Taking the HSK? Already taken it? Report in here!

[Geiko]

On 2/13/2022 at 11:45 PM, becky82 said:

On 2/12/2022 at 6:04 PM, Geiko said:

In 2014 I passed HSK 5 with a total score of 227/300 (听力 76, 阅读 81, 书写 70), but I have to admit that I cheated, because I finished the 阅读 during the 书写 time.

 

That doesn't seem like cheating to me; that's just... sensible.

 

I think it too, but it's forbidden in the HSK, I guess they want to see how fast we read when under pressure.

 

In any case, I got my HSK 5 results today: 听力 75, 阅读 84 书写 84, total score of 243/300. On the one hand, I'm happy because I've improved since 2014 (bear in mind that in the last three years I lost my study routine). However, I'm amazed that my 听力 is worse. I've always been terrible at listening, but this time I felt confident during the test, I really thought I was understanding way better than eight years ago, and it seems I was wrong ?

[Jan Finster]

Found  this really fantastic report on taking the HSK 6 on Reddit: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/toio6w/today_i_took_the_hsk6_exam_heres_my_postmortem/

 

(if linking to posts from other forums is not allowed, then mods please remove this)

[mungouk]

On 3/26/2022 at 7:18 PM, Jan Finster said:

report on taking the HSK 6 on Reddit: 

 

Quote

People think HSK6 has 5000 vocabulary items, but this is basically the "core" vocabulary you need a strong grasp of. Beyond this, I feel like a passive vocabulary of 15000+ words is the minimum, and 20000+ would be desirable. My vocabulary is likely above 15000, and I failed the practice test (by 1 mark), and I'm not sure if I'll pass the official test.

 

This sounds a bit odd.

 

[大块头]

@becky82 will presumably report in on her experience herself.

 

On 3/26/2022 at 3:50 PM, mungouk said:

This sounds a bit odd.

 

You could possibly scrape by with a smaller vocabulary, but 15k puts you at around 95% comprehension.

[becky82]

Unless some kind of "scaling" kicks in, I feel like my marks are going to be very borderline, and my vocabulary is far higher than 5000.

 

Obviously it must be much higher than 5000, because there's so many things that are not included, like names of countries, provinces, cities, animal names, the Chinese dynasties, history, geography, ethnic minorities (their rituals, celebrations, etc.), and many chengyu.  I've encountered questions where you need to know the names of multiple Chinese teas (which demographic likes which tea), molecule names, metalworking terms (like "forge" 锻制 and "weld" 焊接), and all sorts of things.

 

For example, from a 2018 exam, there's this listening question in part 1:

 

Quote

女儿第一次观看芭蕾舞表演。在回家的路上，妈妈问她：“你觉得他们跳得棒不棒呀？”女儿说：“我真希望芭蕾舞演员可以长得再高一点儿，那样他们就不用那么辛苦，总是踮着脚尖跳舞了。”

 

The answer is 女儿不懂芭蕾舞表演.  The daughter interprets ballet (芭蕾) dancers standing on tippy toes (踮) as them trying to act taller, which implies she doesn't understand ballet.  Both 芭蕾 and 踮 are not HSK words.

 

Besides, to increase your reading speed to an appropriate level, you need to read a lot, and you'll pick up a lot of vocabulary along the way.  (Actually, I felt like I absorb new words quite effectively nowadays, since the HSK6 vocabulary covers a lot of characters.)

[PJ]

The ballet example is interesting; I actually think it argues the other way.  I remember that the test organizers say they sometimes try to test whether you can fill in reasonable details yourself, and I think this is a good example of it's success.

 

First, I happen to be at a fairly appropriate level for the test: I've finished HSK 6 vocabulary but haven't had any time to study anything more, so I know pretty much EXACTLY 5000 words.  I learn from only flashcards and occasional articles (which I've been falling further off on lately due to work).  Basically I'm much weaker than Becky.  (But I passed HSK5 3 years ago with no problem, and finished the 6 vocab maybe a year ago.)

