Preparation books for HSK

[Guest Martinshanghai]

I'm sure this has been discussed before - if so, can someone point me to the relevant thread, great.

Can anyone recommend some ood books to prepare for Elementary/Intermediate HSK?

Should I just get a uni-style course, like Practical Chinese Reader? What other courses of this type are available? I remember seeing a different one that looked quite good... (My friend at Shanghai Jiaotong Daxue used it)

...or, what are the books like Intensive Training for HSK etc. like? What in this series are worth purchasing? Where can you get word lists without buying the book? By the way i am back in UK for the next few months and would have to order them.

Many thanks for any advice you can offer!

M.

[roddy]

Have you used this??

Roddy

[Guest Martinshanghai]

Hi,

Yeah i used that but couldnt come up with any precise responses to my questions, so quickly again:

What are good Uni course books?

What are books like Intensive Training for HSK like?

I downloaded the Geneva Uni vocab lists, so that's cool (I'm fluent in French, so no worries there) - just looking for well structured courses to prepare me thoroughly.

Thanks.

M.

[beijingbooty]

I am using HSK "yingshi zhinan" published by Beijing Yuyan Wenhua Daxue, (chu-zhongji). It is a big thick red book with a set of tapes, and packed full of sample tests.

I guess it is as good as any other, and I dont suppose you can go too far wrong buying a Beijing Yuyan Wenhua Daxue book.

So to summarise; for my prep for HSK intermediate I am using that book and an HSK dictionary. Bascially I am learning every word in the HSK dicitionary and using the other book for passage reading and listening exercises.

The same methodology got me an A in HSK basic, so this method works for me at least.

[柯賜海]

beijing booty, could you please post that book title again in chinese for me, so i can do a web search for it? thanks

[beijingbooty]

sorry, cant type chinese on this computer, here is the ISBN:

7-5619-0560-2

[skylee]

柯賜海 -

Based on the pinyin, I suppose it is 應試指南 (应试指南).

Based on the ISBN, it is this book.

[roddy]

Ok, based on what I know (I've taken the HSK twice, and buy all my textbooks in Beijing - I'm not so well aware of what's on the international market)

These books for listening.

These ones to supplement those ones.

If 'Intensive Training for Hsk' is the one on this page, it looks like it might just be a set of practice exams rather than a course.

HSK 速成强化教程 (An Intensive Course of HSK) is a good coursebook that will give you plenty of exam practice while improving your Chinese. ISBN 7-5619-0958-6, 北京语言大学出版社 (Beijing Language and Culture University Press)

The HSK 8级精解 - HSK Essentials- series has four books, one for each section. These are also very good - Whether you want to go for this one or the above probably depends on how much time you have. The ISBN for the one I have in front of me (综合) is 7-5619-1038-X, same publisher as above. (edit. Here's one of the books, and the others are in the 'related products' bit at the bottom. I'd love to know how they manage to have a tape for the Reading course . . .)

Like the listening books I recommend above, 核心阅读　－　Core Chinese Reading - is not specifically an HSK preparation book - but it does give you the skills needed while developing your Chinese at the same time, and I credit this book with taking me from reading individual characters and words to sentences and paragraphs. I've been meaning to do a fuller write-up on this as I did for some of the books above, but haven't had a chance. ISBN 7-80052-552-X, Sinolingua. Unfortunately there's only this one Intermediate edition, and the only reference to it I can find on the internet is here

Some notes on the above. All the HSK books above are designed to take you to an 8. This means that if you are just coming in from Foundation, they're going to be a bit of a shock to the system. They can also be a bit on the dull side, which is why I was VERY glad of the listening course and Core Readings - I found both of these to be fantastic.

Also, there's little in the way of pinyin and English help - only on new vocabulary, and even then it can be a little scarce. You will find yourself tacking complex grammatical explanations, exam strategies and the difference between 成果, 果实, 后果, 结果 and 效果, all in characters - which is more of a challenge to your reading that the reading exercises will be.

Be wary of books with titles like 'New Millenium Concept HSK Trick Answers Handbook' - they're invariably just piles of practice exams, and not necessarily very good ones at that. Get one book of practice tests, do one now so you know where you are, one halfway to the exam so you can see how you're progressing and the remaining ones in the week before the exam so you can see what you need to desperately try and cram into your head.

Been meaning to reply fully to this for a while, but haven't had time. Apologies for the delay. I'll be interested to hear what people think of the books if they get any of them.

Roddy

[yonglan]

Is anyone familiar with a series of four books called HSK词汇突破?

