HSK 5 Written: Describing a picture

[Clarabelle]

I would be grateful for some pointers as to what to say for the pictures. For example, one of the pictures has a bunch of keys on the table and one person is signing what looks like a lease and the other person is standing there. The heads are chopped off. Do you say things like, "I think" or "It looks like" as just giving the facts won't stretch to 80 characters? Thanks. 

[Beelzebro]

I did HSK5 about 8 months ago and got a mark of roughly 90 in the writing section (can't remember exactly). Basically I just made up a story that somewhat related to the contents of the picture, and tried to make use of as much relevant vocab as I could. For your example, I would write something like:

 

这个人租到一套新房子了。现在在签租约然后就可以拿到桌上的钥匙，开始把东西搬进去。房子坐落在市中心，楼下有各种各样的小商店。其中一家就是这个人管理的奶茶店。早上上班只要坐2分钟电梯，也太方便了吧！

 

That's 89 characters excluding punctuation so you could maybe cut it down a bit. Your answer doesn't have to be really complicated, something like what I've written above is fine. They're just looking at whether you are capable of stringing a few sentences together in a somewhat fluid/coherent way. 

 

The main challenge is your knowledge of grammar, and also if you don't know a key piece of vocabulary you need to find a way to avoid using it. For example if you didn't know 租约 then you could instead say 办手续 instead of 签租约. 

 

加油

[Clarabelle]

Thanks so much Bellzebro. That's really helpful.

[stapler]

Similar to the above, I got around 90 on the writing section. I believe my picture was of a guy in office attire spilling a coffee on himself. I wrote extremely simple sentences, stuck to vocabulary I knew very well, and laced my story with sentence constructions. The story I made up was about being in a rush to work then spilling the coffee. I believe the key to doing well on this section isn't to show off how sophisticated your writing is, but to avoid errors.

[艾墨本]

I was taught to employ the 5ws and h for this as a quick prewrite. Before starting simply list out your answers to who what when where why and how, this can make sure your thoughts about what you want to say are clear. Clear thoughts go a long way toward clear writing. Beyond that, the above example is amazing and I second staplers advice.

[imron]

4 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

Clear thoughts go a long way toward clear writing

Same advice we got in high-school English classes (for native English speakers).

[agewisdom]

Dear Ben,

 

I sent an PM to you but accidentally sent it out before it was completed. Maybe you can PM me your email, if it's possible later on?