What would you change about the HSK4 Standard Course textbook to make it more interesting and useful?

[becky82]

I think a lot of students agree that the HSK4 Standard Course textbook is incredibly boring.  I recall finishing this textbook, then saying to my then-teacher something along the lines of: there's no way I'm using the HSK5 Standard Course textbook to study.  In the HSK4 Standard Course textbook, there seems to be a whole lot of useless or near-useless content, like "texts in pinyin", "answer the questions based on the text", and (basically) the first page of every chapter.

 

I feel the grammar explanations (both the English and Chinese), in an effort to be precise and complete, sometimes use opaque jargon: "刚 is an adverb serving as an adverbial modifier", "差不多 can precede a numeral-classifier compound", "the conjunction 尽管 is usually used in the first clause of a complex sentence to state...", "the conjunction 而 can be used in a compound sentence to connect two coordinate clauses".  I don't believe an average native-English speaking adult can understand this, let alone children.

 

What would you change about the HSK4 Standard Course textbook to make it more interesting and useful?

 

Some sub-questions I'm interested in, in particular:

• What do you think of the length of the passages?
• How many times should a new vocabulary item be used?
• What exercises would you find useful?
• How can we make the passages more interesting?  (Should aliens invade?  Should 王静 have an affair?)

[Flickserve]

Oh my, I just started a few weeks back on this book and will be finishing the first chapter soon.

 

I did book one and half of book two for NCPR years ago and not touched a textbook in the intervening years.

 

 I hadn’t even thought of how staid the text is. Either, it’s something I have come to expect or, I am a naturally mundane character. ?. Maybe it’s because I went straight to this book without going through HSK2/3 that it seems ok for the moment. 
 

My very brief assessment so far is that it’s giving what I wanted. I already know a fair amount of the words that are being introduced. The new words and patterns within a systematic teaching framework is what I need to fill in gaps of basic knowledge. The length of the passages are just about right. 
 

I do think some of the new vocabulary can be repeated. I find some of them hard to remember, such as 吸引. For new vocabulary, I am referring back to my Anki master deck to search for a sentence with that word and create a cloze card. Alternatively, I could ask my community tutor to drum up a couple of other example sentences. However, should I need to do that extra process?

 

I haven’t gone through the workbook which might be helpful for review purposes. 
 

 

[suMMit]

I'm on unit 9 of the book right now, planning to start 4下 soon. Maybe I'm easily pleased with learning materials, as I seem to find good points in all of them.

 

I have been enjoying the Hsk 4 book. Mainly because these are topics I needed to start learning about: love, friendship, money, work, health, content/discontent  etc. I feel like they have selected important vocabulary that moves from the more concrete words of book 3 to a little more abstract. I haven't done any kind of count, but it seems I keep seeing words I learned in the earlier units again, so I think it does a decent job of reusing the vocab. This is especially true with the workbook. More importantly, I have been seeing the words pop up in real life and on TV. 

On 4/4/2022 at 8:25 AM, Flickserve said:

I find some of them hard to remember, such as 吸引.

For example, I had never seen this word before starting this book and I knew it immediately in your post, and I don't have any amazing recall abilities.

 

Actually, I noticed that they sprinkle in some vocab from hsk 5 in both the workbook and text that aren't highlighted at all. This way the student can decide if they want to Dig deeper or they already feel they are challenged enough. Either way, when they meet it again later, they will have that feeling of "I've seen that word somewhere before".

 

On 4/4/2022 at 8:25 AM, Flickserve said:

I haven’t gone through the workbook which might be helpful for review purposes. 

The workbook is very good and gives lots of practice reading and listening. They use all the same words and grammar, changing the situation slightly. Definitely recommend it. 

