Taking the HSK? Already taken it? Report in here!

[Basil]

Congrats on passing Geoff.

[mengjiepeng]

Results of last month's HSK have been made available today. Proud to have passed HSK5, it's been a struggle.

 

Listening 87

Reading 73

Writing 80

 

Total 240

[edelweis]

congrats! you have to tell us more about the struggle. Do you study by yourself or at uni etc.

[Hedge]

Thought i'd write up a report as well. I did the HSK 3 and HSK Speaking Intermediate in March in Singapore. My Masters degree required me to be proficient in three languages, so I needed a minimum HSK level 3 and the HSK Speaking Beginner. I didnt really want to study for this, so I went with the minimum for the written test and Intermediate for the spoken.

 

The written test was easy, as expected only the written part was an issue. Not studying characters for years led me to forget how to write 选 and 礼. Results:

听力：100

阅读：100

书写：88

总分：288

 

The spoken test was a different matter. What a terrible way of doing a spoken test. We were in a small room with 10-15 test takers. Each of us were given a tape recorder with an actual full sized TAPE. For the test, we are supposed to listen to sentences from the CD being played in the room, then repeat them into the recorder. 15 people speaking at the same time and for some reason everyone tried to sync their speech with each other. So we were repeating the sentences in union, focusing more on each other than the actual sentences, leading to some of us falling out.

 

Then came the part where you are supposed to just talk about pictures and stuff. Everyone talks quite well for a while, then suddenly the room becomes quiet. I still had B/S I could say, but it was just so awkward in the room with the total silence and the proctor kept saying, "speak, say more!".

 

Then the worst thing happened. At the last 5 minutes of the test, my tape ran out... This happened to several of the test takers and after the test they told us we had to do the test over with a longer tape. I think most people stayed, but I had another engagement I had to get to, so I just told them to send my tape in either way. Results:

Score: 78 (passing score 60).

 

For anyone doing the test in Singapore (at TLC learning center), the written part was well organized. The spoken test, however, was terrible.

[traunk]

I took the HSK IV last month. I'm happy with my improvement from the previous attempt. 

 

Last Time on 2014-02-16:

听力 75.0

阅读 44.0

写作 24.0

Total 143

 

This Time on 2014-08-17:

听力 67

阅读 72

写作 62

Total 201

[Sweetypromise]

I took an HSK 4 last month : ) 

I have just known the result.

 

 

Test date  17th August 2014

听力 96

阅读 97

写作 76

Total 269

 

In a writing part, I did not prepare well so I forgot how to write many characters.

I suddenly forgot how to write them.

 

[mengjiepeng]

@edelweis: Most of my studying has been by myself. I did an MA at Fudan University, but that was in English and Chinese was a seriously undervalued part of our curriculum. Studied with a tutor for a semester, but then went on exchange to the US and thus lost track. Picked it up again a few years later while working in Brussels, through some evening classes at the university and some Skritter. Since I couldn't secure a permanent contract and wanted to invest more in my Chinese, I took the plunge and moved to Daqing in Heilongjiang. There I taught English while studying by myself for 18 months, basically lifting my crappy ca. HSK2 Chinese to a healthy HSK5 now.

 

It's been a struggle because formal education has been just a tiny fraction of learning Chinese for me, so I've spent quite some time figuring out how to study the language. I've found that, for me, daily Skritter (1hr) and ChinesePod combined with regular textbook/reader reading, meeting with a language partner and using Chinese lots in the classroom and daily life has worked pretty well. In that sense moving to middle-of-nowhere Daqing has truly been great, as there are some 50 foreigners in a city of 1,3 million.

 

It's also been a struggle because I was forced to take the HSK this August, while I was hoping to take it late fall. I didn't feel ready and wasn't sure I'd pass. Forced, because a new job with the European Union has had me relocate to Taipei, where I now face the task of re-learning all the simplified characters I knew in their traditional variant. I've always known that with Chinese the challenge never truly stops, but I'm surprised myself sometimes how much I'm starting to like that. :-)

[edelweis]

thank you for the details mengjiepeng, it looks like you did a good job, studying outside of a formal setting   and you have a new challenge ahead, perhaps in a few months you'll come back with TOP/TOCFL (or whatever it's called now) test results

 

and congrats to Sweetypromise, Traunk and Hedge.

[wushucrab20]

I took the HSK level 6 in March this year at a program in Beijing and I passed. It was my first time taking the HSK and I was really happy with my score.

