tawdry New HSK

（考新汉语水平考试还是不考）

monkey business: to HSK or not

There comes a point in every Mandarin student's lifetime when they must brave the ultimate test of notes, ink, and chords. And pay out the pocket for it, ¥500 to be exact. Some call it the Mandarin Proficiency Exam, aka HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi , i.e., 汉语水平考试)

For those of you who are not students of Mandarin or have no intention of HSKing, you might want to continue surfing the internet.

Out of 99% curiosity and 1% it-might-be-usefulness, I signed up 2 weeks ago to take the examination. Even mentioning the exam is enough to widen the eyes and wrinkle the face of even the most studious.

I didn't do any special studying for the exam. I honestly wanted to see what my current level of Mandarin proficiency is. And so, I went, as is, on a short night night of sleep.

准考证：my ticket to HSKland

The new HSK is supposed to be new and improved. After taking the exam today, I can only imagine what it used be.

The entire [new] test is broken into three tests, which can now be taken individually at the intermediate or advanced level. Basic Comprehension, Writing, and Oral. Or so the tests are labeled.

I'll detail below how at least two of these tests ought to be described as Written & Oral History, or as most call it "story-telling".

Since there was no post-exam evaluation form, I thought an online, public one would do justice.


monkey listen

The Listening section cannot accurately test or verify listening comprehension, due to its method of delivery. High tech headphones are stationed at paired desks, adjacent to a blue, but listless, flat-screened computer monitor. Dialogues and stories are played over the headphones, and the student can listen clearly. So far, so good. I approve.

The trouble with the listening exam (as is) is that the exam paper is in text. Mandarin text. If you understand 100% of what you have heard -and could even paraphrase it-, but can only read 50% of the characters from the set of possible answers on the page, then your response, accurate or not, is essentially left to luck.

At this point, I was thinking it might have been useful to do a Mandarin dance or perhaps even better I could [still?] buy an HSK-reviewer voodoo doll and give it nice massages and cook it some fancy food, in hopes of increasing my chances. That ought to help my luck too, right?


monkey read

The reading comprehension was fine, almost. Written questions or paragraphs with blanks and A, B, C, D answer sets. Then again, character recognition and material comprehension are two entities in itself, which could also be tested separately. Enough said.


monkey write

The written exam consisted of 2 parts. The first section proposed the first and last sentence of a story. It also provided several vocabulary and clauses for the middle section of the story, in a way that you had to fill in the spaces with must-have words or phrases. By the time I figured out the directions, I had lost 10 minutes of precious time. Still, I was proud to have understood such complicated instructions in Mandarin (or even if they had been in English.) [The 8-sentence story? In summary: went to a store to shop for a jacket, but lost my wallet instead; staff kindly helped me to find it, and I was ever so thankful.]

The second section consisted of 4 drawing blocks: some apple trees, two workers harvesting apples with a ladder, one worker putting apples into a basket, and the two workers carrying the basket -suspended on a pole- away from the orchard.

Perhaps this test would more accurately have been named "written charades". At first glance, I wish I had studied the words for fall, orchard, apples, basket, harvest. Of all the things to test me on, here in one of the biggest cities of the world, at the beginning of winter, the exam wanted to test my knowledge of fruit farm labor practices. This is somehow to deduce my written proficiency level in Mandarin?


monkey talk

Last but not least. The oral exam. How best to test the oral proficiency of a student? If one could close their eyes for a moment and imagine a rigorous and critical exam, would it look like this?:

30 students at desks sitting in a single room. One teacher to read instructions. One teacher to pass out the exam booklet. A third teacher with IT background to run the recording equipment. Students (all 30, all at the same time) don headphones with microphones and speak into the mic when prompted by a bell. Answer 4 questions. You will have just enough time to think about the question after it is asked that you almost forget the question.

Now look at the four pictures (1. Little Johnny with gun in hand approaches a big tree with a little bird; 2. The bird flies away and the branch is snapped in two; 3. Little Johnny chases the bird who is flying away; 4. Little johnny stands over a broken gun next to a big rock while the bird flies away.)

30 seconds to compose your thoughts. Now speak into the mic (and ignore the other 29 students talking away over you) and tell a story. You have 2 minutes. What? Didn't study up on those vocab such as hunting, poor aim, chasing, ranting, raving, bad temper, ignorance...

Why is story telling (in any language) indicative (in any way, shape, or form) of my oral proficiency?

Looking back, I wish that I had the 口才, or eloquence, to ask Little Johnny's parents about letting him run around in the wild with a gun, wildly shooting at anything living, chasing after wildlife, throwing a fit when not pleased, and furthermore throwing weapons around carelessly so that they break against rocks. We can't be sure that Little Johnny unloaded his gun before he threw it against the rock. And if I mistakenly took a grown man for Little Johnny, then I'll save my list of questions for another entry...

And my goodness. I'm in China, of all places. The People's Republic of China do not allow their citizens to own guns here. They don't even hunt (per *official* record). Other than the random waiter who, upon finding out I'm American, wants me to confirm that America is dangerous because we have and like to shoot guns there, I've never had a conversation about hunting or even killing of farm animals for food.

Why this topic of hunting? Unfortunately this scenario put hunters in a bad light (Maybe that is the [local] attitude of anyone with a gun?) Why, Hsk? ...why HSK?


why HSK does not get my vote

In the end, how true it is that I did not participate in the HSK examination to confirm my Mandarin proficiency, which seems it is not truly capable of capturing. It seems I took the test to simply understand the testing method, if that is even possible. Even (and even more so) if I test well, I will not be impressed with the testing or evaluation methods of HSK.

Yes, I took their test. But did it really test my Mandarin proficiency level?

I hope I will not be required (by future employers) to take the HSK exam again. My time is much better spent reading a book in Mandarin, watching (& listening) to local TV, or talking with the local veggie sellers. This tells me indeed how my Mandarin is coming along.

I applaud the efforts to separate the HSK into 3 parts - Comprehension, Writing, and Oral. Yet without critically analyzing the method of separation and testing, it is rendered a failure.

After one of the exam sections, a student exclaimed "And I paid money to take this?"

This monkey couldn't agree more.