Cambridge IGCSE German 0525/12 is the May/June 2026 Paper 1 (Listening), variant 2. It lasts about 50 minutes, including 6 minutes to transfer your answers, is worth 40 marks and is sat by every 0525 candidate. There are 37 compulsory questions on six recordings, each played twice, and the hardest section was the sleep expert interview, where wrong options reused facts and figures you actually hear. This guide gives the official answer to every question, what in the recording points to it, and where the traps were. The paper, transcript and mark scheme are free on the Tutopiya Learning Portal.

For an overview of all the 0525 papers from this series, see IGCSE German 0525 May/June 2026 past papers: what came up and how it was marked.

0525/12 at a glance

Questions	Format	Recording	Marks
1–8	Short exchanges, choose a picture or time (A–D)	Two parents at the breakfast table	8
9–14	Radio report, choose a picture or number (A–D)	Six recommended podcasts	6
15–19	Match each month to a statement (A–F)	Martina reads her grandmother’s diary to Julian	5
20–28	Two interviews, choose A, B or C	Paul and Oksana on starting at new schools	9
29–34	Interview, choose A–D	Sleep expert Karoline Rakers	6
35–37	Choose two statements from A–E	Felix invites Maria to the zoo	6
Total			40

You shade one letter for Questions 1 to 34 and two letters for Questions 35 to 37. Each correct letter scores one mark. Dictionaries are not allowed.

Question-by-question walkthrough

Questions 1–8: at the breakfast table (8 marks)

Eight very short exchanges between Mutti and Vati, each heard twice. The answers are pictures, apart from Question 3, which offers four times.

Question	What it asked	Answer
1	What Mutti would like	C (another cup of coffee)
2	Where Vati is going today	A (the dentist)
3	The time of the appointment	D (9.45, “Viertel vor zehn”)
4	What Mutti is doing today	B (working from home)
5	What the children like to eat	C (pasta)
6	What Thomas plays	D (handball)
7	Best way for Vati to get to Berlin	A (by train)
8	Where the car key is	B (on the windowsill, next to the plant)

Question 3 is the one to practise: you need to turn “Viertel vor zehn” into 9.45 rather than picking one of the other times on offer (8.30, 9.00 and 9.20). Question 5 also mentions the supermarket, so make sure you answer what the children eat, not where the food comes from.

Questions 9–14: six podcasts (6 marks)

A radio presenter recommends six podcasts, with a short pause halfway through.

Question	What it asked	Answer
9	What Marco and Karin bought for their trip	B (a camper van)
10	How many episodes the gardening podcast has	C (25)
11	Which animal the science podcast discusses	B (cats)
12	What Christine and Mona recommend	D (books)
13	What soup Jana’s mother made	A (chicken soup)
14	What the last podcast helps with	A (falling asleep)

In Question 9 the couple also quit their jobs and let their flat, so listen for the verb “gekauft”. In Question 10 the options were 12, 15, 25 and 42, so “fünfundzwanzig” had to be caught exactly.

Questions 15–19: the grandmother’s diary (5 marks)

Martina tells Julian what her grandmother Annegret wrote at 15 or 16. You match five months to six statements, so one statement is left over.

Question	Month	Answer
15	February	D (a lovely card, on Valentine’s Day)
16	April	B (went dancing with friends, at a disco on her birthday)
17	June	F (lots of schoolwork, revising for a maths test)
18	August	A (disagreed with her parents, who wouldn’t let her go on holiday)
19	October	C (abroad, on an exchange in Manchester)

Statement E, an accident, was not used. The August entry is the subtle one: the holiday is mentioned, but she didn’t go, so C belongs to October, not August.

Questions 20–28: Paul and Oksana at new schools (9 marks)

Two interviews, each heard twice, with three options per question.

Paul (Questions 20–24):

Question	Answer	Why
20	A	His father had been unemployed for a long time, then got a job far from Hamburg
21	B	He thought the move was unfair at first
22	C	He settled in quickly, helped by joining the football games at break
23	B	Noisy classmates disturb him, so concentrating can be hard
24	B	His younger sister is still at primary school

Question 23’s option C is the trap: he says he gets more homework than at his old school, not less. In Question 24, option A fails because the sister is younger.

Oksana (Questions 25–28):

Question	Answer	Why
25	C	She would rather have stayed, but her town was too dangerous
26	B	She learned only English at her old school and started German on an intensive course here
27	C	History and German are still hard; maths is easier
28	A	Classmates are friendly at school, but she rarely sees them outside it

Option A in Question 25 fails because she came with her mother.

Questions 29–34: the sleep expert (6 marks)

The longest and densest interview, with four options per question and a pause in the middle.

Question	Answer	Why
29	D	Without sleep you collapse after 9 days; without food you can survive three weeks
30	C	It is established that sleep helps the body fight illness
31	D	Warm milk with honey calms you and helps sleep
32	A	Exercise three hours before bed makes you pleasantly tired
33	C	Blue light from screens suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin
34	C	Some politicians are proud of needing only three or four hours

This section is built on near-misses. In Question 29, option A says a quarter of our lives, but she says a third, and option C turns the 9 days into 9 hours. In Question 30, option A is wrong because she says the science is not fully explained yet. Option A in Question 31 is sleeping pills, which she wants people to avoid taking too quickly. In Question 32, she recommends a dark, well-aired room, so options C and D reverse her advice. In Question 34, option D gives the three or four hours to sleep researchers, but in the recording it is the politicians who claim it, and the researchers recommend seven hours.

