HSK5 Final Prep - Mnemonic Memorization

Hey all,

So life got pretty busy outside of my Chinese learning, so my progress took a hit.

I finished chapter 3 of HSK5 in the last few days. I'm feeling pretty confident about my ability to memorize these character and also use them in context. Taking the workbook exercises at the end of this week, I hit about 60%, which would be a pass rate. It may seem low, but considering I'm still a 3 months or more away from actually sitting the exam, that is much higher than expected at this stage.

Part of the progress has been my listening practice. Honestly, reading has always come much easier to me. It's easier and more interesting to practice in my opinion. I think because there is less pressure and time constraint on reading compared to listening. However, I've started listening to a podcast that I've found really helpful, called Tea Time Chinese (not a sponsored link by the way).

Overall I'm finding the process of mnemonic learning very effective. Though my theory so far is that it's the process of checking the character, figuring out the radicals and meanings of them and creating a story that is helping more than having the story stored in my mind. It means I'm taking a while to study and review the characters and meanings quite deeply in some cases. In other cases the character is simple for me to remember based on already knowing the radicals / characters, for example 工人 or 人生. Whilst its personal based on what you know, the meanings of these are very obvious to me.

My advice to anyone reading who is at a lower lever would be to dig into the meaning of the radicals, it will help you a tonne later down the line. Especially as Chinese seems to love reusing radicals for implied meanings in more advanced words.

That all being said, it's just my opinion. I'm sure there are many much more advanced users on this site that know much more about it than me.

Anyway, peace and love to all, you can find out more about me at my other blog if you're so inclined.

See you next week.

 So, its Monday morning and yesterday marked the end of the first week on the HSK 5 exam prep. I'm at 91 / 1300 words so far. Stats for this week:

• 7% complete on exam prep
• 91 new words learned this week

Let me first update on what I need to achieve to consider a word "learned":

1. I can recall the meaning and pinyin without too much guessing when practicing character memorisation on Pleco
2. I have finished the chapters exercises, in both the HSK textbook and the workbook (finished means 50% or more scored on the practice questions with a review on the incorrect answers)

I am taking this approach to avoid a previous mistake I've made in exam prep, which is to focus too much on character memorisation. This is great for character memorisation, which is what you're practicing. It is a core fundamental of speaking Chinese and the exam prep, however it's usefulness is limited when it comes to meeting those words in context. 

I didn't get too much time to study this week, limited to just 2-3 hours at most. That being said, it's still decent progress. I have been through this textbook before in the past and familiar with some of the characters at the start of the textbook, so I expect the progress to slow as the weeks go past. It should also be noted that I use Chinese everyday with my friends so some of the vocabulary comes easier to me, as it might be words I already use on a day to day basis. 

Anyone else prepping for an exam, I would encourage these two points mentioned here. Learn the words in context (read widely, listen a lot) and to practice with native speakers outside of exam / study type practice.

See you all next week.

Hi all,

I wanted to start a blog here as I was recently inspired by @HSK Pro's post (link here to the original post).

My background is that I passed HSK4 some time ago, and been slowly building up to HSK but have been put off by the amount of vocabulary. I've been focusing more on reading, watching / listening and talking in Chinese, as HSK doesn't cover these areas all that well. That being said, now it's time to get the formal qualification and it seems like an excellent opportunity to put the mnemonic method to the test.

My method won't be to take a textbook full of mnemonic stories and learn them, but instead to create my own stories. This is because I believe that creating the story will be a big part of the memorization process. In the past I had relied on brute force memorization, with occasional mnemonic memorization of certain characters that had jumped out to me.

I've already been through the HSK 5 textbook before, so I have some understanding of it, but now the intent is to really internalize that vocabulary for passing the exam and hopefully for everyday use.

I'm not planning to set a daily learning goal or exam, life is too busy for that at the moment, but I will document my journey here to share the lessons learned, experience and also for my own accountability. The main updates will be here, but the final results and conclusion may end up on my Chinese learning blog, where I can share the list if it's of use to anyone else.

My starting format is as follows:

A few caveats on the method:

• The mnemonics are personal to me, based on the radicals or characters which are already very familiar to me. They may not make sense or be useful for others.
• I'm also not currently including the tones. This is again based on personal preference. I typically learn pronunciation through practice with Chinese natives as I never really found it useful to learn it through "textbook" practice.
• The definition is also not thorough or totally descriptive. The objective is to learn the characters and general meaning, rather than understand the word totally. Again my preferred style for this is learning in context, so I will be reading and listening, as well as having conversations to learn the deeper meanings of the word. Again, for me personally I never had much success in rote memorization of the subtle meanings of the words and had much more success in contextual learning or practice.

All comments and suggestions are welcome. Wish me luck!

Kris