comments on IUP placement test?

[violinpianist]

Attn: past and present IUP attendees (alumni)

Could anyone comment on the format of the placement test at IUP (where they determine what level class one takes)/share advice on how best to prepare for it?

Also, how does chuzhong, zhongji and gaoji translate into 2-5 year level of chinese?

Thank you in advance. Your answer could greatly reduce my uncertainty/anxiety.

I will be attending IUP at Tsinghua University for summer 2007.

I have just completed 4th year newspaper and literature chinese classes at university. However I have very limited speaking ability because I have never studied abroad before and placed out of 3rd year at university (not surprizingly because the test was purely translation and multiple choice). Because of typing, my hand written chinese is also weak.

[violinpianist]

I have gone ahead and replied to my own question since no one has answered.

DISCLAIMER: This is my first time at IUP and I am only here for the summer, so this post only refers to the current situation at IUP (summer 2007). All views expressed are my own.

The IUP placement test has a written section as well as a 15 minute interview in Chinese. The interview is to determine to determine what problems the person has with spoken Chinese and determine level of fluency (do the words flow out effortlessly? does the person speak in words, or in complete sentences, or in coherent paragraphs linked with conjunction, etc?). The interview is also used to find out personal and academic interests and look into personal background and extent of formal education in Chinese. There are no existential question, but the question of why/for what purpose are you studying Chinese can be difficult enough. The questions they ask can sometimes be very basic. I think this means that they have not read people's applications, as they are dealt with by Berkeley in the US and not in China.

The written section of the IUP placement test takes 2 hours. There are 3 major sections that are further divided into subsections: listening comprehension, grammar and vocabulary, and reading comprehension. In the listening section there is no repetition and things are said pretty quickly. The whole test is worth 220 points, though I will not go into the points breakdown of each section. The test is very grueling because there are so many questions that it is sometime difficult to complete the whole test.

SCORES AND PLACEMENT: For summer 2007 entrance scores seemed to range from about 30% to 75%. I do not know what the cutoff points are for placement into each sublevel of the program. The interview is very important in determining one's main textbook. If one can speak somewhat in paragraphs one is placed in Academic Topics in Chinese or above. This is because Academic Topics marks the beginning of learning Chinese usage that is limited solely to writing. These courses thus do not have as much benefit to one's speaking ability. Also, students may be placed in listening courses that are up to two sublevels higher or lower than their main textbook course. I have many classmates whose listening class is in some level of intermediate while their main textbook class is in some level of intermediate. No ones is entirely sure how the sublevels within intermediate and advanced translate into different levels in university. Course placement is also influenced by what courses are being offered, students' interests, and each teacher's schedule. The guaranteed 3 to 1 student teacher ratio makes it difficult for one to change to another group class (as IUP tries to maintain teacher efficiency by making classes effectively either 3 or 1 student). For example, I have an academic interest in business. I was placed in a supplementary group newspaper course, though I have already taken one elsewhere, because there were not enough students interested in business Chinese (one is in private tutorial for the basic book, another in tutorial for self selected materials on Chinese stock market) and I did not pressure them to put me in a tutorial.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION: TONE DISTINCTION: sets of four syllables are given one must write the tone of each syllable).

TONE AND SYLLABLE DISTINCTION: for each question 3 or was it 4? sets of two syllables are read out and one chooses which two sets are the same. They may differ in tone or may use easily confusable sounds, perhaps to test for dialect interference.

SINGLE SENTENCE, DIALOGUE, AND STORY COMPREHENSION: The dialogues and stories are several sentences long and contain a lot of extraneous information. The questions are about some basic detail of what one has just heard.The answer choices are given in the exam booklet as well as read out. Some answer choices are very close to each other, and some are based on a sometimes ambiguous interpretation of the situation.

GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY: BASIC GRAMMAR: One must indicate into which position in a given sentence (indicated by a blank) the given conjunction, particle or other grammar feature should be placed.

SENTENCE STRUCTURE: One is given sentences that apparently have errors (though some may already be correct) and one rewrites a corrected version of the sentence. No indication is given to the kind or extent of correction expected, so it is sometimes hard to figure out what one must do.

VOCABULARY: There are very many vocabulary items given (I seem to remember 100-150 but I have forgotten already). One must choose from a list of four choices, a term with equivalent meaning. Here again there is some difficulty as sometimes rather similar synonyms are given, and many are not all that common.

CHENGYU: I believe there were 5 or 10 chengyu items. One has to choose out of a list of four which definition or chengyu is equivalent in meaning to the chengyu given. The chengyu seemed rather difficult and seemed to be rather sloppily selected (I have no idea what criteria were used for selection).

READING COMPREHENSION: There are five reading selections of progressive difficulty, each with five four choice multiple choice interpretive questions. The first selection is a story. The next three are more academic in nature and present complex ideas or views on the topics. Again some of the answer choices are ambiguous, but others are in themselves difficult to understand. The fifth section is in classical Chinese but the answer choices are in modern Chinese. If their Chinese is otherwise strong, students who get two or more of the classical questions right are eligible to take classical Chinese.