University Language Placement Test

[Elwood]

Hey everyone. I will be going to Tsinghua University in February 2008 to study Chinese and was wanting to find out more details about their placement test. For example, do you need to know pinyin, the structure of it etc..

Thanks to anyone who can help me out. Much appreciated!

[applepie42]

From what I remember, there were two major parts of the exam. There was a listening part and a writing part. The test is entirely multiple choice.

In the listening part they played a couple of different tracks and you would have to answer questions based on it. For example, they'll play a dialogue between John and Bob about the weather, and then there will be a question such as "What's the weather in Beijing like?" and you'd have to select the correct answer. They're mainly testing for your listening comprehension. Then, there's another part where they say a word and you have to pick the pinyin for it (yup, there are tones too).

Then the remaining part of the exam is mainly reading comprehension. They gave us two passages (about half a page long each) and there were several questions about the content of the passage. I think there may have been a bit of grammar in there as well, such as pick the most appropriate word to fill in the blank with, that would complete the sentence.

There was no oral part of the exam, as it was cancelled for reasons unknown to us.

Hope that helps! Honestly, the exam wasn't all too bad and I didn't study at all for it.

P.S. Excuse me if I sound delirious because it's midterms week and I'm delusional from all the studying.

[adrianlondon]

Don't worry too much about placement exams. People move up and down levels like crazy for the first few days; just join in the fun.

[Elwood]

Thanks for the information.

I've forgotten all my pinyin and tones because as you may know, the higher the level the more the pinyin is ignored. So might have to brush up on my pinyin before the placement test to make sure I don't bomb it too much.

I'm looking forward to my year in Tsinghua. It will be fun!

[adrianlondon]

I'd find it amusing for a place calling itself Tsinghua to be strict with pinyin.

[Elwood]

Yeah that's quite funny. But they actually use Qinghua in China, rather than Tsinghua. But its still funny.