After HSK6?

[MineIsYellow]

What is the next step on the long road to mastering Chinese after HSK6? What have you guys who've finished HSK6 done? How did you continue studying and learning new words? Are there any good, suitable level books/reading material to start from after it? I've seen 活着 recommended multiple times on this forum; how would I learn new words by reading it? Just mark all the unknown words and plug them into Anki, or is there a better system for learning new words form books? What about word lists? Would learning the TOCFL level 6 words help? If so, is there a list of all words that are in TOCFL 1-6 but not in HSK 1-6? Are there any good textbooks for after HSK6? 

(I find I learn the quickest with word lists, as I can pump out 40-50 word chapters every 1-2 days)

Any help/advice is appreciated.

[stapler]

When you pass the HSK 6 you will be well beyond studying word lists and using textbooks. After HSK 6 new learning will come from the continuous consumption of content designed for native speakers and gradually assimilating it.

 

活着 can be read well before your Chinese gets to an HSK6 level.

[ouyangjun]

By the time you're near HSK6 you will know where to go for additional study resources...  like stapler said, it is native content.  The real challenge once you get to that level is to stay motivated to continue to develop.  

[MineIsYellow]

Are there any other books you would recommend?

[ZhangKaiRong]

Learn vocabulary related to your work (e.g. business/finance/engineering/whatever). I always felt that cramming the HSK6 vocab list is a chore to do, and the actual useful vocabular knowledge. There are also a lot of interesting chengyus you can learn, as these were covered quite briefly in the HSK6 syllabus.

[roddy]

3 hours ago, stapler said:

When you pass the HSK 6 you will be well beyond studying word lists and using textbooks.

Yes and no. I'd agree you *could* be if you wanted to be - if you've passed HSK 6 and have a pile of media to consume and activities to engage in, go for it. However I'd argue there's still a place for more formal study at this level *if you want it*. 

 

I'm not sure what's currently available - I'd imagine a lot of textbook publishers are matching material to HSK levels and stopping at 6. But if you recall the old-style HSK of a decade ago - that went beyond the HSK6 level, and there were useful textbooks for that. Assume a high HSK6 is C1 on the CEFR frameworks (which I'm assuming as Wikipedia says so). That still leaves the whole C2 level - there'll be materials at that level for European languages and there's no reason it couldn't be the same for Chinese. There's more of a focus on exam prep (but which exam? Will we ever see an HSK8 again?) and esoteric usage / error correction-  have a look at what's available for the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English for example. 

 

As I say, at that level there's probably no need for textbooks as such. But they might still be useful.

 

If you *want* word lists, look at the old HSK lists - they went up to 9,000 items, quite a bit more than HSK6 I believe. 

[Shelley]

There are the HSKK speaking exams. There are basic, intermediate and advanced levels.

[Geiko]

19 hours ago, MineIsYellow said:

I've seen 活着 recommended multiple times on this forum; how would I learn new words by reading it? Just mark all the unknown words and plug them into Anki, or is there a better system for learning new words form books?

If you like learning through word lists, I'd recommend you to use Chinese Text Analyser from now on:

1. Choose a Chinese novel you want to read (活著 is perfect for a first read). 

2. Search that same novel in .txt form, download it and analyse it with CTA. It will tell you the percentage of words known in that text, and will give you a list of the unknown words ranked from most to least frequently used within that novel. 

3. Study the most frequent words until you reach a comfortable level of comprehension (between 95% and 98%, ideally). 

4. Enjoy your read! 

 

Studying the words before reading the novel is fantastic, you don't have to pause your reading every third word, you forget about dictionaries and when you encounter what you already studied being used in context, it helps you to reinforce the concept and understand the usage nuances. 

[Frederik451]

I agree with what people are saying. You are ready to start consuming more material meant for native speakers. After HSK6 your comprehension level should  be high enough for you to be able to enjoy(or at least not be miserable) reading real books and newspapers.  Should you still be looking for teaching material, then I'm pretty sure the BOYA textbook series goes well beyond the modern HSK6. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Boya-Chinese-Advanced-Hover-English/dp/7301075324/ref=pd_cp_14_3/137-5549273-2622569?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=7301075324&pd_rd_r=CARTSTJD96X8WCX55FN8&pd_rd_w=XvIku&pd_rd_wg=Vk6jR&psc=1&refRID=CARTSTJD96X8WCX55FN8

 

"The advanced level has three volumes and contains about 8,000-word vocabulary and focuses on identifying synonyms, explaining common sentence patterns and difficult words. There are ample exercises and interesting readings after each lesson. Finishing this level enables the students to pass HSK level 11 tests."

 

 

[imron]

5 hours ago, Frederik451 said:

After HSK6 your comprehension level should  be high enough for you to be able to enjoy(or at least not be miserable) reading real books and newspapers

This is probably actually not true for most native material, and in fact HSK6 only gives a relatively small increase in comprehension over HSK4.

 

The reason is that HSK6 is designed to cover vocabulary from a broad range of topics, fields and genres and so it contains a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but when you read something it's on a specific topic and only a small portion of the HSK6 will apply to that.

 

Certainly, starting to read native content from HSK6 will be less miserable than HSK4, but there will always be an initial hump when starting out reading native content until you get up to speed with the common vocabulary used by what you are reading.

 

 

[Prodigal Son]

@Geiko that post about Chinese Text Analyser is super helpful, I have it installed now. What's a good place to look for books around the HSK 5-6 level?

[realmayo]

On 12/04/2017 at 7:12 PM, Geiko said:

. Search that same novel in .txt form, download it and analyse it with CTA

 

I would just add that searching for books in .mobi form might produce more results and if you install e-book management software such as Calibre you should easily be able to convert a mobi file into a txt one.

 

 

[imron]

2 hours ago, Prodigal Son said:

Chinese Text Analyser is super helpful

I agree - everyone should install it

[realmayo]

@Prodigal Son if you mean a good place to find suggestions, start with browsing through https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/53547-book-list/

 

[ouyangjun]

In regards to the comments above about the Boya textbook, I can speak from experience of using them all the way up to the first book in the advanced series (lost motivation to finish the whole series).  It appears to go deeper than HSK6.  The problem for me was that I had trouble staying motivated at this level and I struggled rationalizing the time investment being the best use of my resources in regards to a return on the time I put in...  due to this I gravitated more toward movies, social media, and day to day interaction.

 

For me my Chinese is at the point where it is easy to live my day to day life in China and I'm fluent enough for work.  This is the real danger of motivation, because as you get higher on the curve of Chinese ability, the amount of effort put in versus what comes out is a much lower ratio and a lot flatter curve (a lot of input yields lesser output than the past). So a lot of it I believe depends on your motivation and why you're doing it.  The ideal case is to find something that is very interesting to you and then submerse yourself in it with the Chinese language.