Coursera HSK 5 Course: NOT Recommended

[Moshen]

I am on week 3 of the new Coursera HSK 5 course, created by Peking University professors. I am sorry to say that it's a train wreck.

I loved their HSK 3 and HSK 4 courses, which were designed to teach you the relevant material in an engaging way and then help you become familiar with and practice the testing procedures. They were excellent educational tools, well planned out. I made it through these courses easily because they were so well constructed.

For HSK 5, they've changed the teaching team and the teaching methods, and now it's not possible to proceed through the course unless you have already mastered HSK level 5 material!

For example, in Week 1 they introduce HSK Level 5 vocabulary, which is to be expected, but then the quizzes have no relationship whatsoever to the teaching in the corresponding unit and include quite a lot of words that were neither in HSK 4 nor in that lesson's vocabulary lists. You cannot go on to the next lesson unless or until you get all three questions in each quiz correct. I had to get the help of a native Chinese speaker on several of the quizzes, and in a few cases he told me that the speakers were using both slang and Beijing dialect.

Now, it's valuable to give people practice on the kind of questions that will actually be on the HSK exam, and the prior HSK 3 and HSK 4 courses did this, but only after teaching the content for that level. If you present actual questions from the HSK exam at the beginning of the course for that level, as this course does, how is the person supposed to have already reached completion-level understanding when they've barely started learning at that level?

Ditto for the first reading-assignment quiz, which likewise has no relationship to the vocabulary introduced in that lesson and includes so many words I've never ever seen before that I can't tackle it without using Google translate - which of course partly defeats it being part of a learning course.

Maybe it's sheer laziness underlying this poor excuse for a course. But in any case, I cannot recommend this course except as a review before taking the HSK 5 exam. It's not set up as a truly educational experience.

[edelweis]

Thanks for the review. Now you've made me curious about whether I remember the HSK5 vocabulary I tried to learn several years ago. Maybe I should go register for that coursera HSK5 course to check it out...

[∞保罗∞]

Hi Mo, I'm in week 2 of that coursera course and haven't found it terrible yet but did find it difficult and fairly slow going because they are using chinese to explain new words and don't use any english words at all - I need to throw all of the sentences through google translate (which isn't great at the best of times) to get a feel for the meaning. I also did the HSK 3 and 4 Course and the teaching style does change completely in HSK 5 (immediate focus on Exam questions in HSK5) and you do need to look up some new words. This must have been done to release the course quicker - they didn't have to make their own audio dialogues like they had in HSK3 and HSK4 course...they just use the HSK 5 archive of audio.

 

I also started a HSK 5 class in the real world last week at the 孔子学院 and there is a familiar approach there - little or no english used in the class, only 4 students in the class so the teacher spends a lot of time giving us opportunities to actually speak chinese in the class as opposed to drilling exam q's like the coursera course.

 

 

[Moshen]

I've struggled through to the end of the Coursera HSK 5 course with the aid of Google Translate, and I just want to add that *if* you have already learned the HSK level 5 vocabulary and are looking for a review, practice and tips for passing the HSK 5 exam, then parts of it are quite good for that purpose. For example, the reading teacher discusses strategies for figuring out the correct answers even if there are a bunch of words in a text whose meanings you don't know.

But as I said before, if you're looking for a way to get your comprehension and mastery of the language from HSK level 4 to level 5, this is definitely not it.

[corian]

For those interested, there is now a Peking University HSK 6 course on Coursera--apparently it was added in October.  Looks to have the same teaching staff and, it seems, format as the HSK 5 course reviewed above.

[xiaolang]

If you need some help with the HSK 5 vocabularies, check out our free HSK 5 guide here: https://www.pinhok.com/kb/hsk/6/hsk-5-all-you-need-to-know-about-hsk-test-level-5/

We also have one for HSK 6: https://www.pinhok.com/kb/hsk/7/hsk-6-all-you-need-to-know-about-hsk-test-level-6/

[thechamp]

This actually sounds like an ideal MOOC for me, tbh. I did HSK 5 in 2014 and passed with a good score but I've not spoken Chinese much since I left China. I think I'm going to do a couple of weeks there in April studying, climbing, and doing cooking lessons etc and this course sounds ideal for me as a refresher - so thanks for posting!