Preparation for Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK), or Chinese Proficiency Test, can be daunting – especially if you aren’t sure where to start.
I was lucky to meet some great teachers. Their insights and advice helped me pass HSK5 in 2012 and HSK6 in 2014.
In this post, I share my experience, breaking it down into 11 steps and providing comments on each step.
How To Pass HSK6 Infographics
Before we looks in detail at each one of these steps, let’s look at two key elements of any HSK preparation.
Two Elements of Success
1: HSK vocabulary
The amount of words you know can significantly increase the speed at which you complete the tasks. You don’t have time during the exam to guess the meaning of unknown words, and for most tasks it is crucial to know the meaning.
2: HSK exam tricks
HSK has a specific format, and the only way to get familiar with it is through practice, which is doing tests from the past years. Note that they get more difficult every year, so I recommend you to find the latest version.
Got these two points covered?
Then let’s get to it!
Now let’s look at each step in more detail.
1. Get a Word List for Your Level
You can find those lists both on the web and in print at the bookstores. Get yourself a copy, and if it’s digital, print it out.
2. Understand How Many Words You Need to Learn
With a 6000-word list, this will take some time. If you’re a visual learner like me, I advise to take a highlighter, and step by step go through the whole list, highlighting only the words you know (“knowing” means that you’re confident in recognizing and using them). Leave the words you don’t know unmarked.
I did so and then counted the words, writing the numbers down on every page. It left me with a roughly 4000/6000 ratio, which meant that I had to learn around 1/3 of the wordlist.
Now, you don’t have to be such a control freak, but doing so will give you a clear idea at which speed you need to learn. I had 6 months to go, so I figured out that 10 words a day will be a good pace.
You won’t learn this much every day, of course. But at least you will know that every time you skip, you will need to catch up.
3. Spend Time Learning New Words
The key factor in learning vocabulary is time. The more stretched in time your learning is, the deeper new words will cut into the memory. Cramming it all in the last two weeks wouldn’t be an effective strategy.
I tried various strategies to learn those 1/3 ‘unmarked’ words in my word list.
At first, I started by simply going down the list in alphabetical order. That didn’t really work for me, as words belonged to different categories and parts of speech.
Then I changed my strategy. At that time I was lucky to have Chinese classes every day. Every time we were learning new words, I focused my attention on those which appeared on HSK word list. You might not have daily classes, but if you focus on learning a few words from a particular topic every day, it will be muchl easier to keep them in memory.
It also worked well for me to mark the new words with a different, bright color. This way I could always review them.
4. Use Online Dictionaries to Find Examples
Perhaps at the point when you prepare for HSK 6, you’re already familiar with these tools. But for those who aren’t – I promise, your life will never be the same after you’ve started using them! They are free. Pleco is a mobile dictionary app, while BaiduTranslate has both an app and a website version.
Both of these tools have fantastic examples to HSK word list.
Now, modern editions of HSK word lists may already come with examples. But to be honest, spending your time looking them up in the dictionary, and then writing down an example will tremendously increase your chances of actually remembering the word.
By the way: In 2012, I had Pleco dictionary installed on my Android phone. They had a free feature called “Flashcards”, with word lists for different HSK levels, which worked great for me as a way to learn vocabulary on the go. For iOS, unfortunately, it’s not free. But I’m sure more free tools have been created since then.
(Update: since then I also tried Anki and Quizlet, two more flashcard tools that have HSK decks for different levels. Quizlet is free, Anki is free only for desktop)
5. Familiarize Yourself with Exam Format
Let’s say we’ve figured out the vocabulary part. No let’s dive into tricks.
HSK is a very special animal. Many people blame it for failing to measure the real level of your Chinese, and focusing instead on some silly formalities. Like it or not, but we have to accept the rules:
- HSK is very limited in time. You’ve got less than a minute for each task.
