营帐, 屏障, 帐篷, 帷幕

[Peter2010]

Just to confirm, are you a native Chinese speaker?

yeah, Chinese is my native language.

[jkhsu]

@Peter2010 - Thanks for helping out here as well. BTW, I looked at the college entrance exam. That's like the hardest Chinese exam I have ever seen. I doubt most people here can answer the questions though. But it's a goal to aim for I guess.

[Peter2010]

it's a goal to aim for I guess

@jkhsu- I find helping out other people in the community is enjoyable and beneficial to myself. wish you have fun when learning Chinese.

[Kyle_Wang]

I would choose 帐篷 and 骄矜。

If it was 屏障，道 is the proper measure word rather than 个。Although the better measure word for 帐篷 is 顶，but 个 doesn't hurt.

炫耀地挂着 is quite strange because 炫耀 is a verb.

As for 变醉了红叶，a better expression might be 醉了红叶, in which an adj. is used as a verb, meaning make sth. drunk. It is just like 绿 in a famous poetic sentence 春风又绿江南岸。

[jbradfor]

What should the rules be like? PM your answers to me, and I'll reply with the score and model answers? Free-for-all answering and discussion? Open discussion only after the first 3 days?

Well, if you're making the 中文挑战, you get to decide the rules!

That said, some suggestions. If you look at the current 中文挑战, people are pretty good about putting their answers in spoiler tags, so I would recommend against a waiting period. [Plus, given my attention span, I would forget after 1 day, let alone 3.....] Without seeing the actual text I'm just guessing, but you could just post the text, and put the potential answers in a spoiler tag. So then very advanced learners could try to guess, and advanced learners could look at the options and pick one. [And I would just watch from the sidelines....] Another idea is that while in general roddy discourages Chinese-only posting, in this context (in a blog, in a challenge for advanced learners), it might make sense to have each poster justify their answer with a sentence or two in Chinese.

[creamyhorror]

Alright, I've scanned the passage. It looks like I can either be added to the 中文挑战 blog, or start a new one. I guess the first option is better. Do I ask an admin, or the blog owner?

(I'm thinking of doing as jkhsu suggested and post the answers only 2 days after the initial post, so that people can speculate a bit.)

I would choose 帐篷 and 骄矜。

If it was 屏障，道 is the proper measure word rather than 个。Although the better measure word for 帐篷 is 顶，but 个 doesn't hurt.

炫耀地挂着 is quite strange because 炫耀 is a verb.

As for 变醉了红叶，a better expression might be 醉了红叶, in which an adj. is used as a verb, meaning make sth. drunk. It is just like 绿 in a famous poetic sentence 春风又绿江南岸。

Thanks for your answers, Kyle_Wang. They certainly make sense. (The model answers, however, don't always.)

[feihong]

What should the rules be like? PM your answers to me, and I'll reply with the score and model answers? Free-for-all answering and discussion? Open discussion only after the first 3 days?

For all the 挑战s that I've done, I've never had to post the answer because someone always gets it eventually. I would only consider posting the answer if it looks like people have stopped trying and no one has gotten it.

[jkhsu]

@creamyhorror - Are you planning to reveal the "correct" answers to the questions you've posted here? It might be interesting to see how others analyze why these answers are supposed to be correct. Perhaps there are some details in the passage that people are missing? Or perhaps the questions are just ambiguous to begin with?

[creamyhorror]

Right, I'd almost forgotten about those. The model answers for the two questions in doubt are:

Q4. 屏障

Q9. 骄矜

I think we can conclude Q4 is a badly set question, since native speakers all gave differing answers with differing reasoning. My theory is that the question setter might have selected 屏障 as the answer since 天然屏障 may be a set phrase.

The answer for Q9 by native speaker consensus here seems to be 骄矜, which matches the book's answer, so the reasoning that 炫耀 is more natural as a verb is probably valid.

Good show, everyone. 谢谢大家的参加!

For all the 挑战s that I've done, I've never had to post the answer because someone always gets it eventually. I would only consider posting the answer if it looks like people have stopped trying and no one has gotten it.

Since a cloze test consists of a bunch of questions, no participant might get everything correct (especially if the "correct" answers are dubious themselves). So I think it makes to post the answers after a while - as a spoiler, of course.