HSK elem/inter scoring

[Laska]

Did anyone take the HSK yesterday?

I took it in Shanghai at Jiaotong University. I found the listening harder and the zonghe easier than most of the practice tests I had taken. It's been a while since I sat for an exam like that. It was fun in a perverse way, though the guy behind me had a cold and kept coughing on my head.

Now to my scoring question...

I've scanned through all the threads on the HSK, but please excuse me if this is a duplicate post or if it should be put somewhere else.

I understand that the score is graded on curve with 50 as the mean and 15 as the standard deviation.

My question is this: When people say they thought they scored a 7 or 8 or whatever it is, then they get the results and they had pretty much predicted their score correctly, what were they basing their prediction on? Does someone have a rough guideline for how many answers correctly in each section puts you in the 7 range, 8 range etc.? Or are you just going by percentage of answers answered correctly, and figuring this pretty much corresponds to the score for each section?

I know this question has been asked before. See for example http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/7696-hsk-usual-scores-required-for-each-level&highlight=hsk. I'm probably just not digging deeply enough for the answer. Also, I've forgotten most of my math, so forgive me if I'm missing something obvious.

[lau]

i would rather say that the score is ADJUSTED on curve with 50 as the mean and 15 as the standard deviation.

so, if i got your question right, the easiest way to try to predict your score is to simply calculate the percentage of answers you got right. in a section with 40 questions, each question is 2.5 points.

[wushijiao]

When people say they thought they scored a 7 or 8 or whatever it is, then they get the results and they had pretty much predicted their score correctly, what were they basing their prediction on?

That's a good question. I think people can get a "feeling" if they have taken it before, and they can compare their preformance to the previous test. Even then, they are still just guessing.

Does someone have a rough guideline for how many answers correctly in each section puts you in the 7 range, 8 range etc.?

I think this is impossible for us to know. I'd bet that on, say, the reading section, people who fall into the 8 range generally get X number of questions right. I would imagine that the curve is somewhat stable due to the large numbers of people taking the test. The problem is, the HSK people don't tell you how many you got correct or wrong. If they did, we could all compare results on a test, and then get a rough idea of how many correct questions corresponds to what level on the curve, roughly. But, as of now, that is not possible.

So, to answer yingguoguy's question, I don't think it is possible to know what the results of a practice test mean. For example, if you got 35/50 right on a practice reading, you might ask, "what does this result mean? A 5? 6? 7?"

As far as I can tell, there is no way to know. The only possible way to guesstimate might be to form a big group of classmates who represent a good cross-section of HSK test takers. Then you could all take a practice test, and then compare answers and put your score on a curve. However, clearly that wouldn't be logistically easy to do either.

Just to make it a bit clearer, look at this chart:

http://www.hsk.org.cn/english/Intro_hsk2.aspx

If you get a section score of 58, that means that you were in the 70th percentile of the people taking the test in that section. It does not mean you got 70% of the questions right.

Also, this topic has a lot of useful info:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/105-private-chinese-schools-in-beijing03

Gato also helped us figure out the math:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showpost.php?p=72615&postcount=18

[Laska]

Thanks very much for the links. I don't know how I missed reading that topic carefully. It was very informative.

I think I'm just going to start taking the HSK every time it's offered. I bet I'll have a strange tale to tell a year from now.