- Time to fill in the answers on the answer sheet is included into the actual time to complete the tasks. Remember this, and leave a few extra minutes in the end to fill in the answers. You don’t want to get zero points for your work, simply because once the time is over, an empty answer sheet is taken away from you.
- You need to get a minimum required score for each of the 3 parts: Listening, Reading and Writing. It means that if you did pretty well at listening, but failed reading, you won’t pass. So it’s important to prepare equally for every part.
Let’s look at these parts in detail.
6. Prepare for Listening
First 30 minutes of the exam, when your mind is still “fresh”, is dedicated to listening. The key point here is to stay focused. You get your chance listen to each task only once.
Each question is an “a-b-c-d” kind of task, and you are to choose the correct answer. Recordings start with easy and short, and then the dialogs become longer in length and more complicated in nature, covering a few questions at once.
I’ve never passed the old version of the test, but they say that tasks in the new version of HSK are much more reasonable, simple, and logical. The answer usually lies on the surface and you don’t need to think too much over the meaning of the whole conversation.
Some tips on listening:
- Get ready for each new question in advance. The time is extremely limited. The best strategy I learned from the teacher in Beijing was, once the supervisor turns on the recording and tells you to open the exam sheet, there is a brief introduction to the exam. Don’t listen to that thing. Spend these 1-2 minutes reading the first tasks. You won’t be able to read them all, of course, but at least will be prepared for the first 3-5 questions.
- Stay focused. I, personally, was terrible at that. Once your attention slips away, you might miss the whole point of the question – especially with first questions, which are very short and rely on some key word or phrase you need to catch.
- Don’t hover too long over the things you missed. You will only miss more this way. In the end, maybe you will still get a chance to guess that missing entry while filling in the answer sheet.
- Take notes. Don’t rely just on your memory, especially with longer dialogues. And don’t worry, test papers are not checked – you can write in your language, in pinyin, in characters, in drawings – whatever is faster for you.
- Practise with exisitng tests. There is no way I can demonstrate the variety of tasks in this post, and they keep changing anyway. So download a few recent tests and study them. You can listen to the first few as many times as you want, to understand the nature of tasks and the logic behind them.
- But once you got the idea, try doing a few tests within a limited time. Choose a test you’ve never done before, and set an alarm. Imagine you are at the real exam, and stay within this time frame. (I believe this is as crucial as a military training for soldies! Note that during the real exam the conditions will be much worse – unfamiliar classroom, stress, sneezing/coughing people moving their chairs all the time, clicking pens, sometimes even low or bad sound of the recordring.)
- Don’t leave any blank points. Put some answer in. Then it’s A, B, C or D, choosing one answer will leave you with a 25% chance of guessing it right! (For example, my lucky answer is always b. 🙂 )
7. Prepare for Reading
Next 50 minutes, the longest part (and the hardest I believe) – is reading. Let’s break it down:
Questions 1-10
I call it the “pure luck” part.
My teacher in Beijing confessed to us that this part is difficult even for native speakers.
Not in a sense that it is impossible. But in a sense that you physically don’t have enough time to do it right. I was told that this part is still included to leave some extra points for really advanced students – Japanese, Korean speakers, and other cultures that rely on character-based languages. Without this part the test would be too simple for them. But for us muggles, the best strategy will be to simply GUESS IT. My strategy here, again, was b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b. 🙂
Not convincing? Well, think about this way: you’ll win or lose only 10 points, in comparison to 10 minutes you could win for other tasks.
Exam Questions 10 to 30
That’s where all your vocabulary preparation comes in handy.
- Learn synonyms and antonyms. A lot of tasks are designed around you being able to find a synonym or antonym, or choose one of the synonyms from the list.
- Focus on form and meaning. When you learn a new word, clarify what part of speech it is and how it is used. That will help you fill those limited choice gap-fill tasks much faster.
- Don’t get scared if you don’t recognize a character. HSK 6 is different from the previous levels in having a higher percent of unknown words and names, which are there on purpose. They check your ability to deal with the unknown. Every time you’re stuck, try to step back and guess the meaning of the whole sentence or passage – maybe it’s not that important?
