New online "at home" HSK exam dates: Oct & Dec 2020

[mungouk]

When you sign up for the test on Chinesetest.cn you have to put in an address and phone number... I don't know if they check this when you are taking the at-home test.

 

Similarly the software wants to know your name and nationality if I remember correctly... I don't know if it also checks your actual location from your IP address when doing the test.

 

[kouch]

Hi @brigitte, I'm sorry seeing your message only now. I haven't received a confirmation yet. Other exam centres also told me it was not possible. I am thinking of registering without asking and we'll see. 

[brigitte]

@kouch You might try to get in touch with  Confucius Institute at Cleveland State University. I emailed them and they're basically the only one that told me that it was okay. I agree with the fees being quite expensive but no choice.

[mungouk]

Manchester University (UK) have now got a registration page on their website, and have confirmed that they'll be running at-home exams for HSK 1-6 and HSKK beginner/intermediate/advanced on 12 December.

 

https://www.confuciusinstitute.manchester.ac.uk/study/testing/hsk/how-to-register/

 

Registration closes on 27 November.

[TaxiAsh]

Well, I'm now registered for HSK3 on the 12th. However, the Manchester option isn't available chinesetest.cn, so I opted for Leeds. I wonder if Manchester is full, because it IS on the list, but just says unavailable when you try and select it.

 

Anyone else doing doing exam on the 12th?

 

 

[TaxiAsh]

bit of a boring post, but writing my experience, so other may find one thing that will help them!!

 

well today I did the mock test. (HSK 3) (still new student)

 

This is really good and worth doing, and only available until a few days before the exam I think. So do it now, and find your weaknesses. I found mine again like I did on 1 and 2.

 

My lesson today was time management. In the reading test you obviously are on a timer, and I thought 30 mins, 30 questions, try and get as many right in a minute (obviously), but the first ones, I used the minute up to make sure correct, and the last 10 are quite long, and I ran out of time so had to resort to guessing, with speed reading~!! haha, as you can guess, I got most of the last ones wrong and most of the first ones right! So work on time management if reading isn't fast like me. I can read all he characters easily of course, but getting the meaning of a long sentence or paragraph isn't so quick!

 

It doesn't score you on writing in the mock test, so I don't know it I passed or not.., only listening and reading, and I scored 75/100 in lisenting and 63/100 in reading... so all week I now work on reading!

 

and also I got 4 of the first 5 wrong!! haha!! the easiest questions, and I didn't hear any of it. I'm hoping it's because I thought so easy, and wasn't concentrating enough! so another lesson.

 

 

 

[Random Person]

Well, that was not a great experience.

Following the instructions on http://www.chinesetest.cn/gonewcontent.do?id=44581484 I downloaded the exam client on 14 November, made sure it worked on my machine, then enrolled on 23 November to do the 12 December at-home test ran by the University of Manchester CI.
I was able to do a few mock exams with this client and everything seemed to be working ok.

 

On the test day, when it came time to log in, the client refused to accept my exam number + password.  Eventually one of the exam administrators told me over Zoom that I was using the wrong version of the client.  At this point the exam had already started.  He suggested going back to test.chinesetest.cn:36165/client.html and downloading it again.  So now I notice there is an entirely different version of the program on their website.  Actually an earlier version - with a timestamp of "20200608", whereas the one I'd downloaded last month had the timestamp of "20201031".
I tried to install this one, but for some reason it entirely failed to launch for me.  I guess typical Windows nonsense that I might have had time to try and sort out beforehand, but at this stage I was 20 minutes into the exam time, so I just gave up.

 

It does look like the one I had was a newer version, based on the timestamp and references in the app to "Center for Language Education and Cooperation"  (The 20200608 one still mentioned the Confucius Institute).  Assuming what the guy told me was correct, the new client must be incompatible with the test server they used on the day.

I would guess what happened is the new client was uploaded to their website in November, but at some point between 14 November and test day they discovered it had a problem and went back to the previous build - but didn't feel it was necessary to tell anyone about this.

I emailed the Manchester CI and asked to be allowed to use the credit for the next test, but they have refused.  They are claiming that at the point they sent out a confirmation email on the 23 November, which contained a link to test.chinesetest.cn:36165/client.html, the client on the website was the correct version and they can't be responsible for any client that I might have downloaded from the *same website* on the 14 November.  I don't know if this is true (and I expect they don't know either) but I think this is quite unreasonable.

[brigitte]

I had a very bad experience too. Not as bad as yours though.

I was taking the HSK 6, and we had a videoconference with all the student together while doing the exam.

Everybody had problem except me, so when I was doing my 聽力 they were all discussing with the prof about their issue, and I couldn't mute the phone. Which definitely influenced me, as I couldn't focus because it was very very noisy... I didn't say anything during the test because no time for it. And I thought it wouldn't change anything so I'd better try focusing more. Heck they even goes on till the reading section part. Thanks God I had a pair of  earplug near me so as soon as the listening section ended I changed my earphones for the earplug.

Im not blaming the student for raising their issue. But what the hell who got the idea of a videoconference all together. Especially where I was taking lvl 6 and others lvl 2. 

At least I passed, but with a bad score for the listening section, which make me very unsatisfied.