Now allowed to type on new HSK test

[Don_Horhe]

Online HSK? Pinyin input? Call me quaint, but I'm glad I sat for the old HSK before it was too late.

[roddy]

And a picture. Very interesting, maybe we'll see this sooner than I dismissively suggested.

[jbradfor]

Even if computer technology has replaced handwriting in 90% of instances, that still leaves many occasions when information is written down by hand. So yes, handwriting is "not necessary" from a life or death point of view, but the reality is that it really still is very much necessary for practical purposes for any average educated person in China.

I think we all agree (well, most of us...), that to be a "fully educated in Chinese" one must be able to write. [At least for another 20 years or so B)]. The question is, for non-native learners of Chinese, should being able to write by hand so important that it is a requirement for an intermediate level (e.g HSK 3) test?

@ironlady

Pinyin writing is, IMHO, not sufficient to demonstrate proficiency in modern Chinese ca 2010, simply because literate native speakers cannot necessarily read it.

I think you misunderstood. I don't think anyone was suggesting writing in pinyin. I think people were asking about pinyin-based IME for entering characters, and different versions there-of.

[Guest realmayo]

I wonder if in some aspects this might at some time make the HSK more difficult? Or at least different? The old HSK intermediate involves (involved?) writing a handful of characters only, and I don't think the writing was massively extensive in the Advanced. But if it can be typed, then it's more realistic to ask people taking the test to write at greater length, testing their ability to express themselves in written (ok, typed) Chinese more than would have been fair if you were expecting them to remember how to write all those characters accurately too.

... A reminder of how bonkers the system of Chinese characters is and how fortunate for it that the period between extensive literacy and computers wasn't too long.

[Meng Lelan]

And a picture. Very interesting

Wow, see how in the picture there's not a pencil or paper to be seen. Very different from the Texas state Chinese language teacher exam I had to take. They gave me 20 sheets of blank paper, a pencil, and locked me in a room for two hours to handwrite essays. No dictionaries or reference materials allowed, and they do take off points for writing in pinyin or English instead of a 汉字.

[anonymoose]

If someone can live in a Chinese-speaking place for a decade, work in a language-related industry (T&I) and not need to handwrite the whole time other than filling out forms

Well I guess this is where we disagree then. I gave filling out forms as one example of handwriting in use. Handwriting in use on a daily basis is certainly not just filling out forms. What about students in education? Practically everything they write, from personal notes to assignments, is written by hand. These will certainly not just be limited to a small idiosycratic subset of characters. I'd like to know how a student studying say, history, at university would fair if they weren't able to write by hand.

[yonglin]

It's interesting that you mention university students, anonymoose. Spending about 90% of my wake time in a university environment, I can reassure you that the only occasion a student is required to write by hand is when taking exams, i.e., on approximately four occasions per year. An increasing number of students take notes in class on computers that they bring to lectures, for example.

I think that everyone would strictly prefer students typing their exam scripts to handwriting them - it's just that we don't have the financial resources to implement such a change right now.

[anonymoose]

Yonglin, that may be the case in Toronto, but it certainly isn't in Shanghai, yet anyway.

[ironlady]

It was the case in Taipei by 2002, when I did an MA there -- I did not need to write. I *was* required to type in Chinese regularly, including on the entrance examination for interpreting school. And, as I said, I did an actual survey of about 150 people chosen at random from in front of a train station, asking them what they actually write by hand.

(And if I hadn't had my laptop computer to play with during some of those long boring lectures on Saturday afternoons...I hate to think of the results. Erm, I mean, I surely wouldn't have taken notes so efficiently.)

Think about foreigners -- we mostly have disposable income compared to the Chinese. How many foreigners who study Chinese to the point where they are going to China do not have an iPod/iPhone/iPad/iWhatever, for instance? With the apps available these days, no one has to write by hand if they choose not to, and it's more efficient to search and organize, greener and easier to share notes as well.

The thing is -- outside of education, I haven't heard any extensive examples of the need to handwrite. Okay, let's assume education requires handwriting. Why? So graduates can then go out into the real world and -- erm, not handwrite anymore? Seems like it's the educational system that needs to re-think the importance of handwriting in Chinese for foreigners. Just because something is required, or "has always been required" doesn't mean it's sensible to require it. Usually it's just people doing things the same way because it's easier than changing.

[anonymoose]

I agree, but that's a separate issue.

If the reality of the situation is that exams have to written by hand, then you're pretty much screwed if you can't write by hand. End of story.

[Guest realmayo]

Surely that's only relevant if the HSK is a measure of your ability to take exams in a Chinese university?

[Meng Lelan]

The HSK seems to be changing so fast in so many different ways in the last year or so.

[Ah-Bin]

This a an interesting debate. I had never even heard of anyone who thought that learning to handwrite was a waste of time until about five years ago when I first came to China. Now it seems more and more people are questioning the need. How things have changed.

The tools for learning Chinese are so different from back when I started (1996). The only tool I had for the first two years as a student was the red oxford English/Chinese-Chinese/English Dictionary. It was the only affordable one. The only computerised dictionaries you could get then were for Taiwanese and Hk learners of English. Newer inventions seem to have really lowered the need for the skill of handwriting from memory. It's nice that the HSK people are beginning to recognise this.