Exam Questions 30 to 50
These texts, again, are designed so that you don’t have enough time to read them in detail.
- START BY READING THE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS, NOT THE TEXT. That’s time-saving rule number one. Questions will point you to important parts within the text. You don’t need to read the whole thing – there’s no time.
- IF THERE’S A “MORAL” SOMEWHERE, IT’S USUALLY AT THE END OF THE TEXT. Questions normally come in chronological order, so look for the main idea at the end of the text.
- STAY AWARE OF THE TIME. I never had enough time to finish the reading part. If you feel you’re running out of time, make sure to fill in the answer sheet first, and then think over the remaining questions. In the worst case, you always use the ‘b-b-b-b-b’ trick. 🙂
8. Prepare for Writing
Last 45 minutes of the test are dedicated to writing. By this time you might feel very tired. Cheer up – this is the last part!
Writing section in HSK 6 is much longer in comparison to HSK 5, but not much harder. It also comes down to a number of tricks:
- Understand the format. Headline in the center, empty line after it, two empty spaces at the beginning of each paragraph – doublecheck the latest quidelines, and make sure you follow them.
- Understand the task. You will be given 10 minutes to read the text and remember all the important details. Then the text will be taken away, and within 30 minutes you’ll need to write a summary. Not a composition, just a summary.
- Spend these 10 minutes effectively. First, skim through the text and try to understand what the story is about. It can be a fairytale, a legend, something philosophical with a moral, or humorous with an unexpected twist in the plot. Make sure you got all the important pieces. Then, spend the rest of your time memorizing names, places, time, and some important key words. By saying memorize I mean, literally – even practice writing them on the margins if you need. 🙂 There might be new and tricky characters, and once they take away the text, you won’t be able to see it again. I wrote my key words on the margins of the answer sheet as soon as they swapped the papers. This is allowed.
- Practice with existing tests. Try writing 2-3 summaries yourself. There’s no other way to get a feel of the size of your summary (You can’t make it too short, but it’s always relatively easier to add things, than spend precious time erasing the text which went too long. You don’t get extra paper.) You might also discover some linking words or other vocabulary you need to brush up.
9. Take a Demo Test
Having gone through all these parts one by one, take a demo test. Regardless of how good your scores got while you prepared at home or in another comfortable environment, the test is always a stress, and having one extra try before taking the real exam will never hurt.
10. Get a Good Rest the Night Before
At this point, you get how important it is to stay focused all through the test.
So have a good rest the night before. Sleep well, eat well, and forget about preparation that last night. The words you try to cram into your memory on the last minute won’t stick there, and will only confuse you.
Release your mind before the battle! 🙂
11. Bonus: Give Yourself Time
This was meant to be tip #1, but after all what’s been said, it will sound more persuasive.
You’ve got all the necessary tools to prepare and pass HSK with a high chance of success, if you give yourself enough time to prepare.
HSK Level 6 (and HSK Level 5) are levels at which, literally, stuff gets real. Unlike some lower levels, it’s not a matter of luck, and not a matter of how well you know Chinese in general. It is a matter of how well you’re prepared for the test.
I’ve heard so many friends say “I took HSK, but didn’t pass”, or “I took the test and got low scores”. Reasons why they failed differed. Some thought they ‘knew Chinese well enough’ and didn’t prepare. Others tried to prepare within the last few weeks, and it was just too much information for them to digest. Some even hoped for good luck – which in case with admission fee of $100 is quite an expensive lottery ticket.
Don’t register for your test if you feel you’re likely to fail. Don’t count only on your luck. Work on increasing your chances of success as much as you can – and then the luck will come along 🙂
Wish you all the best!
I hope that these tips will help you prepare for your HSK as much as they helped me. If you have any questions, tips, or comments, please feel free to write them in the discussion below.