Coursera HSK 3 preparation (possibly for crammers)

[mungouk]

大家好！ 

If anyone else like me is cramming for the HSK 3 on 14 July you might be interested in the Coursera HSK 3 prep course.

 

https://www.coursera.org/learn/hsk-3/home/welcome

 

It's meant to be 7-10 weeks, but if you blaze through it you might be able to complete in a week. 

 

I've been enjoying it because (a) it's fairly high quality content (apart from a few typos in pinyin) and (b) it's different from the HSK 3 "standard course" text book and therefore a bit of fresh air.  The pacing is good and presenters speak clearly and with good audio.  Except for the dialogues featuring students which are in echoey classrooms and have the audio level set way too high!  (NORMALISE the audio people!)

 

Annoyingly after the "3 week" point I got hit with a paywall asking me to sign up for a 7-day trial, which I think is a new thing. (I've done Coursera MOOCs in the past and not seen this before.) You can cancel within 7 days if you can set yourself a reminder, or pay USD 49 to continue. 

Anyway despite the gripes I think it's worth a look if you can avoid having to pay. 

 

[mungouk]

Update to add:

 

I'm now in Shanghai, behind the GFW, and having trouble completing this course.  Coursera.org is accessible OK, but the video content, which seems to be hosted on cloudfront.net, isn't loading most of the time.  I've also tried through a VPN, and switching browsers in case of cookie issues, all with no luck.

 

For those who can access it, the first 6 "weeks" (Part 1 linked above) are going through vocabulary, grammar and dialogues and Part 2 is 4 "weeks" on testing strategies and mock tests.  I managed to start Part 2 without completing Part 1, so you might be able to begin with the tests and skip Part 1 completely.

 

Anyway I'm going to have to bail out and cancel my 7-day trial subscription now.  US $49 a month is pretty steep. I guess nobody is going to be willing to pay for a certificate just to say they completed an HSK prep course, when what really counts is the certificate for passing the exam.

 

 

[Luxi]

If you cancel your subscription, will you still be able to audit Part 2 and see the exercises?

You'll miss the teacher's/TA's feedback, but I'm sure you can do them on your own. You can always ask questions here.

 

Have you tried downloading the video lectures to watch  offline? That's what I used to do with moocs taught from China, they were painfully slow in the early days.

[mungouk]

I didn't take part in the forum activities as I was just using the content to review vocab and grammar, and to get a slightly different angle from just doing mock tests.

 

I'll find out tomorrow whether Part 2 is still accessible, but I doubt it.

 

In theory you could download all the videos, but then you wouldn't have access to the mini quizzes/tests (which are all pretty simple actually).

 

48 hours to go!  I should get on with another mock test...

 

[Flickserve]

Lucky I found this.

 

I was wondering about the 49USD. Give credit card details for free enrolment

 

Yup, enrolment is free, to continue you are charged. Classic.

 

 

[mungouk]

Well, this was more than 18 months ago. The business model might have changed again since then...

 

[Flickserve]

I just went on the site today.

They give 7 days free trial, for which you have to enter credit card details first. This is the free enrolment.

[SunnySideUp]

There should be a free audit version - just means you won't be getting a certificate at the end (and possibly some assignments not graded, but I haven't gotten that far yet).