[marcopolo79]

I've found that HSK 詞彙精解 written by the HSK 對策研組 to be really helpful, not that I can even take the HSK in Taiwan, but the explanations it offers for common mistakes are really good and digestable.

This book was published by the 华夏出版社, the ISBN number is 7-5080-1216-X, that's all the information I have.

[yonglan]

Marco, would you please tell us the publisher and their web page or other such information for those of us living in places in China where we must order absolutely everything? Thanks.

[yonglan]

Thanks for the edit, marco. The publisher's web site is here

http://www.hxph.com.cn/

but I can't find that book in their search engine or in their categories. I'll email them.

The book titles didn't show up in a general search, but the ISBN did in Australia and Japan, but it was a cassette.

[kudra]

looks like many of the links roddy posted to his favorite listening course are stale.

Are these the books? 汉语听力系列教材

http://www.welan.com/1263069/

http://www.welan.com/1263094

I am not sure. It looks like one might be the 3 books set for beginner, and one is the cd, but I can't make it out.

if you click on the link to the author you apparently can get the intermediate and advanced books, but with the same confusion on my part about book/cd....

Then as far as An Intensive Course of HSK(Elem and Intermediate)

it looks like these links work.

http://chinesemall-com.stores.yahoo.net/incoofhskein.html

the cds for the book

http://www.chinesemall.com/3cdsforincoo.html

For slang, in a previous post roddy recommended 2 books:

HSK Listening Key Words (Ting Li Guan Jian Ci)

听力关键词

http://chinesemall-com.stores.yahoo.net/hsklikeywotl.html

听力惯用语

http://chinesemall-com.stores.yahoo.net/hskliphtligu.html

By the way, For the 2nd one, its description on the web page has

an explanation of 开夜车 which I just learned from my tutor this evening.

For some reason I get this picture of the night bus in the Harry Potter movie....

I am assembling a possible shopping list for a friend who is soon going to China for a short trip. I am thinking about taking the Beginning HSK for fun in the Fall.

Anyway, for those of you in the Chicago (US Midwest) area, if you need some

motivation/focus for you studies, the HSK is offered in Ann Arbor this Fall.

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/asian/chinese/hsk.html

[roddy]

I've fixed the onsite links in my previous post. There are also pictures of the covers and ISBN numbers for the books (for some of the books, in the case of the listening course) in the linked topics.

[elina]

I am not sure. It looks like one might be the 3 books set for beginner, and one is the cd, but I can't make it out.

This series of books have no CDs, only with cassettes.

汉语听力系列教材：初级汉语听力（1）

http://shop.aaawww.net/mod8/detail.php?gid=317376&userid=7912&catid=662814

汉语听力系列教材：初级汉语听力（1）另配磁带

http://shop.aaawww.net/mod8/detail.php?gid=317377&userid=7912&catid=662814

I am assembling a possible shopping list for a friend who is soon going to China for a short trip.

BLCU has an online bookstore (only in Chinese language) running for a long time (http://www.blcup.com.cn/), but recently it has been down for nearly one month. I don’t know why. On their site, they give 10% discount for every book, which is different from us. We only begin to give discount for the order above USD 50.00, because we use English on our site and when answering email enquiries, which need some translation work and can increase our cost. If BLCU website can be accessed later, I recommend using it, which is cheaper and reliable. Or let your friend go to this bookstore:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8180-blcu-bookstore-location-question

The books on learning Chinese for foreigners there are more complete than the bookstores in Wang Fu Jing.

BTW, on our site, we have all the books mentioned in this thread with more detailed information and cheaper price than Chinesemall. For those who are interested, I can give out the link for reference.

[elina]

An update:

BLCU online bookstore’s new address: http://www.blcup.com/blcup/, it can be opened now.

[kudra]

Regarding elina's links to the listening course at

http://shop.aaawww.net/mod8/detail.php?gid=317376&userid=7912&catid=662814

Took me a while to figure out the search on that site, so I'll give the rest of you a head start.

If you put "Listening" in the key words search box, and choose "For Adult" in the Search class drop down, you get a bunch of books. All 9 (3 books each for Beginning, Inter, Adv) that roddy recommends are all together around the middle, along with the tapes.

[vkim67]

@Roddy,

I think I saw on one of the threads somewhere that you first purchased your books in Harbin. Which bookstore did you go to? I went to 学府书城 and I don't remember seeing 听力关键词 or 听力惯用语. Since I'm in China, I don't want to pay what seem like outrageous prices ($20+) for each book. All the other books I want are on amazon.cn but these aren't.

Vkim67