As China prepares to celebrate late twentieth century history by shutting down the Internet, we are pleased to bring you our latest Reading Comprehension exam. In the event you haven't taken one of these yet, the challenge is to pick the option from the answers provided which best matches the meaning of the selected word from the original sentence. In a real-life test situation, you will have 12:45 to complete fifteen questions of this type.
orbital
said on June 4, 2009
Totally unrelated to this test, but somewhat related to the write-up, I found the following Global Times article worth noting. First major Chinese (state-owned?) newspaper to break the taboo and talk about 1989. They've got guts.
daphne
said on June 9, 2009
That was ...not so easy, but very educating;) Does '跟谁闹情绪呢?' mean sth. like 'Who are you annoyed at? ' ?
Another question: Which book(s) would you people recommend for HSK preparation ? Is there any defined vocabulary for each of the levels ?
trevelyan
said on June 9, 2009
hi daphne,
There isn't a set vocabulary year to year, but there are guidelines for core vocabulary students are expected to know. If you purchase an HSK review book, you'll find this vocabulary listed in four sections 甲，乙，丙 and 丁. These levels don't map to test levels precisely - they're just graded in difficulty.
http://popupchinese.com/hsk/wordlists/beginner
http://popupchinese.com/hsk/wordlists/intermediate
http://popupchinese.com/hsk/wordlists/advanced
We've been working on ways to make it easier for people to review this core vocabulary by mapping it to our HSK difficulty levels. In case this might be useful to you, I've linked above to the core wordlists above. They are technically still under development (we're still polishing the English definitions for the more advanced materials and were planning to release later this month) but there's no problem sharing a bit early.
Once on those pages, you can click through to test yourself using flashcards (we will automatically add any entries you get incorrect to your vocabulary list for study later). You can also add the entire list to your private vocabulary collection, at which point you can export it to other applications using our standard tools.
The code is robust on the backend, but the interface is a work in progress so suggestions are always appreciated,
Best,
--david
Gail天堂的声音
said on June 10, 2009
@daphne,
yes 跟谁闹情绪呢？means exactly what you said.
and the popupwordlist is awsome!
and we do have 甲乙丙丁wordlists in china, but nowadays the HSK center are modifying them, so the wordlist is not precisely used in HSK exams.
daphne
said on June 10, 2009
@david and gail, thank you ! The wordlists are great, just what could bring me back to using flashcards;) Are there big differences in the HSK review books ? The online tests are such good motivators, I would like to review more vocab, but select it so that it fits the HSK Intermediate level (more or less)...
trevelyan
said on June 11, 2009
glad they're useful daphne - we're working to make it as easy as possible for people to get started and make progress. Echo is closer to the HSK team through her work at BLCU, perhaps she'd be in the best position to recommend a text book. Echo?
barrister
said on June 11, 2009
those HSK links are great, guys. Especially the flashcards. Found a decent number of words at the Intermediate level I don't seem to know, and the Advanced setup is pretty challenging. Great to see you keep adding features too.
