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Anyone Taken the HSK Advanced
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roddy -
As title, really. I'm considering taking this at the end of the year - not because I particularly
want to have an HSK Advanced Certificate, but I generally need something to be working towards to
do any kind of systematic study, and this is the next step.
I've done the Elementary / Intermediate Exam twice, last time coming out with a 7 (8's in
everything but 综合, and if I had got 3 (THREE!!! ) more points there I would have had an 8
overall.
The obvious issue is that for the Advanced you really do need to learn to write. I have my doubts
about this.
Do we have anyone on the board who has done the advanced, or is looking at doing it?
Roddy
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Meng Lelan -
Roddy,
I also would like to try taking the Advanced version after moving to Austin, Texas (USA) this
July. I want to ask, do you get a certificate for completing each exam level? There's just three
exam levels, right?
Lelan
roddy -
You get a certificate which . . . er . . . hang on, let me find my certificates
Ok, you get two things. One is a 成绩单 - transcript, I guess. This states your individual
scores on each part of the test and explains how the final grade is reached (by, for example,
making a big fuss about a measly three marks in the 综合 section)
The other is the 证书, which is the pretty thing you put on the wall. This just gives you the
Grade (ie B at Intermediate Level) and doesn't mention the 6's and 7's and 8's which people tend
to talk about when discussing HSK levels.
There are three separate HSK levels (foundation / elementary + intermediate / advanced), and you'd
get a certificate for all of them (assuming you reach a passing grade, I suppose)
Roddy
Meng Lelan -
Oh zowie! A pretty thing to put on the wall, it's in Chinese I would guess (right, Roddy?). I
think I'll give it a try. Are you using any prep materials specifically for the Advanced HSK? When
I was in Beijing a year or so ago I saw a lot of HSK prep materials in the bookstores on
Wangfujing.
MarkKang -
My son took the advanced a few years ago. It does include an essay task.
He did have a prep text that he used that he got from one of the colleges in Beijing.
I might take it someday, after I retire and learn how to write characters longhand. But wait, I'm
not going to retire until I'm cripple and can't hardly do anything. Maybe I won't ever take it. I
can write my name, that's good enough.
Angelskates -
Roddy I did the Advanced test in May at BLCU.
I haven't got the result yet (they say within two months) but am fairly sure I've passed.
I organised a study group (had mostly Koreans, 8 people. I was the only white person - am Aussie)
through my tutor for the exact same reason as you - I needed a goal. I had a ball in the process.
I actually won't care that much about the result since I learnt SO much preparing (for 3 months)
that it is worth it anyway. I haven't taken the elementary or intermediate tests but we did lots
of practice tests which made the actual test taking easier.
I'm not here studying, I'm working. But came to imrove my Chinese. I would strongly suggest a
private tutor or small classes.
Jive Turkey -
I've never taken the Advanced test. I've only known one person who has. He was Korean and he got
an overall band of 10. His written Chinese was pretty good, but his spoken Chinese was not so
great. I get the impression that a very high proportion of the people taking it are Korean.
A Chinese teacher of mine told me something interesting about the Advanced HSK. He said that in
the past couple of years, he had seen a few students who had scored an overall 7 on the
intermediate exam turn right around and get a 9 or 10 on the Advanced just a few months later.
That should not happen. There is supposed to be a pretty big gap between 8 and 9. Hanban describes
an 8 as someone who has received about 2000 hours of instruction. A 9 would usually have had about
3000 hours of instruction. Sure, quality of instruction matters more than total number of hours,
but there is still a big gap. Anyway, this teacher thought he knew why these students were only
gettting 7's on the intermediate and then getting 9's on the Advanced without a lot of exam
preparation for the latter. The elementary-intermediate exam is a norms referenced exam. That
means they expect that a certain percentage of people will get each level of the exam every time
the exam is offered. The result is that if you got 79 percent for a part of the test (which should
be a 7), but hardly anybody else got much better than you on that part, then your score will
likely be adjusted up into the 8 bracket. If their curve says that 5% of test takers should get an
8 for each part, but only 3 percent of examinees got a raw score that fell into the 8 bracket,
then they will lower the the minimum score for that bracket until they get their 5%. To a certain
extent, you are testing against other people who are taking the exam in the same sitting and doing
the same version. They occasionally use a portion of the exam more than once just to get an idea
of whether performance on that part is consistent among different groups of examinees at different
sittings. This is not a perfect system, but it is cheap. It can, however, mean that someone who
just missed an 8 could quite possibly score a very strong 8 the next month.
