In today's sample HSK test we present you with a new type of test question. Your challenge in the exercises that follow is to read the sentences provided and identify which section has a serious problem with either grammar or word usage. Sections are identified by letters in parentheses.These exercises are considered more difficult - and characteristic of the advanced levels of the HSK - because they are essentially open-ended. Instead of being given an explicit question, you are presented with a problem and expected to find it yourself. We hope you find these a breeze, but if you have any questions just a post a note below and we'll do our best to help.
henning
said on October 10, 2008
This one would be a lot more helpful for me if an correct alternative would be included in the results - so I can localize the mistake. Otherwise I might even pick up wrong language...
Echo
said on October 10, 2008
@henning,
非常好的建议，谢谢！ 不知道你这次的测试结果怎么样？
“改错" 是一个很有意义、但是同时难度系数也很高的测试方式，它与“选择正确的答案”有所不同，测试的目标不仅在于人们对题目的理解，更在于人们对这门语言准确的精确的掌握，从而能达到自己组织语句、重组语句的目标。
其实我们也一直在考虑答案和讲解应该以一个什么方式呈现给大家，不知道诸位有什么好的建议？
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
henning
said on October 10, 2008
不告诉你了， 太丢脸了。。。OK, 4/15. Below the expected value of blind guessing.Actually I found a book entitled "Brush up your HSK grammar" in a suitcase last week (that I bought 2 years ago but never touched). Turned out it is geared at "HSK advanced" so I screw up all the exercises.But it is extremely valuable for me as the answers are given and *explained* in the back (when there are several choices they even present a short definition for each of the wrong options).Now I wouldn't expect that you guys go that far (would probably increase the preparation of the tests 10-fold). But for those "find the mistake" questions naming one correct alternative would be a helping as it helps pinpointing the relevant language points - well, and if I don't succeed I can still come back to the discussions...
orbital
said on October 10, 2008
This one wiped the floor with me too. I second the call for some way to figure out what the exact problem is. Maybe you could put the sentences on the text page, and use the popups to explain the mistakes.
brett
said on October 11, 2008
This test is way above my level, but that would be useful for the easier tests too.
henning
said on October 11, 2008
Colleague and wife (both native Chinese) completed the test with 12 resp. 11 points. Both complained that in the answers they missed， the "mistake part" was actually not as wrong as some of the "correct" ones - and gave convincing arguments.There is a catch, however: Their sets of missed answers were perfectly disjoint. This kind of weekens their case.But confuses me even further :)
imron
said on October 12, 2008
Haha, 5/15 in 25 minutes. These are the HSK Advanced questions that I hate the most :-)
As for how to have an explanation for the answers, perhaps you could have an optional 'explanation' field for each question that is only shown on the answer page. For tests/questions that don't really need much of an explanation you could leave it out. For some of the more difficult tests (like this one) however it would be really useful.
trevelyan
said on October 12, 2008
Good ideas all around - we'll figure out a way to add this knowledge to the system. The challenge is ensuring the usability of the lesson creation parts of the system.
Unrelated note - we've just updated the simplified/traditional/pinyin switching code. The previous version ran into some problems with on-the-fly reformatting in specific cases - these should be fixed.
marco64
said on October 12, 2008
I like the idea of an explanation field. I'm embarrassed to post my score here, save admitting that these creamed me.
imron
said on October 16, 2008
Hmm, so is no-one else taking this, or is everyone just too scared to post their results? ;-)
trevelyan
said on October 16, 2008
I think this one really is quite difficult. See how you do on the 了, 着 and 过 test Imron.
imron
said on October 16, 2008
Which one is that?
trevelyan
said on October 16, 2008
this one. It's closer to intermediate than beginner in some ways, as some of the questions are... tricky.
huyilin
said on November 30, 2010
I find the "Find-the-Mistake" tests (高级) challenging for self-study if I don't know what the correct answers are. It would be really helpful to know why the particular parts in the sentences are wrong so that one can learn them correctly. Would you post possible answers somewhere on the site please? :-)
trevelyan
said on November 30, 2010
@huiyilin,
We're working on adding an optional "explanation" section to each question that can be used to explain the answer in cases like this where it isn't immediately obvious why one answer is right and the others are wrong.
The backend doesn't fully support this yet, and once it does we will need to go back and revisit all of these tests to make it work, but this is how we are tackling the problem -- making the explanation visible to people only when they get the answer wrong. In the meantime... questions are always welcome in the discussion section and Echo answers email. Not the most painless way, but we'll get you the answers.... :)
Best,
--david
brshill
said on December 11, 2010
哎哟...难得要命! 只有几个选对的，但是知道正确答案之后一般能弄清楚点
谢谢啊！
