Goethe-Institut Reviews 38

My experience with Goethe-Institut Nairobi has been extremely disappointing.

My wife has been taking the Goethe A1 exam as part of our family reunification process. Over time, her results showed clear and consistent improvement:

• March 2025: 20 points
• July 2025: 43 points
• January 2026: 55 points
• April 2026: 55 points

These results demonstrate significant progress after many months of study and dedication. She attended German language classes for almost a year, and we also practice German regularly at home.

After receiving the latest result, I sent a formal complaint to Goethe-Institut Nairobi requesting:

* A review of the examination result
* A clear explanation of the scoring process
* Information about whether inspection of the examination documents was possible

When I received no response, I sent another follow-up email. Unfortunately, despite multiple attempts, I have still not received any meaningful reply.

What disappoints me most is not simply the examination result itself, but the complete lack of communication and transparency. When an examination result affects family reunification, people’s futures, and months or years of preparation, candidates deserve professional communication and timely responses to their concerns.

As a customer, I expected Goethe-Institut Nairobi to acknowledge my emails and provide clarification regarding the procedures available for reviewing examination results. Instead, my requests appear to have been ignored.

I hope Goethe-Institut Nairobi improves its customer service, transparency, and responsiveness to examination-related complaints. Every candidate deserves to be treated with respect and to receive answers when raising legitimate concerns.

This review reflects my personal experience and the difficulties I encountered while trying to obtain information about my wife’s examination result.

Decent overall experience. The courses are well-structured and the teachers are knowledgeable, but the organization and communication could be better. It’s a good option for learning, just with some room for improvement.

I have been trying to register for the A1 exam on February 6 at GIZ Ikoyi since midnight, well before 10 AM. The booking page finally opened, and I went through the process, but when I reached the final stage, it suddenly told me that the slot is fully booked.
It is extremely disappointing, as I was already in the process of booking and have been making every effort to secure a slot as soon as it opened.
This date is very important for me, and I would be very grateful if you could inform me of any cancellations or emergency slots that might become available please😭😭😭🙏🙏🙏.
Thank you very much for your understanding and assistance.

Many years ago, Goethe exams were considered the gold standard of quality.
I passed B1 about 15 years ago as a kid, and it was fine.
But now…

Pluses:

+ Good visual design of the buildings, well-organized overall, modern devices and auditoriums.

+ Polite staff and clear instructions.

And that’s where the positives end.

Minuses:

- The B1 listening exam includes a three-person podcast where they talk non-stop, and you need to answer around 15 questions matching phrases to speakers. Seriously? I wouldn’t be able to do that even in my native language. I hate podcasts! And this is supposed to be B1, a basic level? The narrator never pauses, making it almost impossible to concentrate.

- Registration is only open for a short window one month before the exam. Whose idea was that? It’s the 21st century — even your microwave has AI, yet I have to rush just to register and hope to grab a slot before others do? Why not offer more exam sessions? This is just creation of artificial demand.

- No office in Montenegro, so I have to drive to another country, rent a hotel… which pushes the total cost to about $250. Not exactly student-friendly.

- Results take forever. It’s a laptop-based exam, results should be ready within a day. For IELTS, I had my results the next day. Here I have to wait two weeks. Do you employ sloths?

- Overall, the exam doesn’t really measure your actual level of German. It measures how well you’ve trained for its narrow tasks and artificial situations. It no longer feels like a language test—just a money-making machine.

their customer services are terribly ignoring the people's rights. I registered for a German language certicate exam online using their website. I was charged according to what is stated on their website. Till here, everything was all right. Afterwards, due to an important appointment at one of German government offices, I asked for changing the exam date. According to the conditions sent by Goethe Institute, it should have been free of charge. But they charged me 25% for rebooking and another 25% increase, what they claim, the fees are increased starting from 1st of July. Nevertheless, both are obvious lies. their website still shows the same price for future exam dates. They are typically exploiting people whenever, they have the chance.

Old, out-dated website.
Old, out-dated ways of teaching.
Old, out-dated and extremely expensive comparing to great alternatives.
I regret spending such a ridiculous amount of money on this literal garbage of product.
I bought a 3 months A2 online course exercises. (You can literally go to chatgpt or any AI model and ask to give you exercises... it will come out much better, up to date and for free.

The online course is a terrible product - the voice modules are slow, the UI is dated and the course lacks thorough explanations. It was a total waste of money.

On top of that, the customer care is very slow to respond (~3 days) and don't often answer the full question.

The exam rescheduling policy does not include sick notes, which would generally be fine but there is also no compassion or customer care whatsoever for any "act of god" types of incidents. I personally had to undergo an emergency surgery and was charged a rebooking fee. I asked for a contact the head of customer care, who sent a very condescending email about how I agreed in the T&Cs.

