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[Aphorisme]

Hi everyone! Here are my hsk 6 results (paper-based test) :

 

-Listening: 71

 

-Reading: 81

 

-Writing: 82

 

Overall : 235/300

 

I'm really happy about my results. I don't know why, but the listening part was specially hard compared to mock tests, where I score 80+ in general. I'm really satisfied with the writing part, as the text was the historical story of 周处, and I didn't know nothing about him prior to taking the test. 

I finally reached my goal which was passing HSK 6 before finishing law school. It was only self-studying and I've never attended a single chinese class, nor did i stay in China longer than a month (only three weeks, three times, just travelling with friends).

 

But I still have a way to go before mastering all chinese law vocabulary, which is my new goal.

 

If anyone wants to exchange self-studying tips with me, I would be a great pleasure!

[BrianC]

Congrats to Zue and Aphorisme for passing.  I wasn't able to get my scores until now for HSK4, but finally got them:

 

Listening: 93

Reading:  92

Writing:    81

TTL:        266

 

Happy with the results, as I managed to go from about HSK Level 2 to 4 in about 8 months, on top of working.  Next up is Level 5....

 

 

 

 

 

[Geiko]

 

 

It was only self-studying and I've never attended a single chinese class, nor did i stay in China longer than a month (only three weeks, three times, just travelling with friends).

 

  Simply amazing, kudos to you! You must have worked really really really hard.

[Aphorisme]

Thank you! 

 

Yes, I studied really hard, but above all regularly. No matter if it was during holidays or during law school finals, I studied chinese almost every day. Regularity is key to success. 

 

But I still have to improve, as my chinese is far, far from flawless. Chinese really is an endless language. 

[Geiko]

Oh, but you stayed in China longer than a month! 

 

 

 

 I had two internships (two months each) in China, one in Shanghai and one in Beijing, in two big law firms 

 

Not that this diminishes your achievement the least bit, but four months of internship plus nine weeks of holidays makes more than half a year in China. 

 

Yes, I know what you're thinking: if I spent less time on the forums and more studying Chinese, I'd probably be able to pass HSK 6 by now.   It's just that curiosity killed the cat 

[Aphorisme]

Truth is they were one month long. I don't know why I said two months   And it was part or the "three times", the third time was just travelling with friends during three weeks. I was too lazy to be precise, as I thought it was irrelevant anyway.

 

I didn't think that someone would check precisely. But curiosity is a huge quality. You should keep it

[Geiko]

I wanted to ask you about your study routine, because reaching HSK 6 only by self-study is really impressive no matter what, but I thought that maybe you had already talked about it in previous posts, so I preferred to check before asking. Now that I know that you haven't talked about it, if you want to tell us your study routine, I'll love to hear about it. 

[Aphorisme]

You already passed HSK5, so I will only speak about my study routine from HSK 5 to HSK 6.

 

I did three things:

 

-I bought this vocabulary book: http://www.amazon.cn/%E5%9B%BE%E4%B9%A6/dp/B00FYO0QJC. It was the key, because each word comes with two sentences. It makes you having a better understanding of how a word works. I learnt 10 pages a week for two years, and every month I spent one week only reviewing. Every one hundred pages, I spent two weeks reviewing. And so on. In order to learn a word, I write it ten times in a small book (I use colors, to work on my accent), and I also write the related sentences. And every day, while in the subway, i was reviewing the words that I wrote the week before in this small book.

 

-I read a book written in chinese about contract law (perfect to improve your grammar): http://images.google.fr/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fimg33.ddimg.cn%2F31%2F20%2F1246490023-1_w_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fproduct.dangdang.com%2F1246490023.html&h=350&w=350&tbnid=51ziLixHgU-peM%3A&docid=Kv7AtpPBnujmYM&itg=1&ei=Vn6WVoyzDMSua8q1vJgE&tbm=isch&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=305&page=1&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=0ahUKEwiMtvvJnafKAhVE1xoKHcoaD0MQrQMIPzAL

 

-From times to times, I took an hour of private chinese teacher just to practice my speaking and listening abilities.

