hsk result

[beijingbooty]

Well, time to skite a little. Or you could view it as giving others motivation.

But I think I deserve it after sweating blood trying to learn chinese for so long.

After a 4 month wait I received my HSK results from Beijing.

I sat the basic test and scored 263/300 which is an A grade. and equivalent to the lowest grade of the intermediate exam. This level is adequate to gain entry to a Chinese university studying techinal fields.

That was after 2 years 4 months of self study in spare time. I did not expect such a good result, because with self-study you tend not to push the reading and writing side of things as much as they do in class.

Needless to say, I was thrilled with the result and now have major motivation to sit the intermediate exam this year.

[roddy]

Well done - I should be picking mine up tomorrow, depending on when I can get away from work. If I don't post in here in the next couple of days with my result - you can assume I didn't do so well . . .

Roddy

[roddy]

Well, I knew I was going to be borderline between a 7 and an 8 (Int / Upper-Int) but I didn't expect to be THIS borderline.

My overall score out of 400 was 336. How much do you need for an 8?

337.

It's not as close as it sounds, as my 综合 score was 70, which is a 6 and you can't have more than one level between your overall grade and your lowest - so even if I'd scored an extra point on listening or something it wouldn't have been enough. I would have needed to get my 综合 section up to a 7 to get the overall 8.

How many points did I need to get the 综合 section up to a 7?

3.

So it was pretty damned close. This is what I was expecting though - my character writing is just shoddy, and it's not the kind of thing you can cram at the last minute, like I tried to. And I'm still happy with my Intermediate B, especially as all my marks apart from 综合 were 8's.

Anyone else?

Roddy

[Jive Turkey]

Anyone else?

Roddy

All right, what the hell. I was all over the range. My overall score was 271, which is in the "six" bracket. I got an 8 for grammar, a 7 for reading, a 5 for combined skills and a 4 (ouch) for listening. I really think I could have pulled a five for the listening. My strategy was all wrong; I kept trying to read ahead on the answers rather than just waiting for the next dialogue to play. There were quite a few of them where if I had been listening attentatively at the very beginning of the dialogue, I probably would have gotten the right answer. Since I got a four for listening, I got an Elementary A for the exam.

When I did practice exams, I also did poorly on the character fill in part on part 4. However, that was the easiest part for me on the real exam; I'm certain I got all but a couple. I found the first half of part 4 to be much harder than the practice exams I did. I had no clue for quite a lot of them.

Roddy, you seem to have taken the HSK a few times. This was my first time. People tell me that the difficulty of the exam varies every time; if part x is hard this time, it might be really easy the next time; if y is easy this time, it might be really hard the next time. My impression of the exam is that it doesn't do a good job of consistently measuring the abilities of people who fall in the middle of the range. For the TOEFL or IELTS, students score more consistently (IMO). When I practiced before the exam, I scored from 5 to 8 on all parts. I did about ten mock exams in two different books. I thought it was just because the practice exams were poorly written. Now I think that it's just the way the exam is. It seems to me that the only ones of us who will score consistently are the ones who nail an 8 every time they practice. Any opinions?

[roddy]

I don't think you could comment on the consistency of the exams with out a lot of statistical data, which I just don't have. It'd be interesting to see how it compares with IELTS and the like for reliability across exams and examinees though.

What I am sure of is that there are plenty of publishers churning out practice tests which may well not accurately reflect the difficulty of the exam.

For listening, see if you can get the listening books near the bottom of this page

http://www.chinese-forums.com/bj/textbooks.html

from my now abandoned original site. I'm planning to do a decent review of this course for here, but in the meantime I'll just say that they're easily the best textbooks I've come across.

[beijingbooty]

Great result Roddy, your hard work paid off.

Next time round you can sit the advanced exam and show off your speaking skills !

Regarding those listening comp. books, do you have an ISBN number or publication details so I can order them ?

[roddy]

Regarding those listening comp. books, do you have an ISBN number or publication details so I can order them ?

of course