 

I read the ballet text, and didn't know exactly those 3 characters Becky mentioned, but completely understood the reference must be to ballet.  You don't need to know the name of the dance, you just need to understand it's some kind of dance where dancers lift their heads up.  I should've (but didn't) recognize the phonetic components -- partially bc I usually don't try hard in reading assuming it's hard to guess -- but if this was a listening question, that would have been easier to pick up automatically.  The answer seemed really clear to me upon first read, though of course the other 4 answers aren't provided so I can't say for sure I would've gotten it right.  But over all I feel the test writers are hitting their goal of testing integration of new vocabulary, which is necessary for all languages.  Ill bet the first time you saw the word "coronavirus" written down, like me, you didn't recognize it at first, but still understood the whole article, and in fact learned that new vocabulary by the end of it.

[PJ]

Oh, I should also add that there is definitely significant scaling built in.  (Becky mentioned that in her "unless".)  If it's your first time taking an HSK, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the marks.  If you're getting borderline 70s, you're going to be getting scores way into the 90s.  Which is what Id expect for someone with 15000 vocabulary ?. I think I could pass myself right now, if I had time to focus a little better and prep up.

[becky82]

On 3/27/2022 at 10:10 PM, PJ said:

Oh, I should also add that there is definitely significant scaling built in.  (Becky mentioned that in her "unless".)  If it's your first time taking an HSK, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the marks.  If you're getting borderline 70s, you're going to be getting scores way into the 90s.  Which is what Id expect for someone with 15000 vocabulary ?. I think I could pass myself right now, if I had time to focus a little better and prep up.

 

For the HSK5, I was pleasantly surprised by my listening and writing marks, but not my reading marks.  For the HSK6, I took the official mock exam, and I failed (by one mark), so...?  Who knows what that implies.

 

My predicted HSK6 marks are listening 45%, reading 80%, writing 55%.  (Feeling confident about my reading!)  I guess we'll find out on the 26-th April.  There was a native Chinese speaker (wanting to do a PhD in China) sitting behind me, and she said it was really hard too.  I'm almost certain I won't get a 90% in any section, as this is what native speakers get, unless I get very lucky in the reading section.

 

It's indeed possible there is some undocumented scaling in place.  I recall one HSK6-test-taker (from 2018) being pleasantly surprised by their HSK6 marks here:

 

Quote

Got my results and against expectations I passed: 81 Listening, 70 Reading, 76 Writing. Total 227/300 so about 76%.

 

So they predicted they would fail, but instead they did amazingly well!  But maybe there's some selection bias online, i.e., people don't report it if they did badly.

[PJ]

Oh, you did do HSK5; then I guess you know the scaling.  Im surprised by your predictions though, at least your mention of "failing"on the mock exam.  By "predicted" 45% etc, you mean getting 45% correct right?  Im pretty sure the score for that is much higher, maybe around 70.  I remember predicting 50% correct on listening and reading on my HSK5, and actually getting over 70 or even 80, passing.  (My writing was my negative surprise -- I thought I would get 90 something but got something really bad like 70s, because I didn't follow directions correctly for the picture.  I thought I was supposed to make up an entertaining story, but apparently only supposed to describe they picture.  Lol.  I need to start reading directions...). Look forward to hearing your results Apr 26!!!  Good luck!!

[Jan Finster]

On 3/27/2022 at 4:04 PM, PJ said:

I read the ballet text, and didn't know exactly those 3 characters Becky mentioned, but completely understood the reference must be to ballet.

 

Depends what the other answers are like:

If they are all about ballet then you would have to understand it better:

a) 女儿不懂芭蕾舞表演.

b) 女孩认为芭蕾很容易

c) 女孩想学芭蕾

d)女孩认为芭蕾让你的脚受伤

 

[becky82]

The actual candidate answers are:

• 女儿决定学芭蕾舞
• 女儿看完表演很愤怒
• 女儿不懂芭蕾舞表演 [answer]
• 女儿觉得自己个子矮

(It's on page 35 of the book Official Examination Papers 2018.)

 

When I did this question, I (incorrectly) chose the fourth option.  I connected 再高一点儿 to 个子矮.

[becky82]

On 3/27/2022 at 7:17 AM, becky82 said:

Unless some kind of "scaling" kicks in, I feel like my marks are going to be very borderline, and my vocabulary is far higher than 5000.

 

Well, despite all the work I put in, I failed the HSK6:  Listening 52, Reading 63, Writing 55.  So a total of 170 (and 180 is usually considered a pass).  My marks are nowhere near any of the goals I set for myself.  I don't think I'm the first person to feel their HSK6 marks were awful the first time around.  (By the way, in the month between taking the test, and receiving my marks, I read a full novel 《喜欢你，我也是》.)