The speaking and writing parts of the Advanced exam are criterion referenced rather than norm
referenced. That means there is no curve. Criterion referenced exams like the HSK, IELTS or
Cambridge CAE have detailed marking guidelines with descriptors for each level. It costs more to
run this sort of exam since markers require a much higher level of training and there is a need
for extensive moderation. Theoretically, a 9 in 1996 should be a 9 today, whereas a student who
got an 8 in May, 1996 might not be any better in real ability than someone who got a 7 in July of
the same year.
Back to why students who just scored a 7 can sometimes turn around and get a 9. Unless it has
changed just recently, there are 3 or 4 sittings for the elementary-intermediate HSK in the PRC
each year. Hong Kong, Macau and foreign testing sites may hold the exam a couple of times a year.
However, the advanced exam is only held once a year in the PRC. I believe that it's in May.
Foreign testing sites only offer it once a year, if at all. Even for graduate study, unless they
are planning to study Chinese lit or history, most people usually don't need an advanced level
score. A lot of very proficient users of Chinese choose to just do the elementary-intermediate
exam because:
1. They don't need an advanced score
2. With its multiple sittings, the elementary-intermediate exam is more convenient
3. There is a gap between an 8 and a 9 and some people are afraid they aren't quite good enough to
jump that gap yet. This combined with the fact that if you don't make the minimum score for a 9,
you don't get a certificate with a grade. If someone needs an HSK cert and doesn't have time to
take it twice, they may just decide to be safe and take the elementary-intermediate.
The result is that there are more and more advanced students taking the intermediate exam and
pushing the curve up. It could very well be harder to get an 8 than a 9. I don't know if the
distortion is really that big, but it seems to me that this teacher's reasoning could be correct.
In my opinion, the kind of person who is able to quickly jump the gap between a 7 or 8 and a 9
would:
1. Be strong in language skills but not very well honed on exam skills. Perhaps they didn't really
do many practice papers before doing the elementary-intermediate. Since the advanced exam has a
lot more subjective tasks, the student with good language skills but poor testing skills may be
able to do better on it than the multiple choice, fill in the blank intermediate exam.
2. Have taken the intermediate exam in a sitting that happened to have more smart people taking it
than usual. Some people have stated before in these forums that it is harder to score a good grade
in the July sitting for the HSK because there are a lot of minority examinees doing it then. I
don't know whether or not there is one sitting of the HSK that attracts more minorities or if
those minorities are even good enough to drive the curve up, but the chance of the curve being
driven upward because an unusually large number of smart people took the exam is certainly there.
roddy -
Thanks for that, very interesting reading, and makes sense.
There's an Advanced exam in October, which is a bit sooner than I'd like - December is much more
comfortably distant.
Roddy
Angelskates -
The advanced test has been available twice a year on many occaisons, including this year.
You also have multiple choice and fill in the blanks in the advanced test.
More info can he found here.
Jive Turkey -
Quote:
Originally Posted by Angelskates
The advanced test has been available twice a year on many occaisons, including this year.
You also have multiple choice and fill in the blanks in the advanced test.
More info can he found here.
Nice link. I haven't looked at the mock exams recently, but if memory serves, some of the fill in
the blank parts of the advanced exam are different from the elem-int. exam. In the elem-int. exam,
there is only character gap fill. I remember that for the advanced exam, at least for the reading,
the fill in the blank part is a subjective short answer format. The marker will usually have a
list of acceptable answers for each blank, and sometimes answers that aren't on the list but
display an acceptable level of comprehension will be accepted. At least that's the way it works
for exams like IELTS, CAE or CEP. Unlike a multiple choice or single character gap fill question,
these short answer questions require more interpretation from the reader and a bit of language
production.
You people have got me curious about this exam again. I've done practice papers for it before and
found most sections ok. The biggest difficulty for me was the writing. For me, 400 characters in
30 minutes is a lot. Some of the prep books I've looked at didn't provide much context for the
writing tasks. For example, a sample paper will say something like "apply to XYZ company for a
job" without really telling you anything about XYZ company or what job you should apply for. That
leads to the writer being tested on non-linguistic knowledge, which is pretty unfair. At least one
of the BLCU books I've got seems to provide good context for the writing task. Does anybody know
if the real exam provides good context for the writing part?
I have a prep book for the writing section that I like: HSK Kaoqian Qianghua-Xiezuo (BLCUP,
2004)(sorry, no Chinese input on this computer). The ISBN is 7-5619-1330-3/H.04036. It provides
good practice for different genres of writing. I haven't been preparing for the HSK Advanced, but
I've found this book helpful for improving my writing.
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