Preparation is not accumulation. It is rehearsal. Many candidates spend months adding grammar to a pile and never once sit a complete paper under time; then the exam tests something the pile cannot do. Here is the plan I give my own citizenship candidates. It assumes a working adult with twenty to forty minutes a day, and it works backwards from the exam instead of forwards from a textbook.
Step one: measure, do not guess
Before planning anything, find your true level. Sit a complete B1 mock test, timed, scored section by section, and accept what it says. If you score comfortably in every section, book the exam and spend your remaining weeks on rehearsal. If one or two sections fail, you now know exactly where the weeks go. If everything fails, you are not a B1 yet and no exam trick will fix that; take the course first. The honest ways to check yourself are in are you ready for B1.
Step two: a week that touches all four skills
The exam has four sections; your week must too. A shape that survives real life: daily audio work of ten minutes, because listening improves only with frequency, as I explain in the listening method. Reading every day at your level, ideally a graded B1 novel, twenty minutes that do not feel like study. Two short writing tasks a week, trained as I describe in the writing guide. Speaking out loud daily, even alone, through reading aloud, and with a person when you can. Underneath it all, review your own mistakes on a schedule, which is the single most efficient habit in language learning; the method is in error driven learning and the science of short daily sessions is in twenty minutes a day.
Step three: rehearsal blocks
From four weeks out, one complete timed mock test per week, then two per week in the final fortnight. Score every simulation section by section and let the scores steer the next week. The reasoning behind this, and why it beats another month of exercises, is in why mock exams matter. The 
amo Italian app carries the whole plan in one place: the A1 to C2 course for the level itself, graded B1 novels for the daily reading, spaced review of your real errors, and a B1 exam section with 35 complete mock tests for the rehearsal blocks. My role as your teacher in this article ends with one instruction: sit the first simulation today, not after another month of grammar.
How long does it take?
From a solid A2, with daily work, months rather than weeks; from scratch, longer, and anyone promising B1 in thirty days is not being honest with you. The full context on realistic timelines is in the complete citizenship exam guide, and if your foundations need building first, the whole method library is in the science of learning Italian.
Note and attributions: CILS, CELI, PLIDA and Cert.it are certifications of, respectively, the Università per Stranieri di Siena, the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, the Società Dante Alighieri and Università Roma Tre; named for identification only. Verify current exam rules with the certifying bodies. Not legal advice.
