New HSK Level 5 Computer Exam – preparation tips

[jienene]

Before taking the New HSK level 5 exam I searched all over looking for details about it that would help me prepare, especially after I found out that I would be taking the exam on the computer (网考). Though I did find the most helpful information on this website, it was difficult to find everything I wanted. This post is a summary of what I would have wanted to know before I took the test.

First some background information. This was my first time to take an HSK exam. I took the exam in a smaller city in China on April 14, 2012. Before the exam I took 15 practice tests at home and also studied a few books about the HSK.

General information

The day before the exam there was a mock exam at the testing center to help those taking the exam get used to the computer based format. I found it very helpful to participate in this.

You don't really need pencils and an eraser for the computer exam, but I brought them anyway and then asked for scratch paper before the exam, which they gave me. I used the scratch paper to mark difficult questions that I wanted to return to later.

The computer format allows you jump instantly to any question (for the current portion of the exam) by clicking the question number on the list at the left of the screen. You can also easily change any answer as many times as you want.

For each portion of the exam, the time counts down at the top of the screen, so you don't need to worry about not having a watch or a clock available.

Listening

The listening portion of the exam was very similar in difficulty to the practice exams available on the Hanban website. Some questions were so similar I almost felt like I had done them before.

The four answer choices appear on the screen when the question number is spoken. You can only see the choices for the current question in part one. In part two, all of the answer choices are shown if there is more than one question for a particular dialog or passage.

A blue progress bar at the top of the screen shows how much time you have left to answer the question. The screen automatically goes to the next answer set if you run out of time. Don't worry if you didn't have a chance to click your answer, though. There are 5 minutes at the end of the listening portion for you to go back. Just make a quick note of the question number on your scratch paper so that you can remember which one it was. Don't get distracted from listening to the beginning of the next dialog, though.

One disadvantage of taking the exam on the computer is that you can't begin reading the answers to the next question if you finish one question early (except for passages with multiple questions). So I recommend when you are practicing with paper based exams beforehand that you refrain from looking at the next answer set until the woman says the number of the next dialog.

I tried a lot of different strategies for the listening portion when I was preparing for the exam. Some worked well and some didn't. I recommend looking over the answers briefly before the listening passage begins. Try to determine what the question is going to be. That will give you a lot more focus when you are actually listening. If there is time before they start speaking then try to read at least one full answer. However, as soon as they start speaking, put your whole attention on what they are saying. You can still let your eyes rove over the answers, but your concentration has to be on what they are saying. I found that for short answer sets (2-4 characters) I could (and should) mark my answer or possible answer at the same time that the speakers were talking. If I didn't do this, it was easy to miss small but critical details. For longer answers I found that if I tried to read them at the same time, then I missed questions because I was concentrating too hard on reading. But if I focused on overall comprehension, I found that I usually had time to read and choose the correct answer after the question was asked.

If you space off for even a moment you can miss a critical detail. I found two things that helped me to stay engaged in the dialog or passage. One was to use face and hand motions relating to the content of the passage to help me interact with what was being talked about. If you are too introverted to do that at the testing center (like me), then another one is to use your scratch paper to doodle about what is being talked about.

Like I said, you have five minutes at the end of the listening section to go back and check/change your answers. I would use that whole time. Even though you can't replay the audio, you can reread your answers and make sure that you didn't misread them earlier or accidentally click the wrong one.

Reading

I found the reading portion to be a just little bit harder than I was expecting after doing the practice exams from the Hanban website.

The reading portion is 45 minutes long. I mention that because some of the books I was using said it was 40 minutes while the Hanban site said 45 minutes. It's still not a bad idea to pace yourself to 40 minutes, though, and then use the extra five minutes to go back and check your answers to the difficult questions.

For part one (fill in the blank), I think the best strategy is to look at the answers, then read the context before and after the blank. As long as you know the meaning of the words you can usually fill in the blank by only reading one or two sentences. For most of the questions you don't need to waist your time reading the whole passage. And believe me, you need every extra second you can get.

For part two (short passage), I found the best strategy was to read the whole paragraph first as quickly as I could (just a little bit slower than skimming) while still maintaining some comprehension. My goal was to grasp the main idea but not necessarily every detail. Doing this I could often pick out the right answer or at least dismiss some wrong answers. Sometimes I had to return to the paragraph to look for details. Sometimes I had to just make my best guess and then make a note of the question number on my scratch paper and hope that I would have enough time at the end to come back and read it more carefully.

