”国考“ China's Civil Service Exam’s Study Materials [Post-HSK]

[Weyland]

Let me endow you all with a suggestion straight out of left field. Last time I introduced the Putonghua Proficiency Test (普通话水平测试) - an exam meant for teachers/media figures - in another thread with a neat APP to test your pronunciation by native standards. This time I'll turn it up a notch. Let me introduce to you; China's Civil Service Examination (国家公务员考试 CN-Link), otherwise known as the Guokao ”国考". An exam where only 1% of all examinees get offered a job. But before any of you start biting your nails, let me give you some background as I think it's materials, which focuses on logic, are great for foreign-language students that want to move past the HSK but still enjoy an "academic" setting. Also, they're multiple choice. 



Like most of you know in ye olde times, or rather up till the Republic of China was established, there used to be Imperial Examinations as a tool to recruit bureaucrats for government positions within the Imperial court and other various positions within Imperial China's extensive bureaucracy. But after the fall of the Qing dynasty it wasn't reestablished, as in the 19th century, critics blamed the imperial system, and in the process its examinations, for stifling Chinese science and technical knowledge. It wasn't until 1994, when Deng Xiaoping called for a new way of hiring government personnel, that it was reinstated. And later on in 2005 it was made a legal precedent to hire the applicant with the most competitive score. 

Now, why am I sharing this? While foreigners can work for the government and even enroll into the Chinese Communist Party through special procedures, they aren't hold to the same standards as natives and thus don't have to join in on the rat race that is the ”国考“. The thing is though; its contents are kind of amazing. Here is why: 

The exam is divided up in several parts, these are the ones that I find most relevant.

Language Section （言语）- List of Examination Questions

 

   Basically the reading section of the HSK on steroids. The list of examination questions for all of the 4 subjects are updated daily, all of which are accompanied with answers and the reasoning behind said answers. The topics of featured passages are far-ranging and unlike what you might expect rarely cover politics. The answers to the questions are explained clearly.

 

• Logical Deduction (逻辑天空）：A passage is provided where certain words are left out/blank. You have to deduce from the context which of the words are most fitting.
• Reading Comprehension（阅读理解）：An excerpt is provided and the examinee has to decide what the contents are, what intention is being brought across, how best to summarize, or what the most important part of said excerpt is. 
• Sentence Expression （语句表达）：Grammar. Which sentences have errors. Which word order is correct. Which idiom fits best. Questions in that nature.
• Essay Reading（文章阅读）: Same as Reading Comprehension, but the longer parses of text with multiple questions covering its contents. Which means that if you get one question wrong you get all subsequent questions wrong as well. Haha
   

General Knowledge （常识）- (Main subjects: Politics [政治]，Economy [经济], Legalism [法律], and the exotic "others" [其他] ) 

   Contents range from politics, economics, law, history, culture, geography, environment, nature, technology, mythology, sports, traffic, etc. etc. While I wouldn't exactly call it a pub-quiz, as it's severely lacking on the celebrity front (except for maybe Cao Cao and Liu Bei). These questions, as you might expect do lean left and often discuss China's social heritage. But, it's questions are literally all over the place. One day you could be answering questions about why the Yellow River is yellow, and the other day you'd have to come up with an argument for bioethics. There are close to 14,000 mock exams all with several questions, so you'd still be spoiled for choice even if you were you planning on avoiding the politics of it all. And topics like Legalism are AMAZING, as the wrong answers are often rife in sarcasm. Let me link you some of the mock-questions:

 

• Politics（政治）
• Economy（经济）
• Legalism（法律）
• Geoscience (地学）
• Self-Defence（正当防卫）
• Ancient Literature（古代文学）
• Nobel Prize（诺贝尔奖）
• World History（世界历史）
• Anthropology （人类科技）
• Holidays（节日）

Deductive Reasoning（判断）- List of Examination Questions

Simple and plain logical deduction. Quite fun actually. Regardless of you one's knowledge on the topic or how extensive their Chinese vocabulary may or not be these questions test the whether your idea of the world, whether the meaning behind the words and their place within our said world make sense. The questions often have you deduce from the definition of used words, or from an illustrated, whether A is true, whether B is true, and or if A is true is B also true. If you like brain teasers, these are for you. 

Analogical Reasoning（类比推理）- A set of words is given. e.g. Apple, Pear, Tree. Then you have to choose an answer that has the same correlation as the illustrated example.
Definition Reasoning（定义判断）- The provided text describes a situation, event, etc. Then you have to choose which of the answers apply to the described situation. If they describe an animal that can be caught by throwing a net from a boat, then you shouldn't choose an ox that has run away from home named Erik. Just saying.
Logical Reasoning（逻辑判断）- These questions are there to trick you. The answers tend to be stoic. E.g. The text describes a car speeding towards a wall. What can we derive? A. You need to pull the brake. B. The car will hit the wall.You choose B. Because here its more about the logical outcome as opposed to the logical action. 

There is actually one more, but this one has nothing to do with Chinese. It's just a bunch of shapes, like those you'd see in a IQ test.




There are tons more that don't follow the same formula as above. They could be a long passage with just one question, or ask you derive information from a graph. 

--------------------------------------------------

I'll leave it there for now. If you'd like to browse the rest of the resources. Here is the website, just scroll down. 

WEBSITE LINK

 

Do take in mind that some of text can have typos. Seemingly a lot of  the content is typed over or scanned it by a computer using character recognition. 兔 could easily turn into 免, so when a search Pleco doesn't turn up anything then it might have such a typo.

 

[Weyland]

While I've recommended the website to you, it's also available in APP format; 必胜公考（requires Chinese phone number to register）

And, of course, you can buy a book. Though I can't recommend any, as I haven't received mine yet.



This is the one I ordered from Amazon which will take a month to arrive or so. Haha. 


I've probably already spend 20 hours on above mentioned content. I really like it. Though I severely doubt whether anyone else will.  ?

[mungouk]

You're putting a lot of time into these posts, @Weyland — thank you.

 

 

[Weyland]

Has anyone tried their hand at any of these questions yet? If you think your Chinese is past what the HSK can teach you then I'd really recommend that you'd give some of these a try. Especially the language and logic sections!

[Weyland]

Well, a couple of days the books arrived. And I can say that I've become rather obsessed with them. The book has some great pointers as to what constitutes as good writing, just to name one.



Also, apparently even if you order 2018's course material you'll still receive 2020's material from Amazon. Which is great.

[GregO]

Weyland, thanks for sharing this. I look forward to hearing your impressions as you dig into these. This is the kind of book that up my alley and I suspect I will order the set as well. Thanks again.

[Weyland]

3 hours ago, GregO said:

and I suspect I will order the set as wel

Be sure to try out the free content on above posted website before you do!

[HerrPetersen]

Anyone has a solution for the logic question with the shapes? I cannot make out a good rule. Seems a little random to me.