Listening · C1
Kommentar: Brauchen wir eine Anwesenheitspflicht?
A radio commentary weighing arguments for and against compulsory attendance at university and proposing a middle way.
C1Commentary: do we need compulsory attendance?1 min 15 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 Anwesenheitspflicht | compulsory attendance |
| verbindlich | binding, compulsory |
| starr | rigid |
| vereinbar mit | compatible with |
| zu kurz greifen | to fall short |
| pauschal | blanket, across the board |
| unverzichtbar | indispensable |
Useful expressions
| German | English |
|---|---|
| für Streit sorgen | to cause controversy |
| Meines Erachtens … | In my view … |
| Sinnvoller wäre es, … | It would make more sense to … |
Grammar in this recording
Konjunktiv I for reporting positions
The commentator reports arguments neutrally with Konjunktiv I.
- Befürworter argumentieren, Lernen sei ein sozialer Prozess.
nicht …, sondern …
Corrects a focus: what matters is not A but B.
- Entscheidend ist nicht, ob eine Pflicht besteht, sondern ob sich die Teilnahme lohnt.
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 8 % 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.

