Tip
Tips and strategies to help you ace your HSK exam
Listening to short passages and choosing the correct answer
- 1
Types of questions that appear: humorous, argumentative, introductory, new words or idioms introduction, news.
- 2
Quickly skim the answers, check if the answers contain time, location, information..., if so, listen carefully and catch keywords.
- 3
Pay attention to the last sentence!
- 4
For storytelling passages, pay attention to the last sentence, grasp details like "time, location, characters, what happened, cause, result".
- 5
Before the listening part, use the time during the music intro to read the first 5-10 answers.
- 6
Pay attention to distinguishing argumentative passages "认为,觉得,因此,所以...".
- 7
Oh, don't expect the answers to be exactly the same as the listening content!
Listening to interviews and answering questions
- 1
Should take advantage of reading through the answers before listening to the questions!
- 2
The questions asked by the host may match the questions in the test, pay attention!
- 3
Take notes while listening (for written tests).
- 4
If you can't answer a question, skip it and move on to the next one!
Listening to long passages and answering questions
- 1
Should take advantage of reading through the answers before listening to the questions!
Choosing the wrong sentence among 4 given sentences
- 1
This type of question does not require the candidate to understand the reading, so answers containing new words are not important.
- 2
No time to correct the answers.
- 3
Degree adverbs do not modify repetitive adjectives AABB.
- 4
Pay attention to the position of particles.
- 5
The error of repeated components is quite common, pay attention to sentences containing two similar words, the error is likely there.
- 6
In a complex sentence, if the subject of both clauses is the same, the conjunction will be placed after the subject.
- 7
In a complex sentence, if the subject of both clauses is different, the conjunction will be placed before the subject.
- 8
Time adverbials usually precede location adverbials.
- 9
Check whether the supplementary components in the sentence are adverbials or attributives to see if their positions are grammatically correct.
- 10
Missing components mean the sentence structure is incomplete, lacking some sentence components.
- 11
Two repeated components will often appear next to each other. So when reading the question, pay attention to whether the meanings of the adjacent words are completely identical.
- 12
When seeing a common structure in the sentence, think carefully and observe whether the structure is confused.
- 13
Logical order error is a very common mistake.
- 14
The correct logical order should be from past to future (time), from narrow to wide (space), from low to high (level).
- 15
Ambiguous sentences are sentences with unclear meanings, easily causing misunderstandings.
- 16
Find the subject, predicate, and object of the sentence, then check if these components combine correctly.
- 17
Find the supplementary components and the central word in the sentence, see if these two components can combine.
- 18
In comparative sentences, if the comparison result is adjectives, there will be no degree words like "很", "太", "非常" before it.
- 19
In comparative sentences, the comparison object after "比" can be omitted, but not before "比".
- 20
Should leave this part for the end!
Reading passages and choosing the correct answer
- 1
Use the elimination method to choose the answer.
- 2
If you don't know which word to fill in, do other blanks you are more sure about first.
- 3
Among the answers, if there are quantity words, judge which quantity word is correct first, then think about other answers.
- 4
Don't choose an answer just because one word is correct!
- 5
For explanatory passages, grasp the object and the order of explanation.
- 6
For narrative passages, grasp the identity, relationships between characters, main plot details, and pay special attention to the chronological order in the story.
- 7
For narrative passages, don't focus too much on grammar when choosing answers, but focus on the relationships between characters and plot details.
- 8
For argumentative passages, grasp the arguments and evidence.
- 9
Pay close attention to sentences using rhetorical devices like leverage, parallelism... in argumentative passages.
- 10
Especially in passages with historical elements, don't panic when seeing many new words, stay calm and analyze sentence components to make accurate judgments!
- 11
First, quickly understand the answers to differentiate them!
- 12
Remember to read the sentence before and after the blank!
- 13
Use the elimination method to solve the question!
- 14
Read the question carefully first, then skim the answers.
- 15
Skim the passage to find the position containing the needed information.
- 16
Skim to find verbs, subjects to understand the overall content of the sentence.
- 17
Reading with your eyes will be faster than reading aloud.
- 18
Remember to read carefully the first and last sentences of the passage!
Reading passages and writing summaries
- 1
Try to remember the time, location, characters, cause, development, result, and moral of the story (if any)!
- 2
Recite the reading method: 3 - 4 - 3 or 2 - 3 - 3 - 2 when reading the passage.
- 3
Read carefully the opening sentence of each paragraph!
- 4
Spend the first 3 minutes skimming the passage to understand the overall content.
- 5
Spend the next 4 minutes reading carefully to grasp details like: time, location, characters, main points, cause, development, result.
- 6
Spend the last 3 minutes reading again to remove redundant content, reinforce the main content needed in the summary, and remember the "key" words.
- 7
If the first and last sentences of the passage are not too long, try to memorize them.
- 8
Must remember the frequently appearing words/phrases in the passage!
- 9
For unknown words, guess the meaning, then find simpler words to remember!
- 10
For computer exams, if you encounter new words, you can guess and type the word according to pinyin!
- 11
If you can't guess the pinyin, you can type according to the following trick: type u + the components in the word. For example: the word "哨" will be typed as "ukouxiao".
- 12
The safe range is 400-430 words, at most 450 words!
- 13
The summary title must be a noun phrase, idiom.
- 14
The title must cover the entire content of the passage!
- 15
The title should be no more than 7 characters!
- 16
The keywords in the title are very likely to appear in the first or last part of the passage.
- 17
After reading the passage, write the title immediately!
- 18
Summarize according to the chronological, spatial order in the passage!
- 19
Absolutely do not create new details in the story.
- 20
Absolutely do not add personal opinions or feelings!
- 21
Remember that each paragraph in the summary must have at least 2 sentences.
- 22
The summary should be clearly divided into: Introduction (1 paragraph), body (about 2-3 small paragraphs), conclusion (1 paragraph)
- 23
Avoid expression errors like missing basic sentence components, word/collocation errors.
- 24
If you are afraid of grammatical errors in long compound sentences, break them into shorter correct sentences.
- 25
Adding four-character phrases, idioms, or "key" phrases to the summary is a highlight.
- 26
Skillfully using advanced grammatical structures will make the test score higher!
- 27
Limit using or quoting dialogues in the summary.
- 28
If you can't remember the character's name, you can use "先生", "他" for male characters, "女士", "她" for female characters instead!
- 29
Don't forget to indent 2 spaces at the beginning of each paragraph.
- 30
For written exams, each punctuation mark should be written in a separate box.
- 31
Spend the last 5 minutes reviewing the summary!
