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Listening · C1

Was macht einen Text wissenschaftlich?

An excerpt from an introductory lecture on academic language: traceability, precise terms, nominal style and cautious claims.

C1What makes a text academic?1 min 34 s6 questions

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6 questions. You can keep playing the recording while you answer. Your result is saved in this browser.

Vocabulary

GermanEnglish
die Nachvollziehbarkeittraceability, transparency
eine Behauptung aufstellento make a claim
belegento provide evidence for
die Begrifflichkeitterminology
unscharfvague
der Nominalstilnominal style
die Zurückhaltungrestraint, caution
abschwächento qualify, to tone down

Useful expressions

GermanEnglish
Vorweg: …First of all: …
Es geht nicht nur um …, sondern darum, dass …It is not only about …, but about …
Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass …The results suggest that …

Grammar in this recording

Nominal style

A clause with „weil“ becomes a noun phrase with „aufgrund“ + genitive.

  • aufgrund des Anstiegs der Mieten

sich lassen + infinitive

Expresses possibility without a passive.

  • Dennoch lassen sich einige gemeinsame Merkmale benennen.

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 7 % against the script on 9 October 2026. Some differences come from the small recognition model, not the audio.
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Not yet reviewed by a human editor.
Version
Version 1, updated 9 October 2026

Pronunciation not yet reviewed by a person