I can say from my own experience that the difference between being able to write characters and write sentences is really huge. I was able to write hundreds of traditional characters from memory (maybe over 2500 at the best time) but I've never been able to write anything in Chinese more complex than a letter that wouldn't instantly give me away as a foreigner because of the grammatical mistakes. The short handwritten compositions I had to do ten years ago always came back covered in lines and corrections - no problems with the characters though!

I also used to find typing more difficult than handwriting sometimes, because I never learnt to pay too much attention to retroflex consonants, and I had been trained to look up all my unknown characters by radical from the second year on, and I got lazy with pronunciation.

However I think that actually it's quite good that people are being allowed to do HSK with a computer. I started learning Chinese becaue I loved characters and enjoyed spending hours writing them out. I realise that not all people share that joy, and I don't think they should be made to do things that even your ordinary Chinese can't or doesn't do, just because of the weight of tradition. There's not too much of that left in China anyway now Confucius has been rolling in his grave since 1919 when Chinese started trying write as they (northern Chinese) speak. By the 50's he was rolling so fast you could generate electricity from him.

[ironlady]

@anonymoose

"you have to write exams by hand" is your experience (well, your perception -- I don't know your history, but you haven't mentioned having done a degree in China in the posts I've read so far, though maybe I'm assuming?)

I **have** done an MA degree at a Chinese-speaking university. It was not necessary for me to EVER write anything by hand for submission during that time. I was free to take notes by any means I found convenient -- and even listening to Chinese lectures, to record INFORMATION and not language, I generally took notes in English (or "interlanguage", since interpreters do not take notes in a specific language when we do notetaking for interpretation, although that kind of notes usually isn't much good for longterm storage of information). I certainly wasn't handicapped in the least by not being able to write 5,000 characters from memory.

There may be programs where handwriting is still expected -- but with some creativity and persuasion (another excellent skill to possess in Chinese, as a foreigner!) that can generally be worked around. And I believe the number of programs where this would be set in stone is dropping like, well, a stone. :rolleyes:

I am specifically excluding programs that "teach Chinese", since those programs are usually requiring handwriting without any deep thought as to the utility of it.

[anonymoose]

As I did make clear in a previous post, I acknowledge that you can function in society without the ability to write. As I said, you can function in society without many other abilities also.

[Meng Lelan]

There may be programs where handwriting is still expected -- but with some creativity and persuasion (another excellent skill to possess in Chinese, as a foreigner!) that can generally be worked around.

Handwriting is still expected of teachers in 对外汉语 programs. It's not something that can be worked around, because the teacher exams require it.

[ironlady]

Yes, you are right (and I feel your pain on the teacher exams as well -- I am certified in NY).

I believe that we need to get more non-native speakers involved in the agenices and organizations that determine what is required. If we are testing a skill thqt is no longer a real world skill for the majority, that should be addressed. Even as a classroom teacher, I can model good lifelong learning skills by showing that yes, people (including native speakers) DO forget how to write characters, and here are the ways you can find them quickly (cell phone, electronic dictionary, Google, online dictionaries, etc.)

When there are questions on the eighth-grade proficiency exam in NY that I find difficult after working professionakky with Chinese for nearly 30 years and living in a Chinese-speaking environment for 10, those are not testing high-frequency items, and I think that means that we have non-aware native speakers writing the exams. We need to create a niche for Chinese as a Second/Foreign language instead of having it accepted that any native speaker with an MA in literature "is qualified" not only to teach but to write curriculum and assessments. I am not saying native speakers cannot make good teachers, but there need to be input and counterbalancing oversight from people from a different, more applied perspective.

[aristotle1990]

However I think that actually it's quite good that people are being allowed to do HSK with a computer. I started learning Chinese becaue I loved characters and enjoyed spending hours writing them out.

I quite enjoy using characters, but only on a computer. My handwriting is horrible -- I don't pay attention to the correct stroke order, because I didn't think it was worth the investment of time for someone who almost never writes characters by hand and isn't interested in calligraphy. (Yeah, when I was studying Chinese formally we had to write out the characters out for tests, so I can write out all the common characters from memory now, but they're more like "horrifically ugly facsimiles that a teacher would recognize" than real Chinese characters.)

[kongli]

I can relate. I can hardly write well in english, so chinese is quite a struggle.

I really wish I had learned to hold a pencil correctly. Now after I write 6 sentences my hand begins to get really tired and kind of hurt.

[hbuchtel]

I **have** done an MA degree at a Chinese-speaking university. It was not necessary for me to EVER write anything by hand for submission during that time.

I don't think this is representative of the majority of universities in China. I've been studying for 5 years at a Chinese university (including 2 years with local students), and there was only ONE course when we did not have to do handwriting on the exam. In most cases if a student (including foreign students) could not write characters, it would be impossible to pass the exam, as about 40% of the final grade came from questions that involved filling in blanks or writing your own response.

My experience might not be representative either, but I think only a few universities in China could expect all their students to be able to afford a laptop or supply the resources for making all testing digital.