 

听力 100

阅读 95

写作 77

 

Total 272

[tooironic]

Wow that's an amazing score. Full marks for 听力 and close to full marks for 阅读?? *bows*

[edelweis]

@wushucrab20

congrats, that's a great score. Could you please tell us more about your Chinese study history and how you prepared for the test?

[wushucrab20]

@edelweis

 

Thanks. Actually most of what I feel like prepared me for the HSK were the classes I took at a program in Beijing and outside study I had done on my own using other resources.  I prior to taking the test this march I had been studying Chinese for over two and a half years (started summer 2011). For the first year or so it was mostly self study and I also took one beginner level Chinese class in my final year of undergrad. During that time I worked through all the Integrated Chinese Text books, which was the series used by my school.

 

After that (summer 2012)  I started using Boya Hanyu Intermediate 1 and at the same time I also started reading Harry Potter in Chinese. I have to say, when I started both Boya Hanyu and Harry potter they were very difficult for me, but I think my persistent use of those two resources was what benefited me most prior to study in Beijing and had the most significant impact on my reading ability and language sense for Chinese. With the first book of Harry Potter I made a goal to completely learn all the grammar and characters in the first chapter. There were hundreds of characters and even more words that I didn't recognize, but after about 3 weeks of studying that one chapter every day and frequently checking characters I was able to understand nearly everything. Then I started reading the rest of the book and although it was still a challenge to understand and there were frequently characters that I didn't recognize, I could at least read the book so I worked my way through it. I also did something similar after every few chapters by picking out and studying knew words and characters, but at that point it went much more quickly because I could understand much more of the book just from my work with the first chapter.

 

With boya hanyu I took my time though working through the lessons in order including the supplemental lessons at the end of each chapter which also contain some great material. I practiced reading the lessons repeatedly, reading them out loud until I understood everything in each chapter and remembered at least how to read all of the characters that appeared in the book correctly. I didn't spend too much time with the drills and exercises, I just focused on trying to be able to read and understand. I also routinely listened to the audio tapes for each lesson (sadly there are none for the supplemental lessons of each chapter). By early 2013 I had finished Boya Intermediate 1 and moved on to book 2 and had already finished harry potter 2 and started reading the 3rd book. At that point I was already no longer having any difficulty understanding Harry Potter and encountered characters I didn't recognize much less frequently.

 

The final thing I did to help improve my listening comprehension was watch a TV show called 租个女友回家过年。I started off watching a few episodes. I picked out what seemed to me to be the fastest, longest, most difficult pieces of dialogue from the first few episodes and transcribed them, studied the new vocab and grammar, recorded them, and listened to them over and over until I could understand the dialogues without any effort (making and studying the dialogues only took a few weeks, but I kept listening repeatedly for at least a month). Then I watched the rest of the episodes in the show and between that and the boya audio lessons my listening had improved greatly for both 书面语 and 口语 . 

 

By the end of summer 2012 I had finished reading Harry Potter 4, and finished working through 博雅Intermediate 2. The last month of summer I also read the Chinese version of Eragon which was actually a noticeable step up in difficulty from Harry Potter, so i used the same technique i did with HP for the first 3 chapters, but it only took a day or two to become familiar with the writing style and new characters. Then I read through the rest of the book.  I also started reading some portions of interest from scientific textbooks, learning unfamiliar vocabulary and characters which quickly and dramatically improved my scientific reading skills as well. The last thing a read that summer was 城南旧事 a famous Chinese novel read by many students in China early in middle school, which was difficult in a different way, because of the amount of cultural content, slang, and colloquial phrases included it was entirely different from the fiction I had read previously.

 

Then I moved to Beijing and started classes at a program over there. For the first semester I tested into the second highest level 高级2 and took 写作，综合，阅读，and 口语 with 视听说 and 高级听力 as advanced level electives. The 必修课 mostly used the highest level textbooks from the 发展汉语 series. It was very helpful for learning more formal Chinese, like what occurs in the news.  I think I spent the most time reviewing and practicing improving my speed with the lessons in the 阅读  text book, which covered all kinds of topics from modern society and science to history and politics. It was very similar to what ended up showing up on the HSK. I also worked through 博雅汉语 Advanced 1 and 2 on my own in about a month and a half, which both had plenty of new material to learn, but were not difficult having already worked through the intermediate ones.

