What is HSK?

[Sam Addington]

I see these three letters thrown around a lot on these forums. Excuse me for being too lazy to look it up, but what is it?

Thanks in advance.

Sam

[renzhe]

Here

[Sam Addington]

just now i looked up 简直 in Yellow Bridge and it told me that it was HSK level 3. Does that mean that if I am familiar with that word and all the words of that level that I am then ready to pass the HSK level 3 exam? Are there word lists available? I was on the HSK page and there was this annoying little floater on the page which made it difficult to read. Though it wasn't there on the English page. But I didn't see any reference to study lists.

[renzhe]

In short, no. The whole thing is a bit complicated.

There are 11 grades in the HSK test, 1-3 is basic, 3-8 is elementary/intermediate and 9-11 is the advanced test.

There are also word/character lists published by the HSK. They are also called HSK1 - HSK4, which is extremely confusing.

HSK1-2 should cover the vocabulary of the HSK basic

HSK1-3 should cover the vocabulary of the HSK elementary/intermediate

HSK1-4 should cover the vocabulary of the HSK advanced

All together, there are about 10,000 words (some are single characters, some are multi-character), covering about 3,000 characters. You can find the whole vocabulary on this site, at http://www.chinese-forums.com/vocabulary/ , and there is a mnemosyne database available at their website, and one for KVocTrain/Parley from the KDE site.

But even if you know all the words in HSK lists 1-3 (about 6000, I think), there is still grammar, listening comprehension, reading, understanding and other, trickier, parts of the HSK test.

[heifeng]

here you go, this is what you must be looking for: "HSK" . hope it helps.

[imron]

Haha, I guess this proves that the HSK is for tools

[anonymoose]

I'm not sure how useful the HSK vocabulary lists are, because I have some mock papers published by BLCU and there are several words in them that are not in the lists, for example 丘壑 in the 朗读 section. Let's see how many learners know how to read this word without looking it up!

[Sam Addington]

Heifeng, that is too cruel!!!!

How did you know that I have almost exclusively been translating technical documents for Japanese toolmakers all these years?

[Ole]

there are several words in them that are not in the lists, for example 丘壑

If you like to have some information about 丘壑 ´s frequency:

here:

[Sam Addington]

As I become more adept at using this forurm, I learn exponentially. It is great.

In another thread I found a great link thanks to simonlaing. It is http://quizlet.com/group/520/

[heifeng]

How did you know that I have almost exclusively been translating technical documents for Japanese toolmakers all these years?

Motown. That kinda says it all....I don't think I know anyone from there who doesn't have some type of machining knowlege or tangled up in related work...of course it makes sense that you should shift over to do some Chinese translation work too:mrgreen: