What alternatives to the HSK are available?

[Friday]

Are there any alternative proficiency exams available in the mainland?

[Friday]

Is there no other choice in exams?

 

I'm looking for an exam more similar to the TOEFL, TOEIC, or IELTS, but for Chinese. These exams: are many hourse in length; include multiple essay writing sections; have reading questions that actually have established contexts; have sections demonstrating one's ability to hold a conversation or to speak on a topic for an extended period of time; and provide test takers with a separated score for each skill, so that one can show employers where one's strengths and weaknesses are.

[roddy]

There's nothing on the mainland I can think of - Hanban effectively has a monopoly. 

[laowhiner]

TOCFL sounds like what you desire (speaking, listening, reading, and writing sections, all with their own scores), but it's only in Taiwan. You can take it in either simplified or traditional, though. 

[Friday]

TOCFL sounds like what you desire (speaking, listening, reading, and writing sections, all with their own scores),

Okay, I will take a look at that and see if I can find some study materials in the mainland, but probably can't manage to travel to Taiwan just for a test.

[roddy]

Are there any reasons the HSK isn't suitable?

[Friday]

1. The exam should be longer. Languages are really big. For this reason, most language proficiency exams are around 3-4 hours.

There is insufficient variety in the questions.

There should be higher quality questions measuring the student's ability. Just as an example, looking at the sample oral exams, I see that only 2 questions genuinely test one's ability to speak, the other questions just test one's ability to repeat back or to read aloud.

[roddy]

Good enough reasons, but I'm afraid there's nothing I know of. Only idea I have for anyone on the mainland is taking tests designed for native speakers - the 普通话测试水平, or maybe even professional exams in whatever your field of choice is. Our user Heifeng posted quite a bit on the 普通话测试水平 some years ago. 

 

You could also look out some old HSK Advanced tests (back before Hanban took it over from BLCU) - they were way tougher, although still flawed. 

[xiaokaka]

If you don't need the test score for anything specific (and in that case it's always gonna be a specific HSK level) but just want to use it for evaluation, why don't you pay a tutor to design a test for you or to just spend a few hours evaluating you? Then the feedback will be much more specific and you will know what to work on. If that's not what you're after, but rather a score for employees, then I'm afraid the HSK is your only choice.

[The_]

.

[GotJack]

You could look into the Mandarin GCSE's and ALevel. I believe Cambridge and Edexcel both do these (and Cambridge exam board has testing centres in Mainland China if thats where you are based). I believe these may have the format and split that you are looking for!

[calibre2001]

GCSE and ALevel Chinese papers are taken mostly by native speakers studying abroad. But there aren't detailed breakdown of scores for each skill in the same way as IELTS.

[Flickserve]

How about iGCSE?

There's one for native speakers of Chinese as well as Chinese as a foreign language.

http://www.cie.org.uk/programmes-and-qualifications/cambridge-igcse-chinese-first-language-0509/