The Last HSK...ever?

[Brandon263]

I'm taking the old HSK on April 17 and am curious to find out who else is doing so.

Also, does anyone have any idea whether 2011 is the last year HSK will be offered? There are already portents that this might be the case (e.g., the old HSK will not be offered in June (in Nanjing), the new HSK is now being offered basically every month, e.t.c.).

On a side note, does anyone else find it exhausting to prepare for the HSK in terms of the time it takes to revise practice tests? I spend lot of time translating words I don't know and often spend 8 to 10 hours working on 1 test paper. Is that a bad 方法？

[Raphanid]

If you do your preparation well, it should be tiring I think. The exam is pretty broad, and potentially covers a lot of topics. When I was preparing for it, some Chinese teachers weren't immediately sure on some of the answers to the 病句 and others, so they're not easy. Decent writing skill was also important at advanced level, and that only comes through practice. I went through about ten practice papers before doing the exam, although I didn't translate all the words I didn't know due to lack of time. It would have helped though. In short it's a good 方法 and if you do all the parts, including the essays if you're doing advanced, then you'll probably do OK on the real thing. Good luck.

Incidentally, the looking up words you don't know thing gets better with time. Although it's hard to believe at first, eventually you do get to a stage where you basically recognise 99% of common characters and don't need to look things up nearly as much.