Questions 35–37: Felix and Maria on zoos (6 marks)

A longer conversation with two pauses. Each question has five statements, and you choose the two that are true.

Question	Answers	Why
35	C and E	Felix is planning a zoo trip with his cousin’s children; Maria liked zoos as a child but now feels sorry for the animals
36	B and C	Maria thinks animals can be seen better on television; Felix says modern enclosures are more natural
37	A and E	Felix says zoos help endangered species survive; Maria asks him to buy her an ice cream

The wrong statements each twist a detail. In Question 35, Maria found visiting relatives tiring (A), Felix finds his cousin annoying (B) and Maria hesitates rather than accepting at once (D). In Question 36, the Berlin Zoo figure in the recording is 20,000 animals, not 30,000 (D), and the tiger point is that it would need over 20 square kilometres in the wild (E). In Question 37, Maria hasn’t been to a zoo for years (D), and she does change her mind and agree to go (B).

Where the marks are on 0525/12

• Picture and number choices carried 14 marks (Questions 1 to 14). These are the short, everyday items, and secure numbers and times decide several of them.
• Matching carried 5 marks (Questions 15 to 19), with one spare statement.
• Three-option questions on the two interviews carried 9 marks (Questions 20 to 28).
• Four-option sentence questions carried 6 marks (Questions 29 to 34), the most demanding section for vocabulary.
• Two-from-five questions carried 6 marks (Questions 35 to 37), one mark per correct letter.
• Numbers and figures decided at least six marks: the appointment time (3), the episode count (10), the third of our lives and the 9 days (29), the three hours before bed (32), the three or four hours’ sleep (34) and the 20,000 animals (36).

How to self-mark 0525/12 with the mark scheme

1. Check each letter against the key above or the official mark scheme. Questions 1 to 34 are one mark each.
2. Mark Questions 35 to 37 one letter at a time. Each correct letter scores a mark, so one right and one wrong still earns 1 out of 2.
3. Read the transcript for every wrong answer. Find the sentence that gives the answer and the words that made your choice look right.
4. Tag each loss by type: a number or time misheard, a detail attributed to the wrong person (as in Question 34), a negative missed (as in Question 23’s homework) or a word you didn’t know.
5. Log the vocabulary from your wrong answers and listen to the same section again a week later.

Sit 0525/12 as a timed mock

The recording sets the pace: you hear every section twice, with fixed pauses, so you can’t speed up or slow down. What you control is how you use the reading time before each exercise. The standard pauses on the recording are:

Exercise	Reading time before you hear it	Use it to
Questions 1–8	A short pause before each question	Name each picture to yourself in German
Questions 9–14	30 seconds	Note the key word in each question (gekauft, Folgen, Tier)
Questions 15–19	30 seconds	Translate the six statements; expect one to be spare
Questions 20–24 and 25–28	30 seconds each	Underline what makes each option different
Questions 29–34	60 seconds	Circle every number and every person named in the options
Questions 35–37	45 seconds	Mark which statements are about Felix and which about Maria
Transfer to the answer sheet	6 minutes	Shade one letter for 1–34 and two for 35–37

The paper as a whole runs for about 50 minutes. Use the first hearing to choose and the second to check, and never leave a box blank.

Other May/June 2026 0525 papers

• 0525 Paper 22 (Reading)
• 0525 Paper 42 (Writing)

Practise and download

• Download 0525/12, the transcript and its mark scheme on the Learning Portal →
• All 0525 May/June 2026 papers: overview and marking patterns
• Try a free IGCSE German quiz

Need help with a 0525 topic? Book a free trial lesson with an IGCSE German tutor →

Frequently asked questions

What was on 0525 Paper 12 Listening May/June 2026? +

Six exercises: two parents at breakfast (8 picture questions), a radio report on six podcasts (6), a grandmother's teenage diary matched to five months (5), interviews with Paul and Oksana about new schools (9), a sleep expert interview (6) and Felix and Maria arguing about zoos (6).

How many marks is 0525/12 and how long is it? +

It has 37 questions worth 40 marks and lasts about 50 minutes, including 6 minutes at the end to transfer your answers onto the multiple choice answer sheet.

Why are there 37 questions but 40 marks on 0525/12? +

Questions 35 to 37 each ask for two correct statements out of five, and each correct letter scores a mark. Questions 1 to 34 are worth one mark each, so the total is 34 + 6 = 40.

What was the answer to Question 29 on 0525/12? +

D: sleep matters more than food. The expert says you collapse after 9 days without sleep but can survive three weeks without food. Option A is a trap, because she says we sleep a third of our lives, not a quarter.

Is there a transcript for 0525/12 May/June 2026? +

Yes. Cambridge publishes the listening transcript with the paper. Read it after you have marked your answers to see which words in the recording made the wrong options sound right.

Where can I download 0525/12 May/June 2026 and its mark scheme? +

The question paper, mark scheme and transcript are free to download and print on the Tutopiya Learning Portal, on the Cambridge IGCSE German 0525 past papers page.

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