German B1 letter writing: the blueprint and the Redemittel

Every German letter and email, from a two-line text message to a formal complaint, is built from the same five parts in the same order. The parts are the Betreff (the subject line, in emails only), the Anrede (the greeting), the Einleitung (the opening line), the Hauptteil (the body) and the Gruß und Name (the sign-off and the name). Once this skeleton is in your hand, every letter type becomes a variation of it, and an exam marker recognises the shape before reading a single word of content.

The five parts

A part of a letter is a slot that always carries the same kind of content, whatever the letter is about. Read the short email below as a whole first, then find the slots in it. The sender is asking a language school when an evening course starts, so the register is formal and the addressee is unknown.

The table names each slot and shows what it holds in this email. The book counts five parts because the Schluss (the closing sentence) belongs to the Hauptteil and the Gruß and the Name form one unit, but it helps to see all seven lines labelled once.

Two punctuation rules

Two small rules trip up almost every learner, and both stand in the most visible lines of the letter. The first is the comma rule. The greeting ends in a comma, never an exclamation mark in modern usage, and the first line of the body continues that same sentence, so it starts with a lowercase letter. The second rule concerns the sign-off. Mit freundlichen Grüßen takes no punctuation at all, and the name follows on the next line.

Greeting and sign-off pairs

A greeting and a sign-off are a matched pair, and the match is by register, that is, by how formal the relationship with the reader is. Four rows cover every letter in the book. The exams expect you to choose the right row for the addressee named in the task, so this table is worth memorising completely.

Notice that the adjective ending does the work of telling the reader who is addressed. It is Liebe Eva but Lieber Tom, Sehr geehrte Frau Weber but Sehr geehrter Herr Braun. Getting this ending wrong is the most visible mistake a letter can make, because it stands in the very first line, before the marker has read anything else.

du or Sie

The register decision comes before the first word. Write du (and dein, dir, dich, all lowercase) to friends and family. Write Sie (and Ihr, Ihnen, always capitalised) to strangers, offices, companies and teachers. In the exams the task tells you which one to use. An email to Ihre Freundin Eva (your friend Eva) is a du-text, and a letter to die Sprachschule (the language school) is a Sie-text.

Mixing the two inside one letter costs marks in both Goethe and telc. Decide before you write, and then check every pronoun on your way out. The sample email above is a Sie-text throughout, with Ihre Antwort, Ihrem Kurs and Ihre Nachricht, while the Eva example uses deine E-Mail.

The Redemittel of the skeleton

Redemittel are set phrases that fill a slot without needing to be composed afresh each time. The ones below come from the two model lines above, and each is tied to the part of the letter it serves. Learn them by slot rather than as a list, so that when you reach the Einleitung the phrase is already waiting.

The six connectors that make a text B1

An A2 text and a B1 text often contain exactly the same facts. The difference is connection. The B1 writer tells the reader how each sentence relates to the one before it, whether it follows from it (deshalb), holds in spite of it (trotzdem) or adds to it (außerdem). These little words are the cheapest marks in the entire exam, and six of them do most of the work.

The one thing you must control with these words is where the verb goes. The six fall into three families, and each family sends the verb to a different slot. Compare the three clauses below, all built from the same two facts, and watch where the verb lands, in second position or at the very end.

The words also come in pairs of meaning. weil introduces the reason and deshalb introduces the consequence, so they are two sides of the same coin. Likewise obwohl sits in the clause with the obstacle, and trotzdem sits in the clause that defies it.

Before and after

Here are four A2 sentences and then the same facts as one B1 passage. Not a single fact is added, only the connections between them.

That transformation, applied once per paragraph, is the whole distance from A2 to B1 in a letter. You do not need more vocabulary. You need weil for reasons, deshalb for consequences, trotzdem for contrast, and außerdem whenever you add a point. Aim for three or four connectors per letter, not one per sentence, because an over-connected text sounds as mechanical as an unconnected one.

Where this comes from

This page condenses the two Grundlagen chapters of The Art of Writing, namely Der Bauplan (the blueprint) and Wörter, die verbinden (words that connect). The blueprint chapter carries the same model email with its parts labelled in the margin, the full greeting and sign-off table, and the register rules for du and Sie. The connectors chapter adds the slot diagrams for the three verb positions and the before-and-after passage reproduced above.

The rest of the book applies this skeleton unit by unit, each unit giving a task, a simple Version A, a connected Version B, a list of the differences, a set of Redemittel and a writing assignment with a model solution. A worked exam unit is taken apart on Goethe / telc B1 Schreiben: a model letter, sentence by sentence, and the connectors get their own page at weil, denn, deshalb: German connectors and where the verb goes. A free sample of the book is available on the book page.

Continue with

• Goethe / telc B1 Schreiben: a model letter, sentence by sentence
• weil, denn, deshalb: German connectors and where the verb goes