Predictive text in online HSK?

[RichieG]

Hello,

 

I was wondering if someone could help me.

 

In the writing section (part 2) of HSK 4, does the online test use predictive text for making the sentences or is it just individual characters that are to be written?

 

Or is this based on the computer?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Richard

[ChTTay]

No predictive text like on a phone or laptop keyboard. You have to know each character. 

[Demonic_Duck]

43 minutes ago, ChTTay said:

No predictive text like on a phone or laptop keyboard. You have to know each character. 

 

So it's a specialized pinyin IME that allows only single-character inputs?

 

Are the options for each character still ordered roughly by frequency? 一 comes before 医 comes before 蚁 and so on?

[mungouk]

52 minutes ago, Demonic_Duck said:

So it's a specialized pinyin IME that allows only single-character inputs?

 

Yes, it was for the HSK 4 test I took in June.  There's an IME built into the software, so it doesn't use Sogou or the native IME.

 

If you're used to the right collocations popping up as you type with your own IME, then you need to be careful not to make typos with this 1-char-a-time version.

 

As for frequency, I didn't study it at the time (or doing the online mock exams) but looking at this screen grab I took, yes — it does looks like they probably are ordered by frequency.

 

@RichieG — you could try downloading the software client (Windows only) that we used for the "at home" tests to see if it still allows you to do mock exams.

 

There's a lot more information on that in an earlier thread. Welcome to the forums btw!  

 

[RichieG]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the replies and thanks for the friendly welcome.

 

That was the issue, I was able to use a predictive text for the mock exam, but during the real exam.

 

If you check out the guy on this YouTube vid, he seems to be able to use a predictive text.

 

Strange...

[mungouk]

Slightly different software, by the look of it. 

 

Incidentally, I don't think there's any guarantee that the software used for the "at home" tests will be the same as the one used in a test centre... from discussions we've had here, there seem to be several different versions of software used for the computer-based test.

 

 

[Pizzamargherita]

I know it's an old thread but I'm just replying to help anyone who is in my situation because it took me hours to solve this! I am preparing for the hsk6 online test (home edition because of covid) So we had to download the client on our computer. I tried a mock test and noticed there wasn't text prediction and it took me a super long time to be able to write, plus I'm not good at remembering characters and was worried about it because sometimes I know pinyin of a word but don't remember exactly which ones are the correct characters. So. If anyone is in this situation in which you download the program and are taking the exam on your own computer, I can help. What worked for me was deleting the windows Chinese keyboard from the pc keyboard settings. Then I downloaded sougou keyboard (just write sougou keyboard for pc on Google and install it). Then I deleted my language keyboard from the settings (Italian in my case). So the only keyboard left was the chinese sougou one. I also changed the language of my computer to Chinese but I don't know if that is essential. Then you just start the test and when it comes to the writing part it writes with prediction. If it doesn't work you have to press Capslock. I hope this can help someone ? 

[WaiPT]

Can Sogou keyboard  really be used in Home edition (HSK) exam? I am preparing for the HSK5 exam. I am so worried about writing Pinyin. So I really want to make sure about it.

[Jellyfish]

The software is updated quite frequently so any information you get from former test takers must be taken with a grain of salt as it may be outdated already. (I took two tests, one in December 2020 and one in May or June 2021 and had to update my software to get the most recent version for the second test).

I'd strongly advise preparing for any at home HSK as if single character only typing were the only option in the exam since that's what my teachers adivsed. That being said, when I took HSK5 I was in fact able to use my normal system pinyin typing method which is not single character but just your standard Windows multi character pinyin typing. As I said, please don't take this to mean that you can use multi-character pinyin input in your exam, it may well have been a glitch or some kind of system error which has been fixed by now. Just try and prepare according to official guidelines.

[mungouk]

[ deleted now I actually read the recent posts. ]

 

You should be able to download the latest client software and try a mock test to see what the current situation is.

 

Using an IME with prediction is pretty much cheating for the writing part, IMHO, but if they don't disable it then... whatever.