This is the question people actually ask, and the one that is hardest to find an answer to. The German Embassy tells you which certificate you need. The Goethe-Institut sells you the exam. Neither of them tells you how many months of your life it will take, because neither of them can promise it.
We can at least give you the honest arithmetic, based on the published guideline hours and on what we see in our own classroom in Accra.
The short answer
For an adult starting from no German at all, A1 takes roughly 90 lessons of 60 minutes. What that means in calendar time depends entirely on how often you come.
At one lesson a week, that is about twenty months. At two lessons a week, about ten months. At three lessons a week, about seven months. Those figures already include the fact that months have four or five weeks and that we close on public holidays.
If you need A1 by a particular date, work backwards from that date now rather than later. The single most common problem we see is people starting three months before a deadline that needs seven.
Where the number comes from
The Goethe-Institut publishes guideline figures of roughly 80 to 200 teaching units for A1, where a unit is 45 minutes. Converted into full 60 minute lessons and taking the middle of that range, you land near 90 lessons. It is a guideline, not a promise, and the range exists for good reasons.
What makes it faster or slower
Practice between lessons. This is the biggest factor by a distance, and it is the one nobody counts. Assume roughly 30 minutes of your own work for every hour in class. For A1 that is about 45 additional hours. People who skip it do not fail, they simply take much longer, because each lesson starts with recovering what was forgotten.
How many languages you already speak. Most people in Ghana already speak two or three. That genuinely helps, because you have done the work of learning a language before and you know what it feels like to not understand and keep going anyway.
English helps more than people expect. German and English are related. Water and Wasser, house and Haus, garden and Garten. Hundreds of words are close enough to guess. Against that, German grammar puts verbs in unfamiliar places and has three grammatical genders that must simply be learned.
Group size. In a class of eighteen you speak for perhaps two minutes in an hour. In a group of four you speak for fifteen. The number of hours needed is roughly the same, but the number of hours you spend actually producing German is not, and that is what builds the ability to speak under pressure in an exam.
A1 for a visa is not the same as A1 for life
Worth saying plainly. The A1 exam tests a narrow, predictable set of situations, and it can be prepared for. Passing it does not mean you will follow a conversation at speed when you arrive in Germany.
That is not an argument for studying longer before you go. It is an argument for expecting the first months in Germany to be hard even with the certificate in hand, and for continuing to B1 once you are there. Many people plan for the exam and are then surprised by the arrival.
Which exam do you actually need?
Ask, and then check. Requirements differ between a spouse visa, an Ausbildung, a study place and a work visa, and they change. The German Embassy in Accra publishes the current requirements and is the only authority on this. Do not rely on what a friend needed two years ago, and do not rely on us either.
What we can tell you is that the level names are standard, so A1 means the same thing wherever you take it, and a certificate from a recognised provider is a certificate. What differs is which providers a particular authority accepts, so confirm that before you pay for anything.
Work out your own timeline
We built a calculator for exactly this, because the honest answer depends on where you start and how often you can come. It covers every level from a standing start up to C1, shows the range rather than a single flattering number, and includes the practice time at home. You will find it on our page for German for Ausbildung, study and family reunification.
If you are starting now
Three things are worth doing in the first week. Find out the exact certificate the authority requires, in writing. Count backwards from your deadline and choose a frequency that actually reaches it. And start, because the arithmetic above only works from the day you begin.
At Studyfreunde we teach adults in groups of no more than four at our centre in Airport West, Accra. Lessons are a full 60 minutes. If no group is running at your level yet, you start one to one at the same price until one forms. You can see the current timetable, the prices, and the adult courses.
If you would like to know where you stand and what your realistic date is, come to a free trial lesson. We will tell you honestly, including when we think a deadline is not reachable.
