Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?

[PerpetualChange]

Somebody shared this on Reddit. 

A 5th grade reading comprehension test for a Chinese school in Malaysia. 

 

I'd encourage the forum to take a stab at it doing no word lookups. 

How did you do? 

 

 

I did alright, but whiffed on a few areas. 

Once I remembered what a "Weixing" is, a lot of it fell into place for me. But I still missed what a "Qixiang Weixing" was later, so I fundamentally confused a few things in the end. 

[becky82]

Here's the plaintext:

 

Quote

卫星比武开始了。首先登场的是身插双翅、形似大鹏的侦察卫星。它举起照相机，警察地搜索军事目标，一会儿拍摄飞机、潜艇，一会儿拍摄隐蔽在树林里的坦克、大炮。它十分得意地说：“我能看到士兵在营房里走动，还能从汽车的轮迹、战马的蹄印上，推算出部队转移的情况和指挥部所在的位置。”

 

刹那间，地球上空云层起伏，气象卫星扇动着双翼，慢悠悠地飞来。它取出红外照相机，给地球拍了一张张云图，并将云图编成电码，迅速发给地球。它还及时发出紧急信号，预告台风或飓风就要来临。气象卫星自豪地说：“只要有我在，就可以减少风灾、水灾所造成的损失。”

 

The only character I didn't recognize was 飓 in 飓风 (the one they added pinyin for).  Since I'm interested in science, I worked out the story was about anthropomorphized satellites without much trouble; one being a spy satellite, one being a weather satellite, with each describing describing what they're good at.

 

The only words I didn't know and had to look up was 比武 and 飓风 (although I inferred 飓风 was something typhoon-like).  Some words I hadn't encountered before (like 轮迹 and 扇动 and 风灾) were self explanatory.  [Re-reading, I just noticed 红外 is "infrared", not "red exterior"---oops!]

 

I'm also a bit confused with why 警察 is used in 警察地搜索军事目标.  And while I can figure out what 电码 means, shouldn't it just be 电子数据 or something in that ballpark?

 

(PS. A while back I made a video studying a Singaporean exam: here.  I downloaded the exam paper from here.)

[pinion]

On 12/29/2023 at 6:32 AM, becky82 said:

I'm also a bit confused with why 警察 is used in 警察地搜索军事目标. 

It’s 警觉, “warily.”

[becky82]

On 12/29/2023 at 11:54 AM, pinion said:

It’s 警觉, “warily.”

 

Hahaha whoops!  I misread that.  That explains why it didn't make sense.

[Woodford]

I fared pretty well! It seems like I learned a great deal of this vocabulary (especially like "satellite" and "infrared") from Liu Cixin books.  I had never seen "云图" before, but I figured it must mean "cloud picture." Which makes sense for a weather satellite.

 

It took me a couple of seconds to get oriented in regard to the craziness of this passage--two talking satellites in a competition? Ha!

[cncorrect]

I recommend some beautiful essays and poems of the Chinese textbook of China: https://edu.cnr.cn/eduzt/ywkwsfsd/