HSK Exam and Writing Characters

[Jamie]

It's been said here that it's not really nessecary for one to know how to write the characters as long as you can read them. For my own personal self satisfaction I would love to be able to write them all correctly (hand written script is so beautiful to read *sigh*), and while electronic mail is how all of my correspondence is done a part of me would like to be able to find an excuse to write the characters at any opportunity. The problem is I almost always make a stroke wrong, or even skip strokes when I am writing without reference. I could take more time and write them dozens of times, however this would really slow down the character learning process. One of my goals is to take the HSK exam at the intermediate level in the fall. If I know writing the characters is important to the grade I will focus on that more now. If not, well, I guess it can wait. :-

So that said, what percent of the HSK exam is devoted to writing characters from memory? Since this seems to be a weak area for a lot of people I wonder how much of one's HSK grade would be affected by this. I posed this question in someone else's thread. It may have gone unnoticed (or not!) but it's something I'd really like to know!

Thanks, friends!

[roddy]

The overall percentage isn't very much - 15 questions out of 170. However, as they are all in one section (the final, 'zonghe' section') and there's a rule that your overall grade cannot be more than one over your lowest section grade, completely ignoring the characters will hold your overall grade down to a 6, even if you get everything else right.

Roddy

[Jamie]

Thanks Roddy, I really appreciate the reply!