Preparing for the HSK

[jbiesnecker]

I'm preparing to take the HSK twice this year, once in June and once in December (the June is a practice run, the December one will hopefully be "for keeps"). I'm shooting for an 8 on my second try (or an 8 on my first try, and six months of vacation, but that's not very likely ).

I'm interested in advice anyone has on how to prepare for the test.

Currently I'm loading the HSK wordlists 35 words at a time into Supermemo, along with some drills for writing the associated characters (figured I'd work on the whole shebang while I'm at it).

I am curious what vocab levels are tested by the HSK Intermediate test. Is it just 1, 2 & 3, or all four of them? (you'd think I'd know the answer to this by now, but I don't).

For grammar I'm using 征服HSK汉语语法 (北京大学出版社, 7-301-07988-5), which I like and seems to be good so far.

I bought 8级精解（听力） (北京语言大学出版社, 7-5619-1175-0) for listening as it was the only one I could find in the Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore that had CDs, not tapes.

Any specific tips you HSK veterans would like to divulge? I'd be forever grateful...

[roddy]

Sounds like you've got everything pretty much under control. Have you done a practice test to see what grade you are getting currently? Perhaps you should be aiming for an 8 in June, and the advanced exam in December?

Levels 1,2,3 are used in the Intermediate exam.

I think the only suggestion I would make is with reference to vocab. The existence of the HSK lists makes it easy to concentrate on lots of flashcard-type learning, without much practice / study of actual usage. However the HSK, to its credit, does test usage in the final section, and maybe the grammar section as well (can't remember, long time since I last did it), and time spent learning the differences in usage between words very similar in meaning will help you, not to mention make your real-life usage of the language much more accurate (not that it isn't already, of course)

I have a dusty copy of HSK 词汇攻关 (BLCU press, 7 5169 1114 9) on my shelf which has over 437 sections comparing usage of, for example (random flick through the book) 农田，田地 and 田野; or 尊敬，尊重 and 遵守. A book like that might be a good addition if you don't already have one. I also suspect that a good foundation in Chinese usage, while helpful for the Intermediate exam, is much more important if you hope to go on to take the advanced exam.

Is there any reason you haven't got the complete 8级精解 set? If you find the listening one useful, that would probably be wise. This post from way back when recommends some extra stuff, and I still (and repeatedly, I know) recommend the listening course and the core readings book mentioned there.

[jbiesnecker]

Thanks much for the advice, Roddy! I'll certainly check out those books you've mentioned.

Not sure why I didn't get the rest of the 8及 set. I think I just wanted to check out the listening (because of it's CDs, not tapes) and see if I liked the rest. Probably worth going back and picking up the rest.

I think learning usage is, as you mentioned, good in general, not just for the HSK, and is probably one of my weaknesses (my tutor is constantly picking seemingly identical words to replace words I've written in essays:) ). Have you (or anyone else) seen that big dictionary of Chinese near-synonyms (forget the exact title, but about RMB 100, newish, with a black, green and white cover)? If so, any thoughts on it? It seems like a good resource, but it's without really getting into it it's hard to tell.

[roddy]

Not seen that one, but the book I mention above will probably give you the same info (limited to HSK vocab) with exercises to boot.

[lau]

Taking into consideration my random attacks of stupidity, i guess it would be more likely to get around 60% in the advanced HSK test (9级）than more than 80% in the elementary-intermediate(8级）...

Any experience in chosing between the both tests? I just tried the elementary-intermediate listening sample test, and my resultwas on the border of 7/8, though while doing it i found the test quite easy.