Simplified Chinese & Exams

[heifeng]

A random question for our wonderful forum members (Chinese learners and native speakers alike)

Q: If you primarily use Simplified Characters are you familiar with this character or have you ever seen it in any publications using Simplified Chinese characters? (Don't look it up~just give yourself a few minutes to stare at it...like, well, you are taking an exam :blink: )

Answer and maybe I will give you some details on why I am asking this ..oh yeah, and the 'your opinion' part B)

[roddy]

Have no idea. Suspect you made it up to make me feel ignorant.

[heifeng]

No no no not at all! It's not made up and you are certainly not ignorant!

(I am trying to prove that someone else (or a certain test authority**) is however....)

**term used very loosely here

[OneEye]

Haha. I see where this is going.

(I cheated and looked it up)

[heifeng]

Ok, but wait just a bit though before you give it away so we can round up some more replies.

(Since you know where this is heading, you can prepare to answer my next set of questions...)

[Guest realmayo]

Never seen it!

[heifeng]

You can reference here too if you like, but you'll need to scroll down a bit~

[roddy]

Come on, bring on the next set of questions . . .

[Daan]

I've never seen it used in texts in simplified Chinese, but it's used quite often in Taiwan.

[heifeng]

Fine, next questions :

1. (If, after doing some digging into the 第一批异体字整理表 & 简化字总表) would you feel it is appropriate for an occupational certification exam to use this character on a question on the Simplified edition of the exam instead of 苏？*** Or do you believe this is a variant character that has been been done away with for a while in Mainland China and should not show up on an exam that you have selected to take in the Simplified 'Standard'?

2. If this character randomly appeared in a multiple choice question to pick the best synonym (ie NOT in a sentence where you could look for context), do you think this may cause a bias against those examinees taking the exam in Simplified vs. Traditional? (For example, maybe this exact question was in the Traditional test, but in traditional the character form listed above is still used....unlike in Simplified)

3. Lastly, would this question lead you to be concerned that additional variant and/or traditional characters may be present on the exam and feel that perhaps the test authority should want to review this issue?

4. And, lastly, for curiousity's sake, what would be the ideal solution to this issue???

***(Side note this is an exam administered in the USA)

[Sarevok]

1) I have never seen it and was quite surprised after looking it up. I would never use it in place of 苏 and believe it's been done away with during the simplification reform (though it is interesting in it's own way, reminded me of 自力更生 and it's also similar to my favorite character 泪 - if you know the components, you know the meaning immediately... maybe they shouldn't have replaced it, but that's a topic for another discussion)

2) They should get their things straight - if there was a question based on character graphics, which would lose it's meaning in simplified characters, then they shouldn't include it that version

3) Yes, it would

4) Don't know what's the current situation in the U.S., according to what I have heard, the standard procedure is to complain, fill in a lawsuit and win big money :ph34r: just kidding...

[rob07]

If you put 甦 in the nciku search box (I did this by drawing it with the mouse), it will automatically change it to 苏 as soon as you hit the search button. Further indicates that it should not be used in a simplified text.

[James Johnston]

The ABC dictionary does have it as the only version of the character in the expression 死而复甦 meaning 'resurrect'. It does seem very obscure.

Mistakes in exam questions aren't rare. Usually they will just void all the answers to that question, but first you'd have to convince them that they did make a mistake.

[gato]

1. (If, after doing some digging into the 第一批异体字整理表 & 简化字总表) would you feel it is appropriate for an occupational certification exam to use this character on a question on the Simplified edition of the exam instead of 苏？*** Or do you believe this is a variant character that has been been done away with for a while in Mainland China and should not show up on an exam that you have selected to take in the Simplified 'Standard'?

***(Side note this is an exam administered in the USA)

Can you post a copy of the question so we can see how it was asked? It might be reasonable if it was asked in the context of a chengyu, for example.

[roddy]

Failed by a point, huh

[Lu]

If it was important, I'd make a formal complaint about this to whatever authority was responsible for this. If I had passed even with this character in it, I probably wouldn't bother (even though I probably should, to back up others who complained because they did fail).

(I've seen this character before, but that probably was in traditional then.)

[skylee]

I live in a traditional-script enviroment.

I won't say that I see 甦 every day but it is certainly quite common (in HK at least). The online Lin Yutang dictionary says that 甦 is also written as 穌 / 蘇; and the latter are interchangeable with 甦.

[heifeng]

Haha Roddy, I did not only failed by a point (a few scaled points though), but after I took the exam (and memorized as many of the questions as I could for my own personal self study) I looked up this character & then thought it was odd that it was on the exam in the first place...

Also, it was NOT part of a chengyu the way it was presented on the exam. I don't think I can repeat the entire question on the board here, but basically (if memory does serve correctly) it was used in the word 苏醒 as one of the four multiple choice options to select a synonym of something.

example:

Select synonym for XX

A ) YY

B ) ZZ

C ) 苏醒 (with that other 苏)

D ) NN

Anyway, I DID file a complaint and waited a full 45 busines days later only to be sent a letter which stated 'we stand behind the expertise of subject matter experts in both English and Simplified Chinese who contributed to the content of the exam.....blah blah...." & "to be assured that the exam development process is designed to make certain that all questions appearing on a candidates exam are appropriate and accurate." Which I have a feeling they just mailed to me to make me stop calling their office since the letter is dated just 1 day after I called and complained about them not meeting their advertised appeal response time. (Plus it is basically what I would write to get someone off my case too.)

The bigger issue I thought (& presented) was that the exam should be reviewed for other non-standard Simplified characters---since another section basically consisted of 'picking out the wrong character' in sentences (these were full of Chengyu & I do not even remember too much of this section since it was much longer)

Anyway, the funny thing (sort of) is that this Chinese written exam is actually already eliminated. Apparently, I was in the last group to take it right before they killed the foreign language component of the exam---now it's 100% English. :blink: So the whole effort was really a bit of a waste since now getting through to the Oral exam just requires passing an English proficiency exam! Good grief!!

Anyway, I guess it's time to put the issue to bed now since clearly me and the test authority are going to just need to agree to disagree on this one :rolleyes:

[gato]

Ask them to provide a newspaper article or official document from mainland China that uses "甦醒" instead of "苏醒". I suspect that a Taiwanese instructor made this question.

Google and Baidu both converts 甦醒 into 苏醒 when you do a search on 甦醒 (without quotes) using simplified Chinese.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=%E7%94%A6%E9%86%92&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

甦醒

When you search for 甦醒 enclosed in quotes, then almost all the pages returned are in traditional Chinese or lyrics of songs in traditional Chinese.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E7%94%A6%E9%86%92%22&hl=en

"甦醒"

[rezaf]

And, lastly, for curiousity's sake, what would be the ideal solution to this issue???

learn fantizi