Hello, everyone!
A couple of days ago, I made a video about learning Chinese in China, and today's video
is just going to kind of build on that.
Today I'm going to be talking about the HSK.
So, what is the HSK?
Well, it is the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, which is like the Chinese proficiency exam.
It is an exam that foreigners can take in China to prove that they can speak, read,
and write Chinese.
Although most foreigners are, in some way, involved in the field of education, not everyone
is.
Lots of professionals - hotel management, web design, game design, marketing, or even
translating/interpreting and stuff like that - those people are going to need to prove
they can work side-by-side with Chinese people and not have language be a barrier.
Not only that, foreigners who come to China to study need to take the HSK as well to prove
to that university that, "Hey, I have studied Chinese.
I know Chinese" or while they're at the university that their language studying's going well, or
things like that.
So let's get into the specifics of what is on this language test and what it looks like.
First of all, the test is split into six levels, which you can see up here on the screen, and
these levels are divided by vocabulary level.
So you can see it doubles up every time - 15-, 300, 600, 1200, 2500, and then 5,000.
You can take any of them anytime you want and you can skip levels - do whatever you
want.
For example, if you want to be admitted into a Chinese university and study academic courses,
you need to pass Level 4.
They don't care about levels 1-3, and some departments and some majors actually require
you to take level 6 and pass level 6 before you're allowed to graduate.
So, looking at these different levels, you can see that level 4, for example, means that
you can converse in Chinese on a wide range of topics and are able to communicate fluently
with native Chinese speakers.
Level 5, you're able to read Chinese newspapers and magazines, enjoy Chinese films and plays,
and give a full-length speech in Chinese.
And level 6 - test takers can easily comprehend written and spoken information in Chinese
and can effectively express themselves in Chinese, both orally and on paper.
So you can see they have very specific goals in mind for test takers and you can show off
your HSK Certificate to whoever wants to employ you or whatever school you want to go to,
etc. etc.
They'll know exactly what that certificate means.
So, let's talk about what the test actually looks like, okay?
The test is split up into three parts: there's listening, reading, and writing.
There are three sections, right?
Each section is worth 100 points, and you only need 180 to pass.
60%.
So you can do pretty well on the reading and the listening and you don't even need to do
the writing and still pass the test.
And when you take the test, it basically looks like this.
It's a bunch of multiple choice questions.
The entire test is multiple choice except for the writing, and even the writing's not
that difficult.
You basically have to unscramble these sentences and put them into the right order.
And that's true until you get to Level 5, which is where you're supposed to write essays.
For example, you have to write an essay using all of these words.
80 words - so not much - it's very short.
It's like a paragraph.
And then you have to write an essay based on this picture explaining what it is, what
it means, and things like that.
You have to write two 80-word compositions.
The test taker will be required to read a narrative article of about 1,000 characters
within 10 minutes, and then rewrite it into a shorter article of about 400 characters
within 35 minutes.
The the test taker should also create a title for the article.
All right.
I'm actually going to be taking Level 5 - I went out and bought a book because I was just
curious, you know?
I had taken the Level 4 exam way back in 2012 or 2013 or something, so I figured, "Hey,
why not?
I've hurt my leg, I can't do much this summer.
I can't travel, so let's study up a little bit."
I've been studying, and it's really not that difficult.
A few vocabulary words I could learn, but whatever.
Good times, I know I'm going to pass it.
I've taken a few practice exams and I've passed every single one of them without even taking
the writing component into account.
So, I'm good.
But the thing about it is - the language on this test is very weird.
It's VERY formal language, like the kind of language you would see in books teaching little
kids how to speak English abroad.
"Hello, how are you?
I'm fine, thank you, and you?
I'm fine, too."
Nobody actually speaks like that, and this Chinese test is the equivalent of that.
My Chinese was not learned that way.
I didn't learn that kind of formal book language.
I learned my Chinese from social media and talking to people and stuff.
So I've had to learn a lot of grammar words like conjunctions, prepositions, and things
like that that I didn't really study before, so it's actually quite good for me in that
regard in that there are a lot of these words that are used in books and magazines like
I said before that I think are great.
I think it can open up that world to me.
Because right now, I pretty much just stick on social media - Chinese social media's where
I'm comfortable at, but I don't really read stuff.
I'd like to read some Chinese books in Chinese!
That'd be great!
There are, of course, variations within the different levels of the test, but the kinds
of questions that are on the test stay about the same.
What is the main idea of the passage?
What is the man trying to say?
What is the woman trying to say?
What does this underlying word mean here, based on the context around it?
Things like that.
It's not a terribly difficult exam - all you've gotta do is just study a bit of vocabulary.
You don't necessarily need to know every single word within that 2500 character syllabus that
they give you or 5000.
You just have to be able to deduce the meaning of what's around it, and if you can get a
general guess, you'll probably get the question right.
And BAM!
Before you know, you've got yourself an HSK Certificate that proves you can read, write,
speak, and understand Chinese.
You can use that like me - I'm just gonna put it on my resumé.
It's just a nice little thing that you can challenge yourself too - see if you can do
it.You can learn some vocabulary, understand different little bits of the language you
may not have discovered before.
It's just something you might as well do, right?
You're probably learning Chinese anyway, and if you're not learning Chinese while you're
in China, what are you doing here?
Get out, you know?
Come on.
Learn some Chinese.
Well, thank you all very much for watching; I hope you all enjoyed the video!
If you've taken the HSK, if you have any thoughts about the HSK, please leave it down below
in the comments.
See you all tomorrow!