Is this manageable?

[chinabro]

I am currently looking to take either HSK 4 or 5. I have more or less learned all 1200 required words for HSK 4, and taken some mock exams with scores easily above 80%. (not including speaking as I had no way to test it)

My city only offers two HSK tests a year. One in April and one in October.
I'm thinking of applying to university in China for the winter semester (September onwards) which requires HSK4. So this means I only have one opportunity to do one exam in April.

I'm wondering if people think it's possible to study up, by myself, for the HSK 5 to be taken in mid April. I have one year (2 semesters) experience of Mandarin course in China, and have continued self study since then.

The 2500 words required for HSK5 is pretty daunting, I'd like to take the challenege but not if it's actually near impossible. I think I calculated I'd have to learn 13 new characters a day for 3-4months, assuming I currently know none of them. I'd also organise to meet with Chinese people once or twice a week for speaking practice.

Based on exam experience and language learning;
does anyone know if that seems reasonable?

Thanks for responses

[renzhe]

I'd prepare for HSK5, but take HSK4, which is what you need. You can always take HSK5 later.

I think it's doable, but why risk it? The jump from HSK4 to HSK5 is not small, and nothing is stopping you from taking HSK5 as soon as you arrive in China.

[hedwards]

Renzhe is right on here, study for the more difficult exam, but take the easier one.

 

As far as vocabulary goes, break the characters down into functional components, assign each one a color based upon the tone of the word and use basic mnemonics for any that aren't sticking easily. If you've got Pleco, use that for your study as it will help cut down on studying characters and words you already know.

 

I also recommend physically writing any characters that you get wrong along with the Pinyin and a one word definition. 13 characters a day is challenging, but it's not impossible if you've got good methods for memorizing. The bottleneck tends to be having time for the revisions and review that come from memorizing the material. I can "learn" 100 a day, but in practice retention was bad because it was so much that by the end of the week I 700 characters to review and by the end of the second week I would have had 1400. Needless to say that's not sustainable beyond a few days.

[AdamD]

Absolutely. Don't stress yourself by going a level above what you need to. The difference between 4 and 5 is vastly greater than the difference between 2 and 3, for example.

[chinabro]

I guess logic is too strong here. It does make more sense to take the HSK4.

I recently did a mock HSK5 exam and did pretty well.

36/45 in Listening
44/45 in Reading - although I went way overtime (so I would've really got 27/45)

10/10 for first part of 书写 造句子部分

Since I didn't have anyway to mark myself I didn't do the 短文 or speaking parts

I think I will still take the advice of people/logic to take the HSK4 test, but HSK5 doesn't seem as hard as I thought it would.

Which makes me wonder - How can the requirement at Chinese universities to do a course IN Chinese be HSK4.
HSK4 seems like it would be way too simple. Despite seemingly being able to take HSK5, I can barely understand Chinese movies and tv.
Even reading newspaper is pretty hard with all the extra vocab.
I can't imagine sitting in a lecture and being able to follow much at all.
Can anyone comment on this kind of experience.

Thanks again for the advice guys. Despite it being a very logical choice, sometimes you just have to hear it from others.

 

[Walkingtree]

I feel the HSK in general is inflated, compared to other language tests [specifically the TOPIK]. I passed the 4 and can get the gist of shows IF and ONLY IF there are subtitles. There is no way my Chinese is at B2.

 

If reading speed is the only thing really holding you back from passing the 5 you can train that skill specifically.

[Lu]

Which makes me wonder - How can the requirement at Chinese universities to do a course IN Chinese be HSK4.

The cynical answer might be that you pay tuition money, so they don't really care whether you can follow everything. If they put the requirement at C1 or C2 level, hardly anyone would sign up anymore.

[afterchineseschool]

The 2500 words required for HSK5 is pretty daunting, I'd like to take the challenege but not if it's actually near impossible. I think I calculated I'd have to learn 13 new characters a day for 3-4months, assuming I currently know none of them. I'd also organise to meet with Chinese people once or twice a week for speaking practice.