For part three (long passage), the best strategy by far was to read the question first, note the key words, and then go back and scan the passage for the key words. After finding them, reading the context usually gave the correct answer. The questions were almost always asked in the same order as the passage content. Answers to questions about the main meaning of the passage can usually be found in the last sentence.

Writing

Here is where the main advantage of taking the computer exam is. I firmly believe that people should know how write characters by hand, but I admit that it was really nice to be able to use a pinyin input editor. This gave me a lot more time to compose my answers. It also allowed me to edit and rearrange after I was already done with my draft. That wasn't possible when I practiced writing on paper. I recommend that you use a computer when practicing this portion (but only if your exam is going to be computer based, of course).

There were a large number of Chinese input editor choices on the computer I used. I chose the Sohu editor. If you can't remember how to write a character but you know the pinyin, then write a longer word or even a whole phrase and the right characters are usually automatically displayed. Some difficult punctuation marks to make are (、) the backslash key, (·) the tilde key, and (……) Shift+6.

For part one, you just drag and drop the sentence fragments into the correct order. As long as you know the grammar, it is fast and painless.

For part two, question one (80-word essay using the five given words), the best advice I found was to form a sentence linking all five words logically. Then expand each part of the sentence by adding descriptions, linking grammar, and so on.

For part two, question two (80-word essay about a picture), the most basic good advice I was given was to first write a simple sentence describing the main point of the picture. Then expand that sentence by adding details, background, ideas, and so on.

Preparation Tips

For long term preparation, I recommend reading extensively in Chinese on many different topics. Specific topics that may be extra helpful are Chinese culture, famous history stories and legends, stories behind proverbs, and modern social concerns like population, pollution, and environmental protection. For listening, I recommend watching Chinese TV or serial dramas, clips on Youku, and listening to the radio. I liked the serial drama 《租个女友回家过年》 for both its interesting storyline and its culturally content. Or just check what modern TV dramas have high popularity rankings on Youku, Xunlei, or whatever your favorite site is. Keeping a topical daily Chinese diary would also be a good practice.

I really, really recommend the Anki app for practicing vocabulary. If my Android phone did nothing other than Anki, it still would have been worth the price I paid for the phone. The app for Android is free and whatever it costs for Apple phones I'm sure it's worth it. I downloaded the 5000-word HSK level 6 list for Anki and after learning that, there were very few words I didn't know in the entire HSK 5 exam (which only supposedly requires 2500 words).

I also memorized some flowery language and proverbs to describe a variety of situations. It paid off in the writing section.

For short term practice, I recommend the following books:

新HSK考试辅导教程（5级） from 高等教育出版社

It has some good advice and also lots of good practice, including writing samples.

21天征服新HSK六级写作

Yes, this is for level 6 writing, but the whole first unit is about level 5 and that alone was worth the price of the book. Very well written. Besides, I can still use it if I take level 6 some day.

Then a book with extra practice exams is helpful, too. I used 新HSK模拟试题集·五级 by Sinolingua. Their mock tests were significantly harder than the actual tests, but that has its benefits, too.

These books and more are all readily available on Amazon.cn if you are in China.

Well, this is a long post, but I wish someone else had written it before I took the exam. I hope you may find it helpful yourself.

[spiff]

Very helpful, thank you.

[slesser]

very nice post. Thank you for giving us so much information.

slesser

[prateeksha]

Extremely helpful. I am about to give HSK 5 in June and have been trying to find reviews on the online format of the exam for a long time now. Thank you so much for the informative post.

Another question. If someone returns to their country before the result is declared, can someone pick the result on their behalf as long as they are carrying an authority letter?

[jienene]

Another question. If someone returns to their country before the result is declared, can someone pick the result on their behalf as long as they are carrying an authority letter?

I don't know for certain. Maybe others could answer this question. If you ask the testing location where you take the exam, I'm sure they could tell you. I'm guessing that if you gave your friend photocopies of your passport and your test ID paper then it could work.

[Nociceptif]

Great tips! I'm considering taking level 5 in Q4, 2012 and this is a great help.

Does any one know whether and when the computer format will become the standard or whether the paper version will continue to be proposed in the near future?

Obviously it's a trade-off between not being able to read answers in advance in the listening section and being able to use pinyin in the writing section. Given my poor hand-writing skills I guess it's still a net gain in my case, but I'll need to test that on a few mock tests.

Thanks again for the insights.

[jienene]

Does any one know whether and when the computer format will become the standard or whether the paper version will continue to be proposed in the near future?

Whether or not this will become the standard, I don't know. But if you want to take the computer version, you can just go to the Hanban site and see which testing center has 网考 listed after it.

[yang zhao]

it is exactly the same experience as mine. very helpful thanks