Some questions about the New HSK 6 Writing Exam

[tooironic]

Hi all. I have some questions about the New HSK 6 Writing Exam (新HSK六级考试书写部分), I'd appreciate any advice you can give. (Note I'm taking the pen-and-paper exam [笔试], not the computer test [网考].)

1. During the writing exam, do they provide you with a pen, or a pencil with an eraser? If I need to make corrections or small changes, would it be acceptable if I added new content in the margin, with an arrow indicating the appropriate place?

2. I know that the reading time is only 10 minutes. Since you're not allowed to take down any notes before they take the material away, are there any specific strategies you can recommend? I've done six mock exams so far, and each time I struggle to commit all content of the text to memory. As a result, I'm often unable to write as up to 400 字 as is required in the limited time frame of 35 minutes.

3. How is the writing exam graded? Are there any specific criteria available online to read?

4. Are there any other tips you could provide that would help me better prepare for the exam? I'll be taking it in September this year, in Melbourne. During the mock exams I always score 65-70 for listening and reading, but I'm worried that the score for my writing exam won't be high enough due to the problem I mentioned in the second question, and that I often forget how to write some characters.

Thanks.

[SuEn]

1. We were told to bring our own 2B pencil and an eraser. I don't know about the corrections in margins. I tried to avoid it. At one point during the exam, I think I even erased a few lines of what I had just written just to add another sentence in there.

2. What I did was to skim over the text once, identify the main parts of the story, the characters, order of events, time, location etc. Then I would go over it again, this time reading the key passages more carefully. What helped me remember more details was to kind of read out the important parts character by character in my mind. After the second read, I tried to think about the story and see if I can recall at least the characters and order of the events. I would reinforce what I remember by quickly going over the text again and I also tried to pick up more details. At this point, I have identified which characters that I can't handwrite are really important to the story, so I spent the remaining time (which was not much) writing imaginary characters in the air to "learn" them. As soon as they took the texts, I wrote these down at the end of my paper (and obviously erased them at the end).

I also struggled to remember all the content, it helped me to deconstruct the story in a somewhat systematic way, I remembered our 写作 teacher in China being really obsessed with 记叙文的六要素 - 人物、时间、地点、经过、原因、结果。So that is what I tried to look for and consciously categorize the content as such to remember it better.

3. There is some general info here I haven't seen anything more specific.

4 I found this series quite useful, especially the 写作 and 阅读 one, they contain a lot of very good tips and explanations.

[rob07]

1.

We were told to bring our own 2B pencil and an eraser

I would just add that it has to be 2B because the multiple choice parts of the test are marked by a computer and it may not be able to reliably read other types of pencil. Writing with different types of pencils can feel different, so I suggest you practice with 2B specifically.

2. My personal opinion is that it is not a good strategy to attempt to memorise anything in the ten minutes reading time. The 1000 character passage is written very carefully to ensure that retelling the main points only in your own words should take 400 characters and this is what you are supposed to do. I recommend using the ten minutes reading time to read the passage properly, if you do this should understand it well enough to retell the main points in your own words (in 400 characters) and it won't matter that the details haven't stuck in your mind. Aim to read for understanding, not to memorise details or parts of the text.

3. I posted what I know about the marking criteria at #13 of this thread, based on what I was told by a large Beijing language school. I would say that a lot of it is not obvious at all (eg, losing marks for not indenting paragraphs). As I said in that thread it is important to develop a feel for how long 400 characters is, and how all of the reading passages are carefully written so that they can be summarised in 400 characters. It may be worth doing a couple of untimed practice tests first to develop this feel and only turning on the clock once you are comfortable with this.

Edit: I agree with everything SuEn said as well.

[mzyng]

Hi there. I apologise for reviving an old thread but I have a question of my own regarding the HSK 6 writing section. Is there any recommended/specific format that one should follow in this section, such as the number of paragraphs and the choice of title? Thanks in advance.