HSK word lists: just 1 meaning per word?

[milin]

There are 4 places where I can find lists with the necessary vocabulary for the HSK exams:

1) I don't know the current web-address, but once (in 2010) I downloaded documents from http://www.chinesetest.cn/index.do. These contain the words you need to learn, but no meaning. (I know there are new lists as of 2012, but that's not the point here.)

2) If you search a word on the site mdbg.net, they indicate if it belongs to an HSK level, and of course (since it's a dictionary site) also all of the meanings of the word. (By the way, they still use the old 2010 lists.)

3) At the bottom of this page on the site van Popup Chinese (http://popupchinese.com/hsk/test) you can find the word lists for each level in Excel sheets. However, there is just 1 meaning for each word.

4) On the site HSK tests (http://hsktests.com/) you can buy packages which also contain a PDF-file which contains the word list, but again just 1 meaning per item.

 

So my questions are:

1) Do you really just have to learn 1 (or at the most 2) meaning(s) of each word, or do you for example have to learn all of the meanings on mdbg.net? I am trying to do the latter, but there can be a lot of meanings. So the learning curve is a lot steeper.

2) Does anybody know another place where you can find word lists with *all* the required meanings?

 

Thanks,

Milin

[山东朱]

I would guess the more meanings the better, especially understanding the words in diffirent contexts. But concerning HSK 5 and 6, I found word lists to be helpful, but nothing to rely too much on, since both exams contain many words that are not on the official lists. I would guess to pass HSK 5 easily, you need around 4.000 words as oppossed to the 2.500 on the list, and for HSK 6, probably 7.000 instead of just 5.000. Knowledge of 成语故事 and chinese history also comes in handy.

[Demonic_Duck]

You certainly don't need to know all the meanings of a word for the first level that word appears in (I mean, for instance, you don't neet to know that "你好二" means "you're so stupid" for HSK1, even though all of these words appear on the list). I think it's much better to learn words in various different contexts, though, as 山东朱 says. It's a pity there doesn't seem to be anything like a definitive source for which meanings of the words will come up at which levels - one which listed different meanings of certain words multiple times at different levels would be good.

[sparrow]

Just learn one meaning. This simplification will save you a little time—which is extra time you can spend reading or dissecting the dialogue of sitcoms you've recorded as MP3s.

 

You'll get the extra meanings from context or when words are used in an unexpected way. This solidifies extra meanings through context and helps you internalize how to use the vocabulary properly, which is something you'll never, ever get from a vocabulary list.

[alanmd]

For some words such as 住 you obviously have to learn multiple meanings early on, because is used in very different ways. Some words can be used as for example a noun or a verb, and the HSK lists published by Hanban actually specify at which level it is used as which. I would guess "learn the common meanings" is the best way, some dictionaries such as MDGB and CC-CEDICT list some very obscure and confusing meanings for some characters/words, that you don't need to know at all. Most of the time I would agree with the "learn one meaning" advice.

[sparrow]

Actually, I completely disagree with learning character meanings altogether. I'm a firm believer in teaching Chinese in units of words, rather in character-by-character.

 

你住在这儿吗？

 

Maybe later, the student encounters the phrase:

站住！

 

Why teach things out of context? Context is the best way to learn anything.

 

Through context, you will get a feeling for the general idea of what characters mean individually, But learn what is actually used.

 

Find a good frequency dictionary for Chinese words, then use that. Don't waste your time on characters unless you find studying words utterly uninteresting and characters as extremely interesting. Otherwise, learn Chinese as Chinese is—which is a language whose smallest semantic unit are words.

 

If you need proof, translate any Chinese sentence character-by-character and you'll see the result is usually incomprehensible. Then translate it word-by-word and it will make sense.

[alanmd]

I didn't mean to suggest learning at character level, however I think completely ignoring character level information completely when learning words is almost as foolish as learning characters in isolation from words. On the whole I like to learn words, but if a character has a specific meaning in several words, then learning all of those words is easier if I know the meaning of that character.

 

For example 住 is considered an HSK 1, and would be given the meaning 'live' or similar. When 站住 is encountered I think it helps to learn that 住 also has a meaning something like 'stop' in those words/phrases, as itmakes 打住， 住手， etc. more memorable.

 

An analogy from English would be saying that syllables shouldn't be treated in isolation, that words should be learned as a whole. This is correct on the whole, but noticing that syllables such as un- and -able have a specific meaning helps to learn words that use them.

 

Better examples for me to have given in the first place would have been 得 or 等, which appear as both HSK 2 and HSK 4 words, with different meanings each time.

[sparrow]

We'll have to agree to disagree then. You wrote:

I think completely ignoring character level information completely when learning words is almost as foolish as learning characters in isolation from words.

I'm not sure why you say it's foolish if the only benefit you're citing is a small mnemonic advantage. I don't usually have problems learning new words, so the added mnemonic advantage is not important to me. I prefer to learn precisely what I need when I need it—or use a frequency dictionary and hope I run into the new words I learn (I often do), which is close enough.

 

Spending time memorizing meanings that I may not encounter for weeks or months seems counterproductive to me when that time could be better spent memorizing exactly what is relevant today. I can then spend the extra time reading or practicing something else to increase breadth or depth of experience.

 

But study methods are very personal, so...you gotta do what works best for you.

[li3wei1]

http://www.writtenchinese.com/

is a very useful resource that, for any character, gives you the most commonly used words it is part of, as well as single-character meanings. I think it uses the same database as the Routledge frequency dictionary, but I'm not sure.

[alanmd]

But study methods are very personal, so...you gotta do what works best for you.

 

Absolutely! Everyone learns differently, and someone else's technique can ever be wrong. I personally try to use as much available information as possible when I am trying to relate Chinese words in my head, and that means incorporation information sometimes at the character level, and sometimes even at the radical level. I never learn characters in isolation however, I only think about individual characters if they occur in more than one word that I know, or if a 1 character word is reused as part of another word with its meaning changed, which was the example I gave. My HSK graphs/charts help to highlight this kind of thing.