and birthdays, write an invitation, order and pay, talk about something that already happened | Separable verbs, ordinal numbers, Akkusativ pronouns, Präteritum of haben and sein |
| 08 | Plattform 2 | Everything from chapters 5 to 7 | Workshop: Akkusativ complete, the bracket in both its forms, all the Modalverben together |
| 09 | Arbeitsalltag | Describe a working day, follow office conversations, say how you get there and where things are, answer a work email | und oder aber, the Dativ, mit + Dativ, prepositions of place |
| 10 | Fit und gesund | Name body parts, make a request, get through a doctor's appointment, give and understand health advice | Imperative with du, ihr and Sie, sollen, müssen and nicht dürfen |
| 11 | Meine Wohnung | Read a flat listing, describe where you live, say where you are putting something and where it now is | Wechselpräpositionen, taught as one contrast: Wohin? with Akkusativ against Wo? with Dativ |
| 12 | Plattform 3 | Everything from chapters 9 to 11 | Workshop: the Dativ everywhere it turns up, and the Akkusativ against Dativ contrast in one place |
| 13 | Studium und Beruf | Talk about the past, describe what you did yesterday, phone someone and ask follow-up questions, jobs and applications | Perfekt: the bracket, regular and irregular Partizip II, and whether it takes haben or sein |
| 14 | Die Jacke gefällt mir! | Clothes, say which one you mean, buy something, understand a compliment and give one back | welcher and dieser, verbs that take Dativ, mir dir ihm, Partizip II of separable verbs |
| 15 | Ab in den Urlaub! | Travel and destinations, suggest a tour, give someone a route, the weather, write a postcard | man, Wer? Wen? Wem? set side by side, denn, time expressions with Dativ |
| 16 | Plattform 4 | Everything from chapters 13 to 15, then the whole course | Workshop: Perfekt complete, all three cases together, and an honest A1 exit check |
A quiz or check after every lesson, plus notes and a discussion space.
Every lesson has a quiz so you can check how well you understood the material. Alongside the quiz, you can also write your own notes while you study, and ask for help whenever you need it.
As soon as you finish a lesson, a quiz puts what you just learned to the test. When you complete it, you get a result or score that tells you whether you have understood the material you just studied.
When you feel stuck or have something to ask about the material, use the discussion thread right next to the lesson. German instructors and other Lingio users will also help you.
The Netzwerk A1 coursebook is the one used in Goethe-Institut German courses. That is why the Lingio team follows the same learning standard and keeps the material as close as possible to what is in Netzwerk A1.
Every Lingio course, including Lingio Deutsch A1, is designed so you can take and pass the Goethe A1 certificate exam. What is more, the course is built by a team who have themselves sat the A1 exam at the Goethe-Institut in Bandung.
Chapter 1 is free. A whole chapter, not a sample of one.
A full chapter of 7 lessons and 7 quizzes to check your understanding after you finish them. Complete the first chapter and you can greet people, introduce yourself, say where you are from and which languages you speak.
For the chapters after that, it costs about the same as 20 trips to a café.
Free account
- Chapter 1 in full, all 7 lessons
- Its 7 lesson quizzes and the chapter quiz
- Notes and the discussion thread on every lesson you can open
- Unlimited reviews on the memorizing side of Lingio, free forever
Pro
- All 16 chapters, 100 lessons
- All 116 quizzes
- The rest of Lingio: thirteen memorizing drills, stories, mock exams, quizzes
- Everything on the free plan, unchanged
Before you start
English. Everything you learn to say is German, and the scenes are entirely in German. The explanations, the questions asked of you, and the translation under every line are in English.
No. This is the material, not a companion to something else you are supposed to have bought. If you are already in a class it will not fight with it: the course walks the same A1 ground in the order every A1 syllabus walks it, so it works as the thing you use to catch up on the week you missed.
Not yet. Every dialogue is laid out as a table with the German and the English together, and pronunciation gets its own callout twelve times across the course: the alphabet, sentence melody, long and short vowels, ä ö ü, the r at the end of a word, s and sch and st, p b t d k g, and the rest. Recordings of the dialogues are being made. When they land they appear inside the lessons you already have, and you do not pay again for them.
The course covers the A1 can-do list and closes by checking you against it, which is the part most people are missing when they fail. Sitting the exam is its own job, and Lingio has a separate module for it with mock papers under exam conditions. The certificate itself comes from the Goethe-Institut or telc, never from us.
No. The whole outline is open once you are in, so you can start at the chapter that matches what you already have. The order matters because chapter nine assumes chapter five, but nothing forces you through a lesson you do not need. The fastest way to find your real level is the can-do checklist that closes each Plattform chapter.
As long as you take. A lesson is one sitting, there are 100 of them, 16 quiz stops, and 4 chapters that are pure review. We are not going to tell you German A1 takes six weeks. Anyone who does is selling you the six weeks, not the German.
We did. Every scene, every example, every line in every table was written for this course rather than lifted out of somebody's textbook, and every German string is read by a proficient speaker before the chapter goes live. Nothing here is an English lesson with German dropped into it afterwards.
Nothing expires and nothing resets. Progress is stored per lesson, so the course opens where you left it and drops you at the first lesson you have not finished. There is no streak to lose and no penalty for the gap.
It introduces words inside scenes, which is where they make sense, and each Plattform chapter gathers up everything from the three chapters before it. Making them stay is the other half of Lingio: the same words sit in the memorizing engine, which schedules each one for the day you were about to forget it.
Take Your First Step Today
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