Hello, new here. I am stuck at hsk 4... What did you all do to get better? Apps?

[china-euro]

Hello, new here. I am stuck at hsk 4...
What did you all do to get better?
Apps?
I used chinese skill, but cant remember the exact sentences, just general situations and disconnected words.

 

[amytheorangutan]

I’m not an expert because I’m still around HSK 5 level and decided not to follow the HSK route anymore. I felt unmotivated after I finished HSK 4 because I couldn’t string simple sentences, couldn’t understand most of TV shows, podcast and unable to read native materials. My listening and reading have improved a lot in the last year and my speaking even though still awful but compared to where I was in 2019 has improved a little. I personally think apps and textbooks start to get redundant around this level because you want to be exposed to as much native materials (or close to) as possible as there are so many words, phrases and sentence patterns that are not covered by HSK but used so much in everyday lives. 
 

For my listening, I just listened to a lot of materials. I used Chinesepod, so I would listen to 2-3 Chinesepod lessons a day especially their upper intermediate lessons because they  speak almost entirely in Chinese for 15 minutes a lesson, but I mixed it up with Intermediate lessons if they get too difficult. Any lessons that I find hard, I’d listen while looking at the transcript and re-listen the lessons multiple times. Sometimes I would listen to one lesson twice in a day then move on to next lesson but go back to it in a couple of days, I just rotate them so I don’t get bored listening to the same thing back to back. The more I listen especially after looking at the transcript the more I understand. You can also do this with any podcast made for learners, Chinese Colloquialised is a good one, Talk Taiwanese Mandarin Podcast is another one I listen to. Now I listen to quite a bit of regular podcasts made for native speaker and I would say I normally understand around 85-90% of what they’re saying depending on the topic. Youtube is also a good listening exercise as they’re normally short and there are a lot of materials you can go through. 
 

For reading I started reading some comics intended for native speaker. The first couple of comics were rough, I didn’t understand a lot but then it gets better, with comics it’s good if you stick with a series because then there will be a lot of vocabulary repetitions. I mix these up with reading lots of graded reader materials Mandarin Companion, Du Chinese, even ones that I thought was slightly below my level, they still help to train my comprehension ability and solidify my knowledge. So far now in term of native materials I have read about 10 comics intended for adult readers (the reason why I specify adult here is because I have read a couple of comics intended for kids like Doraemon, Ironfist Chinmi, and they are a lot easier so they feel more like graded reader materials to me), 1 short story Lu Xun’s Diary of A Madman, 1 romance novel 蜜汁燉魷魚 and currently reading my second novel To Live by Yu Hua half way through. Now reading comics is fairly easy for me so it actually becomes my reward instead of struggle. 
 

My speaking is still rubbish, because I don’t practice as much as the above but I started to have 2 hours semi private lessons every week with a teacher now to improve. I still think it would be lagging behind my listening, reading and writing because I’m only exposed to such limited amount of time interacting in Chinese.
 

In short you just have to do what you want to be good at as much as possible especially using native contents, because apps and textbooks are normally too rigid and limited. 
 

[PerpetualChange]

I think Amy is on the right path! You have to just follow what is really driving your interests in Chinese and pursue that. Is it novels and the literature/history? Focus on reading more in depth and start trying to break into native materials. Is it socializing, meeting new people, traveling? Focus on finding a language partner(s) and have at it. 

[china-euro]

I just like the convenience of apps...nobody else here use apps for chinese? I understand most of chinese entertainment shows and news, but could never repeat what i just watched... just want to get there.

so yes. ill get some chinese friends to practice on
but give me some app tipps in this pandemic!

used:
chinese skill
hanping
debo chinese
pleco
anki
hsk magic
mondly?

 

[Jan Finster]

Sure, get TheChairMansBao. They have an app and tons of audio and text.

[mungouk]

hi @china-euro welcome to the forums.  Please avoid asking the same question in more than one post.

 

The search box at top-left of the window will help you to find the many places where people have already asked about what software they use, and obviously that changes very quickly, so it's best to choose the option to give search results by "newest results first".

 

I think @艾墨本 had a good thread going at one point, maybe you can find it.

 

 

[mungouk]

23 hours ago, amytheorangutan said:

I personally think apps and textbooks start to get redundant around this level because you want to be exposed to as much native materials (or close to) as possible as there are so many words, phrases and sentence patterns that are not covered by HSK but used so much in everyday lives. 

 

I think this is definitely a key point at this level (4 into 5). 

 

Actually in the HSK 5 Standard Course textbook it makes a major shift towards longer, native material (adapted at times) from newspaper articles etc and the grammar changes noticeably because of this, and Chengyu start popping up everywhere. If I'd stopped at HSK 4 and started trying to read only native material I think I would've failed and this would have been very discouraging for me. 

 

I also have a copy of To Live by Yu Hua sitting on my coffee table here, making me feel guilty that I've been too scared to dive in, in case it turns out to be too difficult... @amytheorangutan what has been your approach to this?  Did you pre-learn any vocabulary first or just start reading?

[amytheorangutan]

@mungouk I just dove into it. First few pages I looked up quite a lot of words but I stuck to it and I think by page 20 ish I got more comfortable as there are quite a bit of repetitions of the words I didn’t know. I think once you get past the first maybe 20-30 pages, the novel gets a lot easier to comprehend. I’d say go for it, I think it’s 195 pages and I’m up to page 123 at the moment and I read a lot faster towards the end. The story is engaging enough so I don’t feel bored. 
 

[Flickserve]

18 hours ago, china-euro said:

I understand most of chinese entertainment shows and news, but could never repeat what i just watched... just want to get there.

Does the viki app suit your needs?

[china-euro]

viki app as the video? no i thought that was just k dramas? cringe.... i watch reality k shows but dramas.. embarrassing quality,