 

I clearly focused on vocabulary. Hope it can help!

[Aphorisme]

 

Listening: 93

Reading:  92

Writing:    81

TTL:        266

 

Happy with the results, as I managed to go from about HSK Level 2 to 4 in about 8 months, on top of working.  Next up is Level 5....

 

Well done! In only 8 months on top of working, that's really impressive

[Sarah123]

Hey everyone,

 

just wanted to get back to let everyone know how my HSK 4 test went.

 

I took it on November 14 in Beijing, and I am so so so happy I passed. :-)

 

Here are my scores:

Listening: 94

Reading: 91

Writing: 81

 

Overall score: 266

 

I am kind of surprised listening went so well. I would have expected a couple more points from writing beforehand, but I found that part to be pretty hard and - at least for me - the hardest. In the "make a sentence from a picture and a character" section, one of the characters was actually not from the HSK 4 vocabulary (the character for "second", as in "1/60 minute" - sorry, haven´t got chinese characters available here). I had absolutely no idea what it meant - the picture was of a woman in sports clothing looking at her watch, but that didn´t really help me. After the test I checked the character on pleco (after staring at it for at least 10 minutes and trying out all kinds of possible spellings, I thought it should be something with a sound of "iao" based on the components, I had memorized how to write it *lol*) - and then realized it´s not even HSK 4 vocabulary. I mean, I know there are supposed to be words you don´t know from a higher HSK level, but without a complete sentence around the word I felt it was pretty much impossible to guess it´s meaning (let alone be able to write the word without knowing the pronunciation/the pinyin).

 

Apart from that, it was pretty much what I expected and a lot like the previous sample tests I had been working with. Everything was organized very well, keyboard, headphones etc. all worked without any problems. Instructions were only in Chinese, and students of levels 2 and 4 were in the same room. Also, included in the testing fees was a mock test the Wednesday before, which I found a really good idea and very helpful in terms of finding my way to the testing center, getting used to the computer program, keyboard, headphones etc... not sure if this is offered in other locations as well?

[lukey296]

Hey everyone,

 

I put up a post about a podcast run by my two friends a few weeks ago. In the podcast me and my friend Phil mentioned that we were about to take the HSK 6 and we both just passed!

 

Phil did it with exactly 2 years of work from complete beginner level. I came to China almost 3 years ago and after playing around for a year or so, started focusing hard on daily study. They are both low passes (Phil actually passed by just one point!), but it feels great to do it in such a relatively short time.

 

L: 74

R: 56

W: 63

 

Total: 193

 

I'm very surprised at passing because I felt like I completely choked at the writing section, which was unusually difficult compared to the mock exams. In fact, I angrily left the exam 10 minutes early! My reading is still not good enough and luckily the listening saved it, but I simply don't read enough. The only reading I do is anki sentences and the odd textbook passage now and then. This exam has opened my eyes to my laziness in this area and I'm going to start read Chinese books for pleasure a lot more. 

 

A lot of my study techniques that led to our fast progress are inspired from the core users and members of this site, so thanks for that. 

 

 

Yes, I studied really hard, but above all regularly. No matter if it was during holidays or during law school finals, I studied chinese almost every day. Regularity is key to success. 

 

What Aphorisme said is exactly right. Regularity is what made me able to pass this exam. Phil never misses a day of anki, and I never miss a day of doing at least something in Chinese. 

[imron]

This exam has opened my eyes to my laziness in this area and I'm going to start read Chinese books for pleasure a lot more

This is definitely a good idea.  We had some interesting discussion here (with data) about how once you reach a certain point, learning new vocab plays a diminishing role in your level of understanding, and how you need to start consuming (large) amounts of content to continue making progress.

[lukey296]

Thanks a lot, will definitely check that out.

[Special Kid]

Took the HSK 3 a few weeks ago and just got the score:

 

听力: 85

阅读: 81

写作: 58

 

score: 224\300

[Arthur Ong1492]

I took my HSK 2 and 1 tests back in Feb 21... @Special Kid what is the passing score for HSK 3? thank you

[Special Kid]

It's 180 from 3 and on

[baihua]

HSK 3 288/300.

