Are our Beginner HSK tests lulling you into a false sense of complacency? Despite the hosannas of praise Chinese speakers routinely shower on foreigners with basic conversational skills, true fluency is much more than knowing the difference between 的, 地, and 得. And if you're focusing too much on conversational Chinese you may need to brush up on your reading skills to improve your HSK prospects.

At the Intermediate level the HSK separates the wheat from the chaff by testing on a wider range of grammar points. If you have trouble with these questions but consider yourself already at the intermediate level, we recommend working through our manually annotated short stories, and clicking on unfamiliar words (especially adverbs and conjunctions) to add them to your private vocabulary lists for later review.
 said on
October 3, 2008
Great lesson, I thought it was easy, but only got 10/15. That put a big dent in my false sense of complacency.
 said on
October 3, 2008
7/15 - i have no sense of complacency anymore. : (
 said on
October 3, 2008
11.

I learned 无非 and 看不惯 today.

The 啊, 啦, 嘛 was a bit too subtle for my ability ;)
 said on
October 4, 2008
@henning,

11 is not bad already. This test is not easy, 因为是我们的老师精心编写的:)

关于“啊、啦、嘛”,这里有一些简单的区别方法。

“啊”是表达强烈的感情的感叹词,一般有一点儿惊讶的意思,和之前不知道的情况有关,比如:“今天真冷啊!”,“桂林真美啊!”;“啦”也表达强烈的感情,但是和惊讶无关,一般是说和自己有关系的事情,比如:“终于放假啦,我得好好休息一下。”;“嘛”,可以用在反问句(Rhetorical Questions)中,或者是说话人知情的情况下,一般表达“没关系、不要紧”,比如:“不就是一个花瓶,摔坏了就摔坏了,有什么大不了嘛!”,“我这不是没事嘛,你就别担心了。”

另外,先生们请注意,“啦”这个词最好少用,这个词比较女性化。

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
October 4, 2008
@derek&brett,

加油!失败乃成功之母:)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
October 4, 2008
Thanks for the clear explanations Echo!

I found that my score in Intermediate ocillates around an 8-9 center, with the lowest so far being 6 and the highest today's 11.

The so called "Beginner" has its center of gravity at 11 or 12, with 8 min and 15 max.

But still without a clicking clock in the back and in a rather relaxed setting. Need to try to get those numbers up.
 said on
October 4, 2008
i got #1 wrong too. how exactly should we be translating that sentence anyway: I'm guessing it means something like "This is the only time he tested into first place, what's with the attitude?"

 said on
October 5, 2008
Brett, I'm level with you on this one but lost my complacency a ways back. :-) OTOH I'm excited just to be able to make some sense of some grammar patterns that might have had me closing the book on learning Chinese a year ago.

Echo, I really enjoyed your breakdown of question 3. I'd heard some commentary on those modal particles before, but it never seemed to stick. Also, I love your translation of one of my favorite expressions. Or is 失败乃成功之母 already a common Chinese phrase?
 said on
October 5, 2008
I like to think of 啦 as 了 and 啊 combined :-) Therefore a good way to spot whether to use 啦 is to see if it's appropriate to have a 了 in that place in the sentence.
 said on
October 5, 2008
@orbital,

Someone finally asked Q1:) People don't often use 无非 in daily life, but if you can use it properly, it shows that you are full of 文化:)

无非 is an adv, and means nothing but, just, only , or no more than. So that sentence should be "Why is he acting so uppity, all he did was get first place in the test?" Therefore, it shows that you don't see something is that important when you use 无非 in the sentence, but it's not a rude word.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
October 5, 2008
@BMG,

Hehe, it's one of my favorite Chinese sayings too (since we used it thousands of times in writing tests from primary school),可惜,这个不是我的原创:)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
October 5, 2008
@imron,

Yeah, you can use it that way too. Good idea:)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
October 26, 2008
我不太了解第五道题:

不单......反而......

Doesn't this literally mean: not only ... on the contrary ... ?

He not only didn't fix his mistake; on the contrary, he became aggravated and disregarded the school's disciplinary action.
 said on
October 26, 2008
@weijin,

Yes, exactly! You can also say 不只...反而.Same meaning.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
October 27, 2008
喔,原来我刚才是误读。清楚了。其实 "on the contrary" 后面应该有 "he also"。Echo老师谢谢!
Mark Lesson Studied