I sat both HSK tests last November, but didn’t see the results until yesterday—- what a great way to start off the year!
I did extremely well on the spoken test, as well as the listening section of the HSK 5 (fifth level of the new six-level scheme); however, my reading and writing scores are definitely telling me that I need to do more practice in those areas.
It’s worth noting that the written section of the test requires you to write chinese characters by hand— if you’re used to typing chinese, you may find it easy to compose text by inputing pinyin and ‘choosing’ the correct character, but it can be a bit of a challenge to recall the character when you’re stuck clutching your pencil.
As I recall, there were a few different kinds of questions in the writing section— some involved putting sentence fragments in the correct order, and others involved being given three or four words (eg: 电脑， 游戏， 学校） and having to compose a sentence.
Posted by Guest on October 10, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Hi,
I would be taking the HSK Level 5 test soon and I would like to ask you more about the test. Did you find it very challenging and what did the essays involve? Also, do you have any online/soft copy study guides that I could also make use of?
Thank you.
Posted by Ray on October 10, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Hi there— If you’re not that familiar with the test (have you ever taken HSK 4?), then the first thing that I would recommend is going to http://www.chinesetesting.cn/index.do, creating an ID and trying one of their online sample tests— that site is run by Hanban, so it’s the same people that run the HSK test. Start from there and see how it goes. Best of luck!
Posted by yminisa on October 10, 2011 at 11:08 pm
I have not taken HSK 4 but did study Chinese for an extensive amount of time, first time attempting the HSK.
Thanks a lot for your help!