How to prepare for New HSK 5 WRITING

[baambi]

Hey guys, I am preparing to take new HSK lvl 5 at the end of the month and I still have a very hard time with the writing part. Doing the sample tests I usually get something like 40/45 for Tingli and Yuedu but the writing part is quite tough for me. Most characters I don't really know how to write; I can just read them. Also I am not really able to produce good sounding sentences; I believe that they sound quite awkward to the native speaker. How are you guys preparing for the writing part?

And what do you think how hard is the section graded in general? I mean can I just write 80 chars worth of sentences? Some BS sentences, could that be OK? Or is it that the corrector will also grade how 'elaborate' my writing is? What if I don't remember the character and write some Pinyin instead?

Thanks for your advice,

Cornelius

[Dani_man]

I would suggest:

1. To learn how to write some basic characters. Unless you're not familiar with the basic characters, I've attached a file I prepared containing some "difficult" words which I've found quite useful to get around with the writing section. (just as a funny example, most of the simulations I did, and the HSK itself, required me for some reason to write the word 比赛, which I've never really mastered till the exam...).

2. Write assignments according to the mock exams (without dictionary) and then give it to a tutor to mark your mistakes. You can't imagine how it helps.

3. I remember that Anki decks' library has one deck with sentences in Chinese. This might help you out with sentences structure and grammer.

4. See the solutions the mock exams books provide. It can also show you what they expect from the test takers in this section. But I'm not sure how strict they are in grading those things.

Hope it helps.

HSK writing preperation.docx

[baambi]

Dani,

thanks a lot for the reply! It's a good idea to get familiarized with basic important characters to build those basic sentence structures. I will also try to find a tutor to grade my mock-ups. So far I was a little ashamed to show anybody. ;) In my practice book I didn't have a solution to the writing mock-up but as I'll get a new stash of books soon hopefully there will be one that provides the answers to the writing part.

[imron]

You might also find lang-8 useful.