 

How I use the book: I supplement it with Zero to Hero(wonderful resource), so first I will go through the videos and follow all their instructions in tandem with the textbook. So I will have previewed all the vocab, listened, read and shadowed all of the passages. Then, I go through it with my teacher on Italki. The very first vocab matching is insignificant and takes us a minute. The next section with the charts i.e. "How do you know your friends? What do you do together", she asks me the questions, then I ask her. Next I make sentences with the passage vocab, she gives me a better sentence If mine is flawed. We read the passage together. She will ask me some related offshoot questions i.e. Do you agree with 小夏？ Is chocolate a good gift? What gifts have you brought home from china for friends and relatives? Do westerners have the habit of bringing back gifts from travels? How expensive should it be? etc. I then ask her similar questions about her personally. I have already read the grammar explanations beforehand, so we go through that very quickly and then do the cloze, practice sentences and drills. After that, we do the "pair work" activities, and again she will usually ask me offshoot questions so we have some discussion. Finally, the "group work" section I do as writing and send it to her for correction. If we are left with some odd few minutes, we'll discuss the "culture point", otherwise I just read that on my own. 

 

As a follow up, I do the workbook unit. I add all the new vocab to my srs. I make a copy of the "pairwork" and "groupwork" section and send it to a different italki teacher and we spend an hour talking. Rinse and repeat.

 

On 4/4/2022 at 7:04 AM, becky82 said:

Some sub-questions I'm interested in, in particular:

• What do you think of the length of the passages?
• How many times should a new vocabulary item be used?
• What exercises would you find useful?
• How can we make the passages more interesting?  (Should aliens invade?  Should 王静 have an affair?)

1. Good, not too long, not too short. I actually prefer the monologs to the dialogs. 

2. Just keep using them in subsequent units and the workbook, I feel like they do that.

3. Some kind of role play activity would be nice (***something like this, see attachment from another book that I alternate with HSK4 and my same teacher). 

4. It's a textbook, no textbooks are that entertaining. I can get aliens and drama from Tv, books and real life. 

 

In my opinion the audio is also solid. It's pretty natural/fast/sometimes slurred. It includes male and female voices. This is true of both the passages and the workbook. 

 

When I was starting the book, I read a review on amazon and the commenter was complaining that the book and topics were preachy and condescending. I disagree. I t's my feeling that they are presenting a Confucian/generlized Chinese viewpoint on the topics. Nobody says you have to agree with that viewpoint, you can debate them with the teachers, argue that it's not realistic, yadayada. I have had many a cab driver in China talk to me in the same way as these dialogs. My wife overheard me listening to a passage the other day and even remarked "That's a nice thought, I agree with her that's a good way to look at(whatever the situation was)". I'm not offended by being reminded to go for a slow walk after dinner, get down to the gym and eat healthier, because I actually do need those things anyway.

 

TLDR: I like it, its a solid textbook, I've learned a lot of useful words and structures, supplement it with other material. Without someone on Italki to talk through it with  and without Zero to Hero it wouldn't be as effective.

 

[becky82]

This is really fascinating.  Honestly, I was not expecting responses like these.

[Moshen]

I did the HSK 4 standard books a few years ago, supplemented with Zero to Hero.  I found the HSK grammar explanations at that level and above a bit hard to follow, but since I'm not studying for any exams, I understood it all well enough. The Zero to Hero videos were quite helpful, and what I liked most of all was doing the Quizlet exercises that Zero to Hero has set up, for reinforcement of the vocabulary.

 

As textbooks I think they're good enough.  Although I enjoy reading Chairman's Bao articles much more, that type of contemporary content would undoubtedly go out of date much more quickly and therefore wouldn't suit HSK books.

 

I am curious, becky82, why you were asking.  Are you planning to go into competition with the HSK institution in some way?

[Flickserve]

@suMMit

 

Wow. Very nice and solid summary. 

 

Condescending? This might be the liberal use of the word "該“ （应该）. I remember in my early days in HK, this was quite common and I would feel a bit offended by someone telling me what I should do rather than explaining pros and cons and then leaving me to decide. Now, it just doesn't faze me at all. Perhaps it doesn't have that same strength of meaning in Chinese compared to English being nearer to  "it's possible". Also, is it just me but Chinese people generally are more expressive to have well intentioned advice a bit further down the decision making pathway? They give big brother or big sister advice, even though you don't have that close a friendship. 

