The New HSK Exams

[roddy]

I'd heard rumours about these, but this is the first time I've seen anything formal (admittedly I'd never gone looking) but while I was looking through the 国家汉语对外教学领导小组办公室 (thankfully abbreviated to 汉办) website for info for a new 'All about the HSK' website I'm working on, I came across . . .

HSK（少儿） - HSK Kids (not sure if there's an official translation for these yet - the English version of the website appears to be 30 years behind the Chinese one). This apparently has been tested and should be up and running now, although I never heard anything about it. I suspect it may be more of an 'outside China' exam, as there aren't that many foreign 5 year olds running around. Interestingly specifies that it will test all four skills, something the main HSK exams are woefully inadequate at.

HSK（商务）- HSK Business - should be up and running in the first half of 2005.

HSK（文秘）- HSK Secretarial. As above.

HSK（旅游) - HSK Tourism. And again.

They seem to be referring to the 'old' HSK exams as 主干 with these four as 四个专项考试. Unfortunately I've been unable to find anything concrete on the actual content, but some of the items linked to above make reference to oral testing, which would be a great leap forward. Similarly I didn't find anything on the 'new' HSK exams which we've been told on here are scheduled for 2006.

So, who's going to be first to take HSK Kids?

Roddy

Edit: Turns out each of these has it's own website.

HSK Business - decent, has some info in English, Korean and Japanese (hint - if you are trying to download the HSK(商务)考试题型介绍, they've got the English and Korean ones mixed up, so download the Korean one)

HSK Tourism - seems to have a lot of promising looking links that don't work, but you can download sample questions.

HSK Secretarial is the only one to have a Students Handbook available for download, but don't bother choosing from the four possible languages - they all link to the same Chinese document.

HSK Kids has been sent to bed early - site not found.

One of these days I'm going to write a big long letter to the HSK people about the importance of decent websites. Anyone want to sign?

[yonglan]

Will there still be a 主幹 or one would need to pick one of the three specialties? I was actually thinking about taking this test, but I'm not a salary man, a secretary, or a tour guide. As for what I am, we won't talk about that . . .

[PollyWaffle]

I was actually thinking about taking this test, but I'm not a salary man, a secretary, or a tour guide.

don't be like that, i know i've spent voluminous hours studying this ridiculous language to become a secretary?