[mungouk]

Thanks for your very detailed input @becky82 — your notes on taking HSK 5 and HSK 6 are very useful.

 

I took HSK 5 ("online, at home" version) last Saturday, along with HSKK 高级 — which was compulsory and almost doubled the cost, despite not being one of my goals at all — and I have definitely failed both of them, regardless of waiting for the official result. 

 

Up until HSK 4 I had passed everything first time, but I realise now that I massively underestimated the huge gap between level 4 and 5, and I committed to doing the exam far too early. You live and learn.

 

[大块头]

加油 @becky82 and @mungouk. Keep on plugging away and you'll eventually get it.

[Pablo12]

Hello, everyone! Last month, I sat the 9th April exam. Results were supposed to be released one month later (9th May) but, due to national holiday in China, the website says the results will be released one week later (16th May). Does anyone know if it is always like that and I have to wait one more week or it is likely that I get the results before 16th May? Thanks!

[mungouk]

OK the results from online/at-home HSK tests on 23 April are now up on chinesetest.cn, two days later than expected, presumably related to the public holiday.

 

 

Global averages for HSK 5 in this exam were 写作 68.67， 听力 78.33， 阅读 65.59.

 

I knew I had failed 听力 and 阅读 badly, but I take some consolation from the fact that I was scoring around 40% in practice exams for those sections, so that was a reasonable prediction of final score.

[mungouk]

HSKK 高级 result now out as well. Again, no surprise since I didn't even prepare for this — you are currently forced to sit HSKK at the same time as the HSK for levels 3 and up. 

 

 

Question: It says the analysis is 暂无 which suggests it's only temporarily unavailable... has anyone previously received any analysis of HSKK results, or will it stay like this? (Although I have previously sat HSKK 初级 and 中级 they were registered by the test centre and I can't see those results on chinesetest.cn)

 

I'm curious to know how I scored in each section.

 

I barely even tried for Section 1, where you have to listen to a 1.5-2 min reading of a text — typically a story — and then paraphrase it back. For the "on-line/at home" tests you're expressly forbidden to take any notes at all, which makes this part a ridiculous memory test. I'd love to see what the average score for this format would be.

[markpete]

Results are out for those who took the December 10 at-home internet-based test. I did a bit better than I expected: 69-60-74 listening-reading-writing.

 

 

I think it helped that I hit all of my goals for 2022. They were all process-oriented, emphasizing listening. I wanted to see if the approach I took to studying in 2022 would be enough to help my listening skills, and it seemed to be: my listening score was 20 points higher than a year ago, and my overall score was 24 points higher than a year ago.

 

(The caveat is that my listening score is also about the same that I got two years ago, so it's possible that my "actual" level has stayed mostly the same throughout and that last year was an anomaly with an especially low and un-representative score.)

 

[suMMit]

I took the Hsk 4 and Hskk 终极 today after slowly making my way through Standard Course 4上 and 下 and the corresponding Zero to Hero units. I did 3 practice last week and did 2 hours of practice on Hskk speaking with an Italki tutor. I think I was overconfident as I aced all the practice tests, but today I don't feel like it went that well.

 

Reading I was too slow and had to choose random letters for the last several questions. I basically knew all the characters and grammar, but I had to re-read most questions twice to make sense of it and answer it. On the listening, there were a few times where I was still thinking about the previous one as the next one played and couldn't concentrate on it. I found the best way for me to do the listening with the hsk workbooks and practice tests was to just listen, and then look at the answers and choose the right one. Whereas trying to preview or look at the answers simultaneously was more confusing. I used the same method today and it worked ok for the most part. There was one listening with a lot of numbers, I just couldn't get the answer and guessed. Writing seemed ok, but one of them I did as one person asking the other to help her, which may not be the right format. Anyway, I'm not that confident that I passed, even though I think I know the material well enough. 

 

The speaking test went a little better I think. I was pretty much able to go for 2 min on everything, but I probably should have thrown in more hsk 4 vocab and grammar. I kind of fell back on some easier language. It was also annoying to have 25 people in a room all talking at the same time. The part 1 repeating sentences, there were at least 2 where I realized immediately after that I had said one or two words wrong, ie. 考试 instead of 面试. Anyway I'm just going to hope for a pass.

 

[suMMit]

Got my results for the HSK4, still waiting on the HSKK. Reading was exactly what I expected, because I went too slowly. There other scores were better than I expected.