Future Adjustments to HSK

[Xiao Kui]

Maybe all the Chinese students in the mainland know abt this, but I'm out of the country and therefore out of the loop - here's an interesting radio segment/article abt upcoming changes to the HSK. Some of the things they talked abt are the possibility of having separate tests for westerners vs. Koreans/Japanese, and also specialized tests to measure someone's level for various industries: tourism, commerce, etc.

They talked abt how it was originally based on the TOEFL and how neither really accurately measure one's proficiency in the target language. They also talked abt adding essays. (I always assumed there was an essay on the advanced test, but i've never taken any HSK - next year!)

Here's the link for anyone who's interested:

http://gb.chinabroadcast.cn/1321/2006/05/22/1569@1054491.htm

Click on 在线收听 just under the title to listen

[badr]

They've been talking about this for at least a year as far as I know. I'm not sure when it will go into effect but i expect it to be later than sooner.

They might start offering it alongside the 'old' version for a while to facilitate the transition otherwise, they'd be a number of unhappy campers

[wushijiao]

I’m not sure that it’s a great idea to have separate tests for separate regions. I’m sure that the HSK people have found that the people with the highest scores are generally from just a few nationalities. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

What they should do is ask themselves, “what does this score mean?” If they want people who receive, say, a 4 to be able to successfully take science-related classes at the university level and survive, well, then they should find out what academic skills are needed in order to do that, and then incorporate those skills into the test. If testing whether or not a person can do well at the academic level is the main goal of the 初中, then one would expect that reading and vocabulary (which seems to be the main focus of the 综合 section) would be crucial in order to avoid failing out of your university class.

Do Koreans and Japanese have an advantage in this aspect? Of course. Is it an unfair advantage? No. Koreans and Japanese would have an advantage on the HSK because the foundation of doing well on the test is one’s ability to read, relatively quickly. Likewise, academic work in Chinese also requires one to be able to read in Chinese, obviously. If a Chinese university course requires a tremendous amount of reading, it wouldn’t be fair to let in a Westerner (using a specialized easier test) who can’t handle the curriculum. Similarly, for better or for worse, people who speak Romance or Germanic languages have a competitive advantage when taking tests in English because of some linguistic similarities.

The only way to solve this problem would be to stop using a system in which people get graded on a curve, and start implementing a system that gives people a grade based on their level of Chinese, regardless of how well the other people do in the test. I’d imagine that since the popularity of the HSK is exploding, it would be almost impossible for them to recruit enough trained examiners around the world to administer such a test in the immediate future.

As far as a Business HSK, I think it would be a great idea. I wonder why they haven’t come out with it already.

[gato]

I’d imagine that since the popularity of the HSK is exploding, it would be almost impossible for them to recruit enough trained examiners around the world to administer such a test in the immediate future.

I think China will have enough new college graduates to deal with this shortage.

[youpii]

中级 should include a spoken test too, can you really admit people in a university without testing their speaking skills ?

I understand the new TOEFL will include that

[wushijiao]

中级 should include a spoken test too, can you really admit people in a university without testing their speaking skills ?

I agree that speaking should be a tested component of the 中级, but I think that is also unlikely to happen in the short-run.

[roddy]

See here for some old links > Clicky.

I don't like the different tests for different nationalities idea, but I do think they should have options which don't require writing, or allow writing to be tested by computer.

As for not having enough qualified testers, I strongly suspect they'd use unqualified ones if they had to. But having said that, currently almost everything can be computer marked, and what can't could be flown back to Beijing or wherever . . .