HSK Post-Mortem
Well, that was fun. My first (and hopefully last) go at the HSK exam is over, and in a couple of weeks I'll find out how I did. Overall, I'd say I didn't do any better or worse than I had on the most recent practice exams, which would mean I've still got quite a bit of progress to make before I get my desired result. Oh well- there's time!
On the HSK (or any standardized test) there are three types of questions: ones to which you know the answer, ones that you don't know but can make a reasonably educated guess, and ones that you have no idea how to answer. My goal over the past two months has been to reduce the third category to nil while raising the proportion of the first to the second (got that?). I still haven't gotten there. Yesterday, there were still quite a few questions in each section that totally befuddled me. Gotta learn more characters.
Some other observations:
- There were fifty-odd students in my test room, and all but three (counting me) were Asian. Before the exam I took an unscientific survey of which Asian countries these students came from (mostly from listening to their chatter) and discovered that the vast majority were Thai or Vietnamese. There were a few Koreans thrown in too. The other two non-Asians were both Italian.
-Two Vietnamese boys sitting directly in front of me chatted throughout the test and took turns looking at each other's answers. Finally, the proctor came over and told them to knock it off, but by that point the exam was nearly over.
- The HSK takes about two and a half hours, and there are no breaks in between sections. By the end, my brain was fried and I could think of nothing else but the burrito I was planning to eat for lunch.
-The test itself? For people who haven't taken HSK before, there are four sections: listening (å¬åŠ›), grammar (è¯æ³•), reading comprehension (阅读) and comprehensive (综åˆ). These sections are further divided into sub-sections: three for listening, and two for the rest. For me, the easiest parts on the practice exams have always been the first two parts of listening, all of grammar, and the second part of reading comprehension. The harder parts were the third part of listening (long passages followed by a few comprehension questions), the first part of reading comprehension (heavy on idioms or æˆè¯), and all of comprehensive, of which the second part (fill in the blanks) I've found next to impossible.
On the test, I found the third part of listening remarkably easy and the fill-in-the-blanks surprisingly doable. The second part of reading comprehension, though, was really, really hard: the passages chosen were dense and full of vocabulary I haven't learned, and the questions seemed trickier than usual.
Now that it's over, I feel relieved. Even if my results aren't as good as I hope, I've learned quite a lot just by intensely studying the language, and I'm pretty confident that with the same amount of persistence I'll find the exam far easier if (when) I take it again later in the year.
Chris I'm sure kicked my ass, by the way.
April 28th, 2008 - 08:26
Oh, I don’t know, considering how quickly I raced through reading, running purely on exam technique and bugger all actual comprehension, and doing a similar thing with grammar and comprehensive, I’m sure I didn’t do as well as I should’ve, and I’m certainly far from arse-kicking level.
And the fill in the blanks section? Well, my brain freezing on å©š takes one down, and there’s one more I now know I buggered up (I was only sure before, now I know), and the first one I’m pretty sure I stuffed up completely. As for the rest, I’m not overly confident. That section was also a real weakpoint for me, thanks to the sheer amount of time I spend on computers and cellphones instead of writing the old-fashioned way.
My wife, by the way, is talking about getting my onto HSK Advanced ASAP. I’m inclined to agree, but from the little I understand of it, it’s one hell of a leap upwards.