2009-06-11 Advanced HSK

After weeks of checking online, I finally received my results for the Advanced HSK exam. I am really happy to report that somehow, I managed to pass. I have no doubts that this was in part due to a large dose of luck, and I guess my fairly advanced listening and speaking skills as well. If you've read this far, I'm sure you'll probably stick around for the breakdown. My scores for each section:

听力: 65
阅读: 47
综合: 53
写作: 58
口试: 69

For a total score of 292, which is just over the minimum score of 280 for level 9.

Listening - This was very hard, and after the exam, I was sure that I'd bombed. What I forgot, was that listening isn't a strength of Korean students (who make up over 90% of Advanced HSK testees). Even though I got raped, they got raped harder and scalage probably bumped me up.

Reading - What can I say? While I had the necessary reading speed to handle the exam, I was sorely lacking in vocabulary. It's not much good being able to blaze through the texts when you only recognize 50-60% of the characters. I had to leave 8 out of the 15 questions blank in the first part, and I probably knew the answers to about 25% of the questions in the second part. I have no idea how I managed to get 47%. I'm guessing everyone else crapped out as well.

Comprehensive - Here's where the exam started to get a bit easier. I was feeling pretty down about having got shat on in the previous two sections, but it kinda took the pressure off and I relaxed and did okay in this section. 53% is probably an accurate reflection of my abilities, I knew I got a good chunk right, but I also had no effing clue about alot of questions as well.

Writing - I got really lucky in this section... Not in terms of how I performed, cause I did really well. In the 30 mins alloted, I spent 5 planning, 20 writing the requisite 400 characters and the last 5 checking for careless mistakes. This section went as smoothly as I could have hoped... and I got the lowest passing mark. Seriously, one less mark and I would have failed this section and the entire exam. I got a topic I could handle and did the best I could with my laughable vocabulary. If they'd hit us with "write a job application letter" or something equally sadistic, I would have promptly shat my pants and started crying.

Speaking - I had no worries about speaking, as this is my absolute strength and the biggest weakness of the Koreans. Listening to my fellow test-takers finish their recordings, it became obvious that I had the best pronounciation out of everyone in the whole room (excluding the teachers of course). The reading passage was fairly easy (even so, there were several characters I didn't know). Both of the disussion questions were pretty straight-forward as well. So I wasn't too surprised with my score of 69, which is actually a level 10!

So yeah... Yay me. I was so sure I'd failed, I literally yelled out and started jumping up and down when I found out I'd passed. Now I just got to figure out what to do next... Eh, something will come up... but for now... WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!