 

After failing the paper based writing in HSK 4 - 18 months ago, this might be a nice platform. Be interested in peoples experiences of moving up to HSK 5. I noticed a difference from 3 to 4 which I dont think I was ready for at the time - no repetition, faster dialogue, extensive writing section. I've made good use of older papers since and I will be sticking to the computer based exams from now on.

[indonesie]

Started learning Chinese in the end of 2014, when I arrived in China for the first time. Took 六级 last month, and the result is out.

听力：94

阅读：88

写作：76

总分：258/300

Reflection & Comment:

Listening section was pretty much the same in terms of difficulty to the 真题s. I was pretty comfortable answering it, just as I would do doing 真题 at home. Note-taking strategy proved to be one of my key success answering the questions. Although I do miss on some points, but I think it's pretty normal overall.

The reading section this time though, taking the 真题's as benchmark, was a beast. There were bunch of of old Chinese cultural stories rich in adjectives and nouns I have rarely seen, which are especially hard for me to grasp (to the extent of not knowing what exactly the subject the article is talking about!) due to my limited vocabulary, reading, cultural knowledge in this regard. I had to spent more time to understand these kind of passages. After finishing the last 3 sections, I left only 12 minutes for the first part, which I usually have 15~17 if I do it at home. I might no so used to computerized exam and my eyes got hurt staring on the screen for quite a long time. I also remember this time I didn't found all the mistakes in the 病句 section, and so I had to rely on my gut instinct which of course was prone to mistakes. But considering the difficulty I felt when doing this part, I am glad enough to arrive at score close to 90.

I was pretty confident to get high mark (80<) on this part: the essay topic was doable (it was a kind of 人民间的励志故事), I remembered everything just fine (I made sure to type the structure first to avoid missing one part, and then later developed the story) , and expressed it well and spiced in some appropriate 成语s in total of around 400 字 (it was 450-460字, is this too much to the extent that it will negatively affect the grade?). But I was quite embarrassed to see my result and I regretted I didn't really prepare for this part until a week before exam (the time when I realized there's a diminishing return for focusing on listening and reading). I didn't have teacher to check for my HSK6 essay and didn't really have any idea of essay worth score of 90< is like, even until now (honestly, I don't really know how to prepare for this section). Maybe I deserved the score: I should have prepared better and practice composition more.

But hey, no more HSK from now ;)

[Guest]

I last took the HSK4 in December 2015, and failed miserably - I scored 120. I was more shoehorned into taking the exam by my university in China as opposed to voluntarily taking it (or feeling prepared).

 

It's been roughly eight months since then and I'm hoping to retake the exam in December this year - I'm currently working through Hanban's HSK 4 上 and 下 books alongside using Glossika and NPCR 3.

 

I've got plenty of resources on my plate, but I'd love to hear some tips from people who've already passed the HSK 4 - any tips you'd give to someone preparing for the exam? What did you find was the best way to study? What do you consider to have been your most useful resource?

 

Cheers!

C 

[nihaokelin]

Lived and worked in Taiwan for a bit, and now back in Australia, so decided to take the HSK for an impetus to continue with Chinese.

 

Never studied Chinese 'formally' in classes, but from internet resources and with the help of friends. Decided to go with the easy HSK 2 today, which in retrospect was probably too easy, but I really wanted to get a feel of the HSK before going to further levels. I did a run through of the format a couple of days before and it was fine. My writing of simplified characters is poor though, so a level with no writing part was handy at the moment.

 

I've taken the JLPT previously, and one thing I noticed with the HSK was how laidback the test administration was. Not to mention, there were only a handful of students taking each HSK level, compared with perhaps 30-50 for each JLPT level here. The JLPT was very regimented and just a very long day with breaks - so I found the HSK refreshing in that regard. HSK is also a fair bit cheaper for entry levels which is great.

 

Next step? Who knows. Will look at the levels closer and pick one. Not even sure how often the HSK is held here, so will factor that in.

 

Got a trip to China coming up in December for practice too! All in all I enjoyed the test and the nice bit of motivation.