 

I'm actually in a similar situation. I'm trying to pass the HSK 5 on March 28th just as a challenge for myself, but I believe realistically I'll be much better prepared in the fall.

 

I've started prepping for this starting late October 2014 with 15 words a day at 612 and decided in January that I needed to ramp up the pace to about 30 words a day. I'm currently at about 1151 words. I'm currently using Memrise HSK 5 to practice (you can also mark words to skip) with an emphasis on just recognizing the characters and being able to speak them and neglecting being able to write them.  The reason why I'm neglecting writing is because the test center in San Francisco has virtual exams to take on the computer so you can type out words and I've actually spent most of my time studying mandarin using traditional chinese. 

 

Getting burnt-out is pretty real when Im learning 30 words a day. For example, when I don't review vocab words for maybe 2-3 days, the queue of words to review can be from 200-400 words. On a typical day the queue is about 150 words to review. This doesn't even account for learning vocabulary in context. 

 

I've only been able to manage this for about 3 months because I'm currently in a limbo while searching for a job and have about 2-4 hour of free time/motivation per day. Learning and reviewing vocabulary can take me about 1.5-2.5 hours for 30 words a day, so I'm estimating 13 words a day will take about 45min to 1 hours a day.

 

IMHO, listening is easiest portion, reading is the hardest for me because I read slow, and writing is so-so.

I took the H51001 on chinaeducenter and got 40/45, 26/45 (reading, left 14 blank), 9/10 writing multiple choice and I'm guessing 15-20/30 on the actual writing.

 

According to http://sarajaaksola.com/preparing-for-the-new-hsk-level-5-exam/, the passing score is 180 points or about 60% overall. You shouldn't be too far from passing HSK 5, but I wouldn't feel confident if I'm just scraping by.

 

 

I'd prepare for HSK5, but take HSK4, which is what you need. You can always take HSK5 later.

 

 

Completely agree.

 

My recommended resources would be http://www.fluentu.com/chinese/blog/2014/10/06/new-chinese-hsk-exam-study-guide/ and http://sarajaaksola.com/?s=hsk+5

[roddy]

Chinabro, how did you get on with this plan?

[chinabro]

Wow it's been just over a year since I posted this.
I am now in China just finished my first semester of uni. My final exam is tomorrow. All those months ago I decided to do the HSK4 test (which actually has a computer test once every month - as opposed to originally thought 2 times a year). Computer test is definitely the way to go, so much easier to be able to type characters if your goal is simply to pass. Also you can pretty much cheat, if you aren't sure of the pinyin of a word you can just type in one character and then the computer guesses the next one for you. Lots of ways to abuse this.

to quote myself from a year ago
"I can't imagine sitting in a lecture and being able to follow much at all."

This was very accurate. Even after a semester here, I'm still BARELY able to know what's going on in lectures. One of my professors has a slight accent which makes it literally impossible to understand a word he is saying. The other professors are fine, but I really need to focus otherwise I miss a lot of stuff.
HSK 4 really doesn't prepare you for Uni life. It gives you a good foundation, but when I started I could barely read the text books. Had to teach myself a lot of new words and structures. It would be very beneficial if you had confidently passed HSK5 before you start uni. You still wouldn't be at the same level as Chinese students of course, but it will make life a lot easier. It seems reading and writing would be the most important, you can get away with not being able to speak, and listening probably isn't that important. Exams are mainly based on textbook, not on what the lecturer says. (I assume, as I can't understand the lecturers.)

So yes, people were right to say Study for HSK5 and do HSK4. But really you should be certain you have a very strong HSK5 level for uni.

In saying all this, Unis do seem very very kind to foreigners. I'm pretty sure I failed all exams but they are just like "No worries Mate". Haven't got my results, but I've got a lot of indication that they will just let me pass everything. Possibly just give me a stern talking to

[roddy]

Yay for the follow-up! Which uni are you at?

[chinabro]

云南大学