How Schreiben is marked — at Goethe, telc and ÖSD

Examiners don't read your text by feel but with a marking sheet. Know the criteria and you know where the points are — and that a forgotten guiding point usually costs more than ten grammar mistakes.

Updated 16 October 2026 · 7 min read · Rilke editorial team

The criteria at a glance

At heart, all three exam boards ask the same thing: did you fulfil the task? Is the text well structured and appropriately worded? How wide-ranging and how accurate is your language? They just divide it up differently.

The Zertifikat B1 is a joint exam of the Goethe-Institut and ÖSD; there, both use the Goethe criteria.

Goethe: four criteria

• Erfüllung (task fulfilment) — are all points of the task covered, at the right length and in the right register? At A2 the criterion is called Aufgabenerfüllung.
• Kohärenz (coherence) — is the text structured (greeting, opening, order, closing)? Are sentences and clauses linked?
• Wortschatz (vocabulary) — range and control: how varied is it, and do slips get in the way of understanding?
• Strukturen (structures) — range and control of grammar, including spelling.

Each criterion gets a band. One special rule is decisive: if task fulfilment gets the lowest band, the whole task scores zero. A text that misses the topic cannot be saved by good grammar. At A1 a simpler scheme applies: what counts above all are the content points of the short message.

telc: three criteria at B1 and B2

• Aufgabenbewältigung (task completion) — does the text cover the task? At B2 you choose from four points: at least three — or two plus an aspect of your own that fits the situation.
• Kommunikative Gestaltung (communicative design) — structure, linking, register, range of expression. The band drops if features of the text type are missing (for the B1 email, the greeting and sign-off, for example), if the register wavers, if the points sit side by side without links — and even if most sentences start with Ich or Wir.
• Formale Richtigkeit (formal accuracy) — sentence structure and forms. Systematic mistakes weigh more than occasional ones.

Each criterion is rated A, B, C or D, and the three count equally. telc accepts all standard varieties of German — Austrian and Swiss forms are not mistakes. At C1, telc uses four criteria of its own, among them Repertoire: how complex and varied your wording is.

ÖSD: five positions from B2

At B2 and C1, ÖSD marks in finer detail:

• Aufgabe (task) — here points are deducted if requirements are missing or treated too briefly. If the task is barely or not at all addressed, it is failed.
• Kommunikative Angemessenheit (communicative appropriateness) — text type, greeting and sign-off, reference to situation and reader, the right register.
• Textaufbau (text structure) — logical organisation, referring and linking words.
• Lexik/Ausdruck (vocabulary and expression) — precise, varied word choice.
• Formale Richtigkeit (formal accuracy) — morphology, syntax, spelling and punctuation, explicitly in one criterion at ÖSD.

One thing to know about ÖSD: a text with less than half the required length counts as not fulfilled.

What is the same everywhere

1. Content comes first. Every point of the task must be there — recognisably, and with more than half a sentence.
2. The tone must be right. Du or Sie, the matching greeting and sign-off, throughout.
3. Links count. A text made only of short main clauses is not good at any level above B1.
4. Mistakes weigh differently. What disturbs understanding costs a lot; a wrong article in a complex sentence costs little. If you attempt something ambitious and make small mistakes, you often fare better than someone who writes only simple sentences without errors.

A marking, step by step

This is what a correction looks like in the Rilke app — using a B1 example. The task and the text are our own; the mistakes are typical for the level.

In short: your friend Sabine is moving at the weekend and asks for help — thank her, say whether you can help and why, and suggest a time.

Result: 68 out of 100 — a pass. A friendly, complete answer: all three points are covered and the tone fits a message to a friend. What costs points is the sentence structure, plus a detour that has nothing to do with the move.

What Anna should do next: check the verb position in every subordinate clause, cut whatever serves no point of the task, and add two or three set phrases — Das klingt gut, Wenn es dir recht ist, Ich melde mich noch.

And with Rilke?

In the Rilke app every text you write gets an assessment against the criteria of your exam — Goethe, telc or ÖSD — with a score out of 100, the reasons for each criterion and your specific mistakes with corrections. What the tasks themselves look like is shown in the guide to Schreiben B1.