Scoring of listening part HSK 4

[milin]

I don't know if anyone has ever posted this information before, but I couldn't find it (although this is an interesting thread about scoring too: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/37160-correspondance-between-hsk-score-and-actual-correct-answers/).

 

A teacher from the Confucius Institute told me that for the listening part of HSK 4 the following is true:

1 point for a good answer in the first section of 10 questions;

2 points for a good answer in the first section of 15 questions;

3 points for a good answer in the first section of 20 questions.

 

This makes a total of 100 points, and puts greater value on the more difficult sections, which seems logical.

 

Apart from a table about the writing section (see http://home.hccnet.nl/h.dalmolen/En/China/HSK.htm#weight), I had never found any information about scoring before. Does anybody have information about the reading section of HSK 5 (and other levels)?

 

Henk

[edelweis]

I've always understood that the scoring is linear for tingli and yuedu:
score = (100 * number of correct answers) / (number of questions)

official info from the HSK website:
http://www.chinesetest.cn/userfiles/file/HSK-pingfen.pdf
see the 客观题评分 paragraph

And the link you shared takes its information from here
http://www.chinese.cn/teacher/article/2010-04/22/content_138787.htm

which also says:
各级别的客观题采用零一计分，线性转换为百分制。

[milin]

The teacher in question teaches a.o. an HSK 4 course. So that's why I attach some value to this information, although in some other aspect the teacher is mistaken too. He uses the word lists of 2010, not those of 2012.

 

Anyway, the differences between the linear scoring method and this method are minimal anyway. But since this was new information to me, I thought I'd share it here.

 

Henk

[edelweis]

I think that most people would get worse scores with the scoring that you teacher described (unless they got nearly perfect scores anyway...). Wouldn't it show when people compare their score using past tests (from the Hanban website) and the actual test?

But it is quite interesting that the Confucius Institute and Hanban have different information about this

Anyway we don't know really how the thing is graded and whether they actually make adjustments to the scores depending on curves or whatnot. sigh.

[milin]

I regularly see the teacher, so when I have an opportunity, I will ask him about it (and take printed copies of the documents you mentioned with me). I also know another teacher from the same institute, and perhaps I will ask him independently about it.

[Rawley]

I took the HSK 4 in June 2013 in Paris. My examination score report says I scored 88 out of 100 in the listening part, which was containing 45 questions. Since 10+2*15+3*20 = 100, we can presume you teacher is right. My level is not high, I am 41 and only take a weekly lesson as a hobby. I was surprised when I got the results because I remember I couldn't understand all the recordings. For some questions, only 2 ou 3 words. But I suppose the key part is to read each question BEFORE listening to it.

 

Each of the reading part and writing part is also out of 100. And you have to get at least 180 points out of 300 to pass the test. I scored 224.

 

And next week I will take the HSK 5. But this time I really don't expect to pass, since I haven't learnt all of the 2500 words.

[zhouhaochen]

Ok, I just asked our HSK examiner at the school and she said according to the official Hanban grading regulations all questions receive the same amount of points in the listening section of HSK 4 whatever the difficulty level is.

[Rawley]

It's not possible to assign the same number of points to each question since there are 45 questions and 100 points dedicated to the listening part.

[edelweis]

@rawley

the pdf file from the official hsk website, in my earlier post, explicitly shows how each question receives the same amount of points - and it's a decimal value for instance 2.86 points for each tingli question of Hsk2.

However they take great pains to explain that this is for self evaluation of mock tests. This suggests that they actually make secret adjustment to the grades... but no one would know the exact process except for the few people who put the answer sheets in the machine and analyse the "objective" question results before they are posted to the website...

No mere teacher or proctor would know the actual decisions made at that stage IMHO.

[tysond]

Perhaps they "grade on the curve" and adjust a little to achieve a particular distribution of results?  

It's a common technique for examiners.

 

I've always wondered whether they adjust the computer entry results versus the handwritten results.

[Hershey]

Can anyone tell me the points distribution in Hsk 4 reading and writing? 

[Jellyfish]

See @edelweis's earlier posts. It's a percentage calculation. 100 points is 100% of all points you can get and every mark out of 45 or 40 you lose, you lose x percent. So for example:

 

100 points

45 questions

of which you get 33 right, 12 wrong

So that's 33 (right questions) divided by 45 (total number of questions) times 100 (total potential score).

33 / 45 x 100 = 73.33333

So you get 73 points in that section.

 

That's my understanding of it anyway, that's how I always graded my mock tests and home and I always got very similar scores during the actual tests so I think it can't be far off.

As for the writing part, it's hard to say how that's graded. Some exercises are easy to grade (correct answer is one point) and I always assumed that you just lose one point for each mistake you make in the writing section but that's pure conjecture and varies widely between different levels of HSK anyway; I can't tell you what HSK4 would be like exactly.