I have no HSK exam centre where I live

[kouch]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm sorry if the question was asked before.

I live in Qatar, where there is no HSK exam centre. The nearest exam centre, UAE, is not really accessible given the current political circumstances.

 

I saw that some people were able to take the exam online recently because of the Covid-19. But is it something that is possible even after ?
 

Thanks a lot

 

Kenza

[mungouk]

From what some of the Confucius Institutes in the UK have been saying, I don't think there will be any more tests in the UK before October/November... In normal circumstances UK Universities would have a summer break from June-August so the CIs wouldn't normally arrange tests at that time.

 

However the "at home" tests have been running world-wide in 152 regions/countries according to CTI, some of which might have university holidays at a different time?

 

If there are any more online tests this year, I wonder if they would object to you taking one from a different country?  Maybe you can contact some and ask them.

 

The CTI WeChat account (汉考国际CTI) has recently been posting pictures and reports about the online tests in:

• San Marino, Thailand, South Africa, Italy
• Kyrgyzstan
• Singapore (the test centre there is called Crestar)
• Russia

 

 

[kouch]

@mungouk thanks a lot for your help  in the past, i took the exam in June, it was in France, so I guess there should be sessions this summer or at least in September!

I will check the centres you recommended.

[mungouk]

18 minutes ago, kouch said:

i took the exam in June, it was in France,

 

Of course, not all of the test centres are universities... many of them are private language schools. 

 

Good luck and let us know how you get on! 

[zhouhaochen]

The HSK has always had an online version and you do take the test online. The test centers only provide the infrastructure and make sure nobody is cheating, like making sure you dont have your Chinese teacher sitting next to you for example.

So I do not see any way how an HSK exam (or any exam for that matter) could be taken from home without anyone being present to make sure that no additional tools are used and your Chinese girlfriend isn't whispering you the correct answers. It always has to be in a "controlled" environment, like a test center with people responsible to make sure that nobody is cheating.

That is why all HSK exams have been suspended, because physical presence is always required (unless they changed this very recently, though I cannot imagene how one could credibly test people without them going to an exam center).

So for the moment it is only wait and see. I am surprised they dont have a test center in Qatar, sounds like someone needs to set one up.

 

 

[mungouk]

9 minutes ago, zhouhaochen said:

I do not see any way how an HSK exam (or any exam for that matter) could be taken from home without anyone being present to make sure that no additional tools are used

 

Well, students in more than 150 countries just did exactly that during May and June. ?

 

More information in this thread: HSK online test "at home edition" 居家网考 May-June 2020 (COVID special)

 

Some colleges also ran mock Gaokao exams in a similar way several months ago.

[zhouhaochen]

Thats really interesting, thanks @mungouk.

Looks to me that this makes the HSK redundant as a standard exam companies and universities use to assess the Chinese level of an applicant, because there is no way to prevent cheating - or at least it will if they continue to do this.

Any idea why they chose to do that, except general virus mania maybe?

[mungouk]

2 minutes ago, zhouhaochen said:

there is no way to prevent cheating

 

For my test centre we had to have a device running Skype pointing at us all the time we were taking the exam, so that the invigilator could see what we were doing.

 

Plus the software you have to run constantly takes pictures of you using your webcam.

 

Ultimately people would probably find ways of cheating, though.  

 

The reason for doing it is explained in the first post in that thread... because of the COVID lockdown, many people would have been unable to take their HSK/HSKK exams otherwise.

[zhouhaochen]

Very interesting and I understand why they do it. Though cheating this system is still be pretty easy, though it probably takes a few more exams for people to figure it out.

Thanks for the information.

[roddy]

21 hours ago, mungouk said:

Ultimately people would probably find ways of cheating, though.

I don't think it's hard to figure a method out. Have the display echoed to a monitor in another room, have answers sent to a screen just out of view of the cameras... it seems excessive to those of us who basically do the exam to keep ourselves honest, but it'll happen.