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HSK Intermediate: Listening Exercise #5

In today's sample HSK exam, listen to a series of 15 audio clips and then answer a single question about the snippet you just heard. The challenge in these questions is less time pressure (you take the test at the pace it is spoken) so much as the lack of repetition: you get exactly one shot at each question. A good strategy to help prepare for this is scanning the questions quickly before the dialogue begins.

BMG

said on

November 4, 2008

Wow, these tests keep getting better. I like the one-question-per-dialog format. This time I used the "scanning the questions quickly before the dialogue begins" approach and it helped. In a real-life HSK environment, how long would I get to do this?

Some of the answers were obvious to me, others still aren't after listening again a second or third time. Just a matter of unfamiliar phrases, I think. Time should cure that one.

Here's one I still think I was right on, though. In number 12, doesn't 闭门羹 mean A rather than D?

bb_bermuda

said on

November 4, 2008

8/15. I'm sure I could do better if I could listen to the questions more than once, since a lot of the right answers seemed obvious when I listened again. I suppose that isn't really fair though, is it?

The problem appears to be my weak listening comprehension. I lose track of where I am in the sentence once unfamiliar words start assaulting me and find it hard to get back on track until there's a significant pause and my mind can "start over".

Echo

said on

November 4, 2008

@BMG,

In Chinese, 闭门羹 just means the door is not open, not necessarily refused. Maybe nobody's at home, or maybe they just don't wanna open the door for her, but we don't know if she's refused. Also, it doesn't necessarily mean that the guest has a bad relationship with people in the house. It just technically means door's not open.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Echo

said on

November 4, 2008

@BMG & bb_bermuda,

初、中级的HSK听力测试一共有50道题，每题只放一遍，一共大约35分钟。我们的速度是基本一致的。

听力测试的关键是找准 key words,不一定题目中的每个词都听得懂或者听得清楚，但是一些关键的名词（比如地点、时间、有标志性的物品词），还有一些重要的关联词（比如但是，可是，不过这样的转折词后边往往是最重要的部分），听懂了关键词，答对问题就不难了。

--Echo

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imron

said on

November 5, 2008

The sound in the quiz is not playing for me (Firefox 2 running under OSX). When I click on the play button, it turns black but no sound comes out. The sound on the main discussion page works just fine. Incidentally, on my machine, this post also appears out of chronological order.

BMG

said on

November 5, 2008

谢谢你的解释。联系这里的HSK测验问题很有助于让我提高自信。

huyilin

said on

October 30, 2010

Even though I guessed 3 correctly I still could not figure out what they're saying:

－小王平时对人的态度怎么样？What is Xiao Wang's attitude generally toward others?

－他只要见到jing1li2shi3态度才会好的。这个人太不shi2zai(实在?)了.He only has a good attitude after he's seen .... He's really too .... .

谢你们的帮助！

Echo

said on

October 30, 2010

@huyilin,

－小王平时对人的态度怎么样？What is Xiao Wang's attitude generally toward others?

Yes.

- 他只有见到经理时态度才会好，这个人太不实在了。He only has good attitude when he sees the manager. He's very fake. ( I asked some native English speaker friends, and apparently they have no idea how to translate 实在. I think it's very close to "honest".)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Xiao Hu

said on

October 30, 2010

@huyilin,

I just wanted to add a little extra info about 实在, which can be interpreted as, "real" as in our recent 口头禅 (catchphrase) "keep it real". The phrase is referring to someone who's not being real, or being "too unreal".