 

I forgot to mention my tutor isn't correcting me very much when I read out loud. There's a few words I can't quite remember the tone so I mark the tone symbol over the character on my iPad. I haven't even listened to the recording that comes with the book. Then she asks me a few questions about the passage - it's usually a comprehension type question. I find it challenging enough because although I read and can translate into English, I have not really remembered the context of the story in Chinese. Quite funny, part of the process and pitched at the right level. 

 

@becky82 do you think that a lot of people who study the language are wanting to discuss 'meatier' topics by the time they finish HSK3 level? And that could account for the feelings of boredom. When I see people looking for language partners on Hellotalk, the impression is people frequently overestimate their ability to hold deeper discussions. 

 

[vellocet]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:04 AM, becky82 said:

I don't believe an average native-English speaking adult can understand this, let alone children.

That's because it wasn't written for them.  

 

These textbooks are written by professional linguists, for an audience that they (without thought) assume are also professional linguists.  Thus they don't have to explain everything and can use a kind of shorthand.  "刚 is an adverb serving as an adverbial modifier" is ordinary linguist jargon, nothing special to see here.  No further explanation is needed.  

[Guest realmayo]

Yes maybe the textbooks assume that students will know or will be taught basic grammar but that's not the case.

[Jan Finster]

I only ever had 1:1 lessons. My teacher used to do classes without textbook. I then paid her 10 lessons in advance and then she decided to use the HSK4 standard textbook in order to "provide more structure". I did one lesson with that book and stopped (so, yes, I still have 9 lessons unused and this was 2020...).

 

I am not sure if the textbook itself is bad or if I simply do not enjoy learning languages in 1:1 classes with textbooks. I can imagine textbooks can be fun when you are in a class and you do exercises with peers and/or listen to how others answer (or struggle with) the questions.

 

1:1 I find them boring and generic (why would I care how you say "Notting Hill" or "Titanic" in Chinese?)

 

[becky82]

On 4/4/2022 at 5:00 PM, Moshen said:

I am curious, becky82, why you were asking.  Are you planning to go into competition with the HSK institution in some way?

 

Haha!  Now that I've (hopefully) finished HSK6, I'm thinking of writing a kind of "graduate thesis".  I'm not precisely sure what I will do, but one option is writing a HSK4-level textbook.  One thing I'm quickly discovering is that writing at a HSK4 level is harder that I expected!

[becky82]

On 4/4/2022 at 5:31 PM, Flickserve said:

do you think that a lot of people who study the language are wanting to discuss 'meatier' topics by the time they finish HSK3 level? And that could account for the feelings of boredom.

 

Perhaps this is the case, but there's a few posts above which suggest the boredom is not universal.  I recall the HSK4 textbook having many discussions about unspecified 事情.  Discussions about how different people have different definitions of 成功 persist until HSK6.  For both the HSK4 and HSK6 textbooks, sometimes the passages were so boring, I wrote my own instead, and gave it to my teacher to correct.

 

I wish textbooks could give a feeling of progress, something like: "Hey, you learned all those words, you can now read the following passage unaided.  Enjoy.".  This way, even if the textbook is a grind, there's some kind of intermediate milestone (not just another chapter).

[Moshen]

Quote

I wish textbooks could give a feeling of progress, something like: "Hey, you learned all those words, you can now read the following passage unaided.  Enjoy.". 

 

But if you've embarked on HSK 5, say, you can go back to articles or stories that are rated as HSK 3 or 4 (not part of the textbooks) and you will indeed find that they are easy to get through.  I've done that and it's confidence-boosting.

[suMMit]

On 4/4/2022 at 7:04 AM, becky82 said:

useless or near-useless content, like "texts in pinyin", "answer the questions based on the text"

I like the fact that pinyin is not rampant in this book. If you go to amazon and read the reviews, you'll see complaints that the reading are not in pinyin. Maybe at some point they updated the book to include that section because people were asking. Maybe someone who's a bit weak on characters or listening finds it useful to check. I personally don't look at it, but it also doesn't bother me.