While I hated the product, the time to grade exams was a huge plus for Goethe. I will now actively go out of my way to never use Goethe and make sure I share this with everyone I know looking for a German course.

HORRIBLE. DON'T LET YOUR KIDS GO THROUGH THE S@!T THAT I HAD TO GO THROUGH. My parents bought an a2 half-year course for me (14). And when I heard the price, I was completely in awe. Ridiculously overpriced. But was it good? NO! The website for homework and tests, etc, was impossible to navigate. Nothing inside was in English, and the translation tool didn't work! Even when I managed with Google Translate image tool, I SPENT 30 MINUTES CLICKING EVERYTHING TO TRY TO FIND HOMEWORK! And it's like this EVERY SINGLE TIME. Now the lessons: The woman was horrible. She was mean, and whenever I came home at 6, I would have an hour and a half of pain with her yapping. It wasn't even useful yapping. She would not teach anything useful! For example, we spent 3 minutes discussing the dative lightly, and in the next lesson, we had a test. WTF? Then we would just spend the entire lesson learning to pronounce "TS" or some dumb crap like looking at an image and guessing where in the world it is OR doing group work. DOG WATTER. I learned more from Duolingo's lesson than from half a year with Geothe. DO EVER SPEND YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY ON THIS. And save your kids the pain, too.

I joined the online only course, so I can learn at a time suitable for me. My key issue for me is that lessons totally lack explanation. The system is also 'buggy', so you can frequently lose your work when it crashes. The course was totally tasked based, reading, listening and sorting text. I've had more fun watching paint dry, especially when you don't understand what you did wrong. This is the worst online course I have done. I found other online courses have better explanations and make learning more interesting. Totally disappointed and didn't expect such a poor offering from the Goethe Institute.

I did the online german course.
It was a complete waste of time.
It was MASSIVELY overpriced.
DID NOT LEARN ANYTHING!!!!!!
No grammar or explanations, just badly put together questions dumped on a barely functioning website.
What a waste of money!

It took them three weeks to reply a mail, impossible to communicate with. As a whole it doesn't worth the money and there are much better alternatives.

Not worth the money.

I have taken a few courses with different institutes, and I decided to try a course with Goethe as they seem well known. I had been given some warnings by colleagues who had taken these courses, and I should have listened. Goethe cancel classes and courses with no warning, but give you no leeway if you want to reschedule a course. If you are outside of the 14 day notice period after booking, it is tough luck. If they want to change the time of the course to one that doesn't suit you, it is take it or forget it.

Aside from that, the classes are basically as good as the other students are. The teachers are nice, but you spend most of your time in groups talking with people who are also just learning. For some reason, they simply cannot end the lessons on time, and if you need to leave after the lesson is due to end, you will miss the last extra ten minutes or so, which is a time when you actually might get some instructions or feedback from the teacher. If the teacher can't make a class, it will be rescheduled, maybe to a weekend, maybe on a public holiday, and if you cannot make it, tough luck.

I learn from the homework, but I could do these exercises myself for free. You can get a far better experience with a 1 to 1 tutor for less money than you pay for these courses. I won't be back.

Überteuert und unzuverlässig!
Expensive and unreliable!
I had booked A1intensive but had an accident in first week.
I had no possibility to reach the teacher or the Mombasa office to find a way to shift the course to next course period. There is no phone number for Mombasa office and teacher did not share contact either.
After my recovery i went at school and asked about a possibilty to join again: I had paid 39.000,00 kes. I was told I should have inform them (!). But to join new I would have to pay a fee of 13.500,00 kes (!). In terms and conditions 5% of course fee is mentioned which is 1.950,00 kes.
One day in first week the teacher did not come at all without informing the students at all.
I cannot recommend Goethe Institut in Mombasa at all!

I did A1-A2 online group course. Not recommended. So little learnings. They just rely on endless online exercises. Tutors are nice/friendly but they teach so little and always send you to do partner & group activities (mostly speaking) 80% of the time. Problem is, its hard to learn how to speak German when you both dont know how to speak German - no one corrects the grammar or knows the german word when in group/partner activities & always ended up speaking english anyway. It’s somewhat feels like a SELF STUDY & not worth the price.

I’m surprised about the negative comments here. I attended 5 intensive courses with GI and the quality was top.

I bought the only German course on sale for $99. I was determined to improve my German but the lessons were so boring. It was like a text book from the 80s and the interface was just to repetative. Maybe it will work for some, everyone learns differently, but that pace was just so slow and it just made we want to turn it off. I had several months to get through as many lessons as I could but only made it through mayby three chapters.