HSK advanced follow-up: prep books/materials?

[bagz007]

That earlier thread on some of you guys taking the advanced HSK exam was inspiring stuff! Call it a new year resolution, but I'm hoping to take the advanced test despite A) living in the states; and B) only being able to pursue it part-time. I took Chinese throughout college and lived/studied in China for a couple of years so I should have a solid base to get started.

My question: what books, tapes, etc. do you guys recommend as the best prep for the actual test? Angelskates had a great post where he listed the following books, below. Can anyone add to this list in terms of books, online media, tools I haven't even considered, etc? Also, which Mainland online bookseller is reliable for international shipments and credit card payments? Finally, I'm trying to track down a quality Chinese-Chinese dictionary to go with my copy of Wenlin. Any suggestions?

You guys rock...many thanks for any help/suggestions on these questions.

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（高级篇 -下）

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（高级篇 – 中）

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（高级篇 –上）

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（中级篇 -下）

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（中级篇 –上）

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（初级篇 -下）

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（初级篇 –中）

Brushing up your vocabulary for HSK 单词速记速练（初级篇 –上）

HSK Kaoqian Qianghua - Xiezuo HSK考前强化-写作 （高等）

中国汉语水平考试模拟试题集 （高等）

HSK Kaoqian Qianghua - Koushi HSK考前强化-口式（高等）

HSK高级阅读实践演习

中国汉语水平考试应试指南 （高等）

An Intensive Course of HSK (Advanced) 速成强化教程（高等）

An Intensive Course of HSK （Elementary and Intermediate） 速成强化教程 （处，中等）

[hidden12345]

I recommend lovemandarin.com. Very good customer service and good people overall to do business with. If a book is sold anywhere on 王府井 it's a good bet, they probably carry it as well.

[hidden12345]

I recommend lovemandarin.com. Very good customer service and good people overall to do business with. If a book is sold anywhere on 王府井 it's a good bet they probably carry it as well.

[bagz007]

After going through the last year of previous threads on this forum, I was able to find the following additional suggested books for HSK Advanced. Any others to add...I'm hoping to buy one bulk purchase of the best stuff from the U.S. Thanks for the tip on lovemandarin.com, Hidden!

HSK Kaoqian Qianghua-Xiezuo (BLCUP, 2004)(sorry, no Chinese input on this computer). The ISBN is 7-5619-1330-3/H.04036

科技汉语——中级阅读教程 - 出版社：北京大学出版社

ISBN：730110619X

HSK 听力关键词 (ISBN 7-80005-696-1) and HSK 听力惯用词 (7-80005-695-3)

[wushijiao]

科技汉语——中级阅读教程 - 出版社：北京大学出版社

ISBN：730110619X

Keep in mind that that book is not specifically made for the HSK, but it might be indirectly useful for HSK both the 高　and 初中.

Also, a great book for speaking is ２１天征服HSK（高等）口试　郑丽杰－编者。The book includes a lot of useful words and grammatical patterns. It also covers a wide variety of topics.

[heifeng]

A pretty good book that I recently found is 汉语普通话语音辨正, ibsn- 7-5619-0622-6 for 12.50元. It is not specifically for the HSK, but for anyone who needs to practice tone and reading for the 朗读 it may be useful. I figure that there is exactly enough time to memorize/finish this book by the April HSK! Anyway, I still use the HSK 前强化-口式（高等）(that big blue book) for some of the useful lists inside, but I think the drills are better in this 语音辨正 book, at least in light of the short 4 months ahead:mrgreen: (plus this book is a smaller, cramped-in-bus-reading-friendly size)

It has 14 chapters of pronunciation drills, with pinyin complete with tones on one side and characters on the other. What is good about the pronunciation drill set up is that the word group organization makes it easier to remember the tones for a set of words through association, so if you already know the tone for one word you can probably rember the other word's tone a bit more easily.

for example:

ua, uo 对比

wa1娃 窝wo1

wa4袜 卧wo4

gua1瓜 锅guo1

gua4挂 过guo4

hua2滑 活huo2 (I know I always mispronounce the tone on 滑 for some reason)

hua4画 货huo4

etc...

...anyway if you happen to stumble across this book, it's not too bad.