Hskk Intermediate Speaking test book, thoughts and a sample of my current level

[suMMit]

I have been working on this book for several weeks now and I will share some of my thoughts.

First of all, I think the Hskk speaking test is kind of underrated and I'm glad it has been made mandatory when taking the Hsk in China(apparently it's not outside the country). I think it's a decent indication of ones speaking ability, and why take a language test without a spoken element, that never made any sense to me. It's not perfect, especially as it you're only speaking in monologue and not with another person, but I still think it gives a reasonable idea of someones spoke level.

 

Part 1

Repeating the sentence from the recording. This is my least favorite part, as there's not much involved, but I guess it does show your accuracy in structures and pronunciation / tones. I used this book and went through all the exercises which were practice broken down by practicing repeating simple sentences, complex sentences and many groups of sentences using the same grammar structures. I went though all of part 1 pretty quickly, but I thought is was a decent review of many of the hsk 1-4 grammar structures.

 

Part 2

看图说话 picture description. I have just finished working on this on my own and with my teacher, putting in a number of hours. I have to say I really enjoyed this exercise and found it to be great speaking practice. From my research on the internet, there seems to be a lot of different ideas on how it should be done and what is expected. I am going to go with what the book pictured above says, and I'll give you a very basic breakdown of that here:

 

-Roughly 2 minutes to think and prepare what you will say

-You are allowed to speak for up to 2 min, but you do NOT have to speak the whole 2 minutes

-Picture will be a daily life situation

-Picture will have one or more person

-Give one character a name or indicate who they are, don't try to name all the people

-If it seems appropriate you can refer to the character as 我 or your sister, brother, friend etc

-Talk about the following: what led up to this moment, what's happening right now, what will happen next

-Make it into a story rather than just describing the picture

-Chose the important details to incorporate into the story, which could be any or all of: time, place, items, clothing, season, weather

-Mention the feeling or emotions of the character

-Include Hsk 3 and 4 level grammar and vocabulary

-Include and idiom or saying if possible

-Include anything that can show your knowledge of Chinese culture

 

So after practicing this with many photos , I'm still not great, but better that I was the first time. On the actual Hskk I took last year I only scored 72/100, which is what motivated me to do this book. My teacher assures me that my Hskk 看图说话 is much better now. What I like about it is that you can be creative and use your imagination. It forces your to use "tenses"/aspects like what's happening / what happened / what will happen. Really makes you utilize your vocabulary and measure words. You need to be sharp with common Chinese names and how to say foreign names in Chinese. Helps you practice telling everyday stories and talking about everyday situations. I also found it interesting how differently I thought about the photo than my teacher, often due to cultural differences.

 

The method we used to practice:

1. she would show me the picture

2. give me two minutes to prepare

3. I talked uninterrupted

4. after finished, she pointed out any errors, helped me correct them

5. she told me how she would have interpreted the photo

6. I then did it again trying to improve my own story or utilize her ideas

 

The book itself gives lots of tips, grammar reviews, sample answers both written and recorded. For part 1 it has recordings of hundreds of sentences to practice repeating. In Part 2 it breaks it down into smaller steps of place, time, what's happening etc. A good number of practice pictures. I haven't started part 3 yet. Not the most exciting book, but worth the 50 rmb on taobao. There's is absolutely zero English in the book, so reading the strategies in Chinese is also a good exercise in itself.

 

So here's where I'm at with it now, a sample of a practice one I did this morning:

 

YouTube: https://youtu.be/MD1Qnntf9Bo

BiliBili: https://b23.tv/Jj0M0cp

 

Although I think with more work I could certainly get better with 看图说话, I'm going to move on to Part 3 回答问题。

 

 

[becky82]

First, I watched your YouTube video, and you absolutely nailed it!

 

May I suggest using https://jianwai.youdao.com/? This website uses speech-to-text to generate Chinese subtitles from videos/mp3s.  You can add them to your YouTube videos.  If it generates incorrect subtitles, then it's likely because your pronunciation is wrong/unclear.  Sometimes it sounds 100% correct in your head.

[suMMit]

A few weeks ago I finished the Part 3 section of this book: "回答问题“. As with the part 2 picture description section, I enjoyed it and found it useful. We did 2-3 hours a week and the method I employed was:

 

1. On my own read the books tips and strategies on organizing, grammar structures and vocabulary.

2. With my teacher, look at the question(for the first time) and spend 2 min preparing the answer.

3. Answered the question while my teacher listened to whole answer.

4: Teacher gave me feedback on what was good, any grammar or vocabulary errors, orginization or pronunciation.

5. If I didn't answer the question well, I did it again after the feedback.

 

My teacher pushed me to talk for 2 mins straight on each answer, although this is not necessary to pass the Hskk. Since my goal is more about improving speaking, I was happy with this. She also pushed my to use a variety of grammar and vocabulary and not fall back on 所以 and 虽然 every other sentence. She also pushed me to give more details and specifics and show my knowledge of Chinese culture where relevant. Again, I was very pleased with all of this. It was basically a good exercise to help make some of the Hsk 4/5 level language I know passively into more active language. 

 

The part 3 Questions were talking about things like: what you would do if you had a 3 day weekend coming up, what gift you would buy for a friend, the person you've met who impressed you the most, a teacher that you liked, the differences between two cities you have lived in, a cultural difference you experienced in China, a problem you encountered during a trip, your dream job, etc. I think all of these are good Intermediate level topics that allow for turning what could be a quick, simple answer into fairly detailed and descriptive answers, without being overly difficult.

 

The book provides some nice templates to help you practice structures and organizing your answers. It also gives you a sample answer recording for each question and the tape script. There are some answers that show the contrast between a higher level and lower lever answer as well.

 

One thing this is missing in the book is that in the real test, one of the two 回答问题 questions is more "philosophical". Here's an example from a different source:

 

Whereas the Hskk Intermediate Speaking Test book focused mainly questions more like #13 above rather #14. Maybe that's because the test was updated after this book was published? Idk, but is definitely a drawback.

 

The book ended with 4 full mock HSKK tests with I did together with my teacher. We both agreed that I did well on all of them and 取得了很大的进步。Anyway, this book may not be "exciting" , but It greased the wheels for my favorite learning method: learn something new, have a reason to use it (something to talk about), get some kind of feedback.