 

Why are the "questions based on the text" useless? In my case, it usually happens that we reach those in the session after the one where we read the texts(because there's a big gap of grammar and practice between text and questions). So it forces me to go back and read them again to refresh me memory prior to class so I can answer them.

 

I also like the "retell the text from abc's point of view" as its a different skill to retell a dialog.

 

On 4/5/2022 at 1:51 AM, Jan Finster said:

(why would I care how you say "Notting Hill" or "Titanic" in Chinese?)

That's an isolated case and just a warm-up activity meant to get you thinking about love and romance. I'm sure was not intended for people to learn or remember those words. You'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful of useless words in the book(other than in the grammar descriptions and culture notes - both of which are also in English)

 

On 4/4/2022 at 7:04 AM, becky82 said:

I feel the grammar explanations (both the English and Chinese), in an effort to be precise and complete, sometimes use opaque jargon:

I agree the grammar explanations are not the best. But that's one of the reasons I supplement with ZTH and if I'm still stuck I just have a look at Grammar wiki. Mostly, as with any textbook, it just makes me aware that that bit of grammar exists so that I notice it in real life.

[Flickserve]

On 4/5/2022 at 6:42 AM, becky82 said:

 

I wish textbooks could give a feeling of progress, something like

 

This happens in anything you are learning seriously. There's always a feeling you're not really improving. It will happen because the teacher is always there pushing you along. The book is always introducing new stuff.

 

It's the same in sports. If you improve, the coach will make the routines harder and you feel you aren't progressing. 

 

I recently joined a group of learners in a group call. I misread the level and thought it was intermediate - it was advertised as advanced (how did I manage to misread that???). Ends up me understanding the group leader quite well and more fluent than the rest of the class. All along I have been thinking my progress is very mediocre but for that one hour, I realise I have made some proper progress compared to other learners. 

 

I don't think a book can really give you a feeling of progress unless you want it to waste space. People will just be complaining what's the point (like the bit about film names).

[becky82]

On 4/5/2022 at 3:00 PM, Flickserve said:

I don't think a book can really give you a feeling of progress unless you want it to waste space. People will just be complaining what's the point (like the bit about film names).

 

In my mind, it's like a computer game.  You can't defeat the big boss at the end straight away: you need to level up first.  You finish the game by actually defeating the boss, not be being theoretically capable of beating the boss.

 

But by the looks of things in this tread, there's a range of opinions of what's useful and what's not.  It's certainly not as clear-cut as I was thinking.

[Flickserve]

Can Chinese language be beaten?. ?

 

If you have written other materials from a different perspective, that's really good. Anything that aids learning from a different perspective is also good.

[Guest realmayo]

If you wanted to consider a textbook that takes a different direction, how about going specialist? Most (maybe all?) intermediate plus textbooks of course try to be as broad as possible, to cover as much fairly-common grammar and as much fairly-common vocabulary as possible.

 

But how about a series of books that take a particular topic, e.g. climate change, or linguistics, or football or the United Nations or fashion or whatever. One topic. Assume the student is at approximately HSK4 level. In the first few chapters, treat that topic at an approximately HSK4 level. Then the next few chapters at HSK5 level. Then HSK 6, then HSK6+, then ++.

 

Any newly introduced grammar wouldn't need to be particularly advanced - the focus would be on building a deep pool of vocabulary around the topic, and familiarity with encountering and discussing concepts related to this topic.

 

The goal would be for someone at HSK4/5 level to be able to gain advanced competence on a handful of topics that they find interesting. Not as a replacement for the steady incremental progress in the overall language. But as an add-on - to give a real flavour of what it's like to have that advanced competence. And hopefully maintain motivation in continuing with the language.

[Moshen]

Quote

But how about a series of books that take a particular topic, e.g. climate change, or linguistics, or football or the United Nations or fashion or whatever. One topic.

 

Theoretically graded readers could do this. But I haven't seen any that take this approach.  Although you could undertake that kind of study approach on Chairman's Bao, by for example, selecting only the science articles or those on sports.