Advanced HSK 2009年4月18日

[anonymoose]

So did anyone else take the Advanced HSK today?

Here's my feelings:

Listening:

I was actually surprised by how manageable this was from an understanding the language point of view, but unfortunately the length of the passages and the difficulty in having to remember all the facts and figures overall made this section quite hard.

The first piece was about decorating rooms with different colours, and how different colours can have various influences on mood and behaviour for different age groups. It went through about five or six colours and described at length their effects on different people. Remembering which colour had which effect, and what colour was suitable for what purpose was a royal pain in the ass.

One of the other extracts was about 冰燃料.

Reading:

As usual, the time was nowhere near sufficient to get through this properly. I actually found the material itself to be quite challenging this time, which was a bit of a disappointment given that I consider reading to be one of my stronger areas. This time I tried the strategy of just scanning for the answers, and ignoring the irrelevant parts of the passages, but the passages were quite long, and the time was insufficient to get through more than about half of the questions even this way.

综合:

This was pretty much as I expected, and I think I did reasonably well on this section overall. The last part where you have to write characters I found more challenging than usual, not because I wasn't sure how to write the required character, but because I wasn't even sure which character to write for several of them.

Writing:

This is undoubtedly my strongest area, and I think I probably did quite well on this.

The topic was 细节决定成败. The question gave two examples, the first being of a girl who wanted to take a taxi, and from two that were in front of her, she chose one because it was cleaner. The second example was of several people going for a job interview, but the girl who got the job got it because she said 谢谢 on her way out. The question asked to discuss your opinion on these two girl's 做法.

Speaking:

The 朗读 passage I thought was ridiculously easy, because the language and vocabulary was very simple, but unfortunately I don't think I did myself justice at all on this section. Whilst it wasn't terrible, given how easy the passage was, I really feel I should have done a lot better.

The questions this time were along the lines of 1) describe your ideal living environment, and 2) does you country have a 老龄化 problem, and if so, what can be done to combat it? If not, what measures can be taken to prevent 老龄化 becoming a problem?

The speaking is definitely my weakest area, and I'm not at all satisfied with my performance on this section. The problem I have is not so much of language, but when I get nervous under the exam conditions, I find it very difficult to put forth a fluent and coherent speech.

Overall, I fell I could have done better on this exam, although I recognise that probably most people come out of HSKs feeling this way. Now I just guess I have to wait a couple of months or however long it is to see if I can get that elusive Advanced HSK certificate.

What impressions did other people have?

[wushijiao]

I should have an impression, but when I called the test center on Tuesday to find out the exact time and place, they told me that the test would take place on 5/17! Next time I’ll go to Shenzhen!

But anyway, thanks for the write-up anonymoose. It sounds like you did pretty well.

[Tommi]

This was my first time doing the advanced HSK, didn't really prepare at all.

Listening I managed quite well. First part forgot to take notes of the colors, otherwise no big problems there.

Reading was really tough, I only did 10/15 of first part before running out of time, second part the one about tea was really confusing and last text i simply guessed, so i think i completely failed the whole thing.

Grammar was okay, on my usual level, so i expect to pass this one. Characters i think weren't that difficult.

Writing, the topic was easy to write about, but i'm a slow writer, barely managed to get 400 zi.

Speaking was my second failure today, i also thought langdu was really easy and too short, caused that my answers were too short, ended with 4 minutes unused. Definitely need to improve this part.

Overall the exam was not that difficult, but really needs time to prepare well. So no hope of getting that 9 today...

[dncdoor]

Anon""" I had types out a lengthy reply, but alas my computer crashed.

To put it simply I agree with your take on today's exam.

[kdavid]

Now that the two of you have successfully taken (if not passed ) the HSK Advanced, what advice can you give those of us preparing to take it in the future?

Anon mentioned that the listening was difficult because of all of the information he had to remember while Tommi said that he "forgot to take notes of the colors". Does this suggest that taking notes is accepted, or, at least not punished?

Is there any particular textbook you recommend?

Is there any "bar" that you can say once a person has reached they should be able to do well? For example, "Once you've memorized the HSK 8000 dictionary, you'll have no problem with this," or "Once you can read a whole newspaper, you should be fine."

[imron]

Does this suggest that taking notes is accepted, or, at least not punished?

From what I've heard and seen, taking notes is pratically required.

This thread has lots of good advice regarding the Advanced HSK.

[anonymoose]

kdavid

I think the thing about the advanced HSK is that you need to have good chinese (be able to read a newspaper without too much effort) as a minimum requirement, but unfortunately that is not sufficient on its own, as there is also technique to tackling the questions.

For example, as mentioned, in the listening section, even if you can understand perfectly, it doesn't mean you'll necessarily be able to answer the questions. You are free to take notes if you wish, but the speed of the speech is quite fast, so you'll have to be careful not to lose concentration on what's being said.

In the writing section, you have to be careful that the format of your answer in terms of layout on the answer sheet conforms to the standard, and also that the content of your answer meets the requirement of the question. Being able to write good chinese is of course a minimum requirement, but it is not the only requirement.

Likewise, for the other sections, particularly the 综合, if you know what you are looking for, you'll be able to be quicker at it. Generally speaking, speed is the key to tackling this and the reading section. I can't imagine anyone could be quick enough to complete the whole thing in the time available, so to put it simply, the faster you are, the more you'll be able to get done.

As for books, I only used one that is specifically aimed at the HSK, which is "An Intensive Course of HSK (Advanced)", BLCU Press, ISBN 9787561910863. This, or a similar book is worth reading, because it goes over quite a lot of exam technique and requirements.

[Tommi]

Does anyone know when the results for this test will be online?

[yueni]

Results for this HSK came out yesterday! I've already gotten my scores. =) I have to say, Anonymoose, that you pegged how I felt about the test in a nutshell. I will say that I found the listening portion really difficult, not because I couldn't understand their speech, because most of the time I could, but because I couldn't remember enough details to answer 6 questions per passage each time!

The reading section really sucked this time around, and this is the section that I usually do pretty well on. ==;; I hated the tea passage with a passion, and the floorboards one was really annoying to answer. I did answer all the questions though. 综合 should have been easy, but I had a brain fart on a few questions and there went my score. 作文 was really easy, actually. I immediately had an outline for what I wanted to write and wrote it successfully, but unfortunately wrote it too simply, so I had a full 5 minutes of unused time and a 500 word essay. I could have written at least another 100 characters! 口试 was a piece of cake. The two topics that came up on it this time around (your ideal home and population aging) were pretty simple for me, I felt, particularly since I had written a research paper on population aging

I ended up with the following scores:

听力 65

阅读 61

综合 63

作文 71

口试 81

Total score put me at a 10, but because I had three Cs, I have a 9. On one hand, I'm really happy that I passed, because after taking the test, I was sure I failed. =P So overall, I'm just glad I have a proper HSK score, as this is the first HSK test I've ever taken! =)