 

The textbook for听力 ended up being similar to what I felt the HSK was like. After I did poorly on the midterm for that class I realized that not only is understanding as you hear things important, but you have to remember the details too in order to test well. So later on when I practiced for the final I paid more attention to the details of each dialogue and would jot notes down as I was listening to help me remember key points. I nearly got 100% on the final. Our teacher also had us practice in class using a book called 原声汉语 and recommended we purchase and practice with it on our own. I bought it and it was an amazing resource that has a lot of vocab and things that could be found in the HSK but the difficulty level of the audio files is much higher than anything on the HSK because they are taken from real live interviews with native speakers that have all kinds of accents, styles of speaking, and speaking speed.  Practicing with that book made the other 听力textbook and HSK prep audio material feel easy.

 

 At the end of the semester I signed up to take the HSK March 2014 and began studying for it over winter break.  The book I bought to study for it was 新HSK速成强化教程六级 which I think is an excellent text to prepare for the HSK. I knew my weakest area by far was writing so I made sure to understand the strategies for taking the 书写 section and practice that, but I didn’t do as much as I should have or needed to as was reflected in my test score. As for the Reading and listening I only spent a little bit of time getting the hang of the different types of questions and the more difficult 病句 阅读 section, but I really didn’t study too much because after taken a few practice tests I already felt very comfortable with the test content and confident that I was ready to take it.   By the time I took the test, I had also already taken about a months worth of the 高级三 courses and I felt well prepared.

 

I think the important thing is to use study materials that are enjoyable to you and that you can stick with. It really made a huge difference for me. I hope that helps

[edelweis]

thanks a lot for all these details wushucrab20. It sound like you have some interesting study methods combining impressive self-study stamina with university classes 

Well done and quite inspiring, thanks again

[HerrPetersen]

I will be taking the HSK 4 on the 11th of October in Erlangen, Germany. I took a long break starting in 2010. (Getting married, getting a job, having a son, ... ).

For the last year or so I slowly got into a grove starting out with just 5 min a day hanzi review. Now I am learning 30-60 min a day until the exam. Not sure what I will do afterwards.

[wushucrab20]

@ Edelweis

 

No problem. For me it was mostly those things i did before studying for the HSK that prepared me for it. I don't mean to make is sound like an overwhelming process. Studying a little bit every day makes a big difference.

 

It was all really enjoyable and I still had a lot of time to spend time with friends and explore Beijing  The HSK prep book was also very useful though and I would highly recommend the book i mentioned to anyone preparing for HSK Lv 6

[JustinJJ]

@wushucrab20

 

Congratulations, that's a fantastic score and good feedback on your study methods!

[Coys1991]

Hello I have been getting my feet wet with this HSK thing and it seems like I have been doing ok so far with the practice tests. But I have one question about studying the vocabulary, it seems as though there isn't a set type of vocabulary you need to know before the test is this right? I have the list of what I am recommended to study but I always find new words from the book that I don't know. So I need help with a good vocabulary list for the HSK. Thanks a lot!

[edelweis]

@coys1991 : there are official vocabulary lists, however the higher the level, the higher the probability that the test will contain words that are not on the list.

 

For instance, HSK level 1 tests could possibly contain only words from the list, HSK level 3 tests could contain 3-4 words that are not on the list, while HSK level 6 tests will probably contain many words that are not on the list (since the expected vocabulary is "upwards of 5000 words").

And the mock up exam books also reflect this, although different authors mix in different percentages of words that are not on the lists, resulting in varying levels of difficulty... this was discussed several times in this forum including here with links to earlier discussions in the next post after that.

 

The official lists currently on the HSK website are here (you can find many more official resources here).

[Flying Pigeon]

Even though the HSK computer based exam has no value, I’m still happy I passed level 5. I couldn’t have done it without banging on a keyboard.

Here’s the breakdown:

Listening: 95
Reading: 77
Typing: 89
Total: 261

I’m happy with my listening score, pleasantly surprised by my typing score and a little disappointed with my reading score. If I had taken the dead tree version, I think my reading score would have been higher (because I would have had more time to read and reread), but since I don’t know how to write characters, I would have failed the handwriting section. Three cheers for keyboards!

[Elizabeth_rb]

Well, I think it's time I got myself into gear and took the HSK, so I plan to take level 5 in May locally.  I'm very grateful to several of the comments above for mentioning the written component as, thanks to lack of constant use of hand written characters, I would struggle with and let myself down on that part.  So, I will get going with more 写字 practise as soon as I can.