Listening · B2
Wohnungssuche in Universitätsstädten
A radio report about the shortage of affordable rooms for students, with a student's experience and the „Wohnen für Hilfe“ model.
B2Looking for a flat in university towns1 min 06 s6 questions
Listen
Speed
Tip: listen once or twice without the transcript, answer the questions, then read along.
Select a line to play the recording from there.
Questions
6 questions. You can keep playing the recording while you answer. Your result is saved in this browser.
Vocabulary
| German | English |
|---|---|
| die Hürde | hurdle, obstacle |
| bezahlbar | affordable |
| knapp | scarce |
| ausweichen auf | to switch to (an alternative) |
| pendeln | to commute |
| der Einzug | moving in |
| die Faustregel | rule of thumb |
| der Wohnraum | living space, housing |
Useful expressions
| German | English |
|---|---|
| auf etwas setzen | to rely on something |
| darauf hinweisen, dass … | to point out that … |
Grammar in this recording
Reported speech in news
Reports use Konjunktiv I to show that a view belongs to someone else.
- Es fehle schlicht an günstigem Wohnraum.
zwar … doch
Admits a point and then limits it.
- Die Studierendenwerke bauen zwar neue Wohnheime, doch von der Planung bis zum Einzug vergehen oft mehrere Jahre.
About this recording
- Script
- German Prep editorial team. Original German Prep script. © German Prep. All rights reserved.
- Speech synthesis
- Piper TTS 1.8.0 (piper-tts, OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl) — GPL-3.0-or-later (licence of the synthesis software)
- Voice „thorsten“
- Model de_DE-thorsten-medium (MIT (rhasspy/piper-voices)), trained on Thorsten-Voice (CC0 1.0). Model card (opens in a new tab)
- Voice „kerstin“
- Model de_DE-kerstin-low (MIT (rhasspy/piper-voices)), trained on dataset-voice-kerstin (CC0 1.0). Model card (opens in a new tab)
- Automatic check
- Vosk (offline speech recognition), model vosk-model-small-de-0.15 (Apache-2.0): word error rate 6 % against the script on 9 October 2026. Some differences come from the small recognition model, not the audio.
- Human review
- Not yet reviewed by a human editor.
- Version
- Version 1, updated 9 October 2026
Pronunciation not yet reviewed by a person
Synthetic voices can stress or pronounce individual words unnaturally. If something sounds wrong, trust the transcript and tell us via the contact page.

