HSK 6 in a month!?

Hello LingQers,

Next Monday, I am beginning my HSK 6 in a month challenge. (HSK is the chinese language proficiency test for foreigners. 6 is the highest level and contains 2500 new words)
I understand it probably sounds a bit stupid, however this is a short term memory challenge. 80% of the vocab (or there abouts) will disappear (not completely) into the great abyss of the subconscious if I do not review the words after this period… which I will do.

The challenge really is to recall at least once the definition of the words/characters in a ‘review period’ at the end of each week. So in a sense, I’m trying to learn about 625 words a week and then recall them on the Sunday. This works out to about 100 a day…

The rough structure is as so:
Week 1: Mon- Sat, vocab 625
Sun, review of week 1
Week 2: Mon -Sat Vocab 625
Tue, review of week 1
Sat, review of week 1
Sun, review of week 2
Week 3: Mon-Sat, vocab 625
Tue, review of week 2
Thur, review of week 2
Sat, review of week 1
Sun, review of week 3
Week 4: Mon-Sat, vocab 625
Mon, review of week 3,
Tue, review of week 2
Wed, review of week 3
Thur, review of week 1
Fri, review of week 2
Sat, review of week 3
Sun, review of week 4
Extra review days: Mon, review of week 4
Tuesday, review of week 3, 4
Wednesday, TEST DAY

That is the idea, and I should be spending about an hour a day learning and an hour reviewing. Sooo thatll be around 42-45 hours of learning.

Note that I already have learnt most of HSK 1 through 5, so this isnt entirley random.

Thought I’d blog this so I don’t lose my mind.

Ill be posting frequently on this thread to let you know my progress.

Felix

http://hskhsk.pythonanywhere.com/hskwords

this is the link im using-- the words are ordered in frequency within in each HSK category and you can hover over to see the definition.

No doubt that during this challenge I’ll be LingQing everyday too!

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Good luck and I look forward to following your progress!

Thank You! Would be great to have some support!

What’s HSK?

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Sorry I should probably define it above! its the chinese language proficiency test for foreigners. (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) Level 6 is the highest level and contains 2500 new words, of which im trying to somewhat learn in a month

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Hello Darklink! I’ve recently became interested in Chinese, and I’m doing the" Who is She?" series by lingq. I wanted to thank you for the link that you have posted above, for it will be useful for me to see which words/hanyu/characters to learn from the list while doing things on lingq. I hope that you and I are successful in learning Mandarin Chinese.

You are very welcome! Yes, this link is particularly good because it displays the words in order of frequency within each category.Whilst doing things on lingQ, learning/reviewing HSK 1, 2 and 3 vocab over the next few months would be ideal for you to build a solid base. HSK 4 is beginner 2ish and HSK 5 is more for the intermediate level ! Happy LingQing

DarkLink

How is it going now? I´ve just checked the list. There are lots of words to learn under 5 and 6.

There are alot!

Sorry I havnt been updating this post like I said I would, because just as I began the challenge, the internet I was using decided to block LingQ somehow in the category of ‘banned keywords’ lol

Essentially I reached roughly 1500 words in 6 weeks which was quite far off my target of 2500 in four. I since stopped because my brain was frying and I’ve now set on reviewing the 1500 that I had looked at.
I will say, which may seem a bit obvious, that the more words I learnt a day, the harder it was to remember the previous batches. , I could recall with 80% accuracy the first 500 that I learnt in roughly a week and a half the following weekend, but as I came round to 1500 the retention rate was dropping more to 45-55% at which point I decided to stop.

in review, the exercise has proved very useful for my reading and ‘passive vocab’ store… (a phrase that Steve uses alot which I belive is the most important concept in language learning. Before HSK 5 and 6- a page of the mandarin harry potter Im reading had about 90 unknown words on, that number has decreased to about 30 now. I would say however that the majority of words in HSK 6 are what I call contextual words, or words that are topic specific. You’re just as well off reading a book or LingQing as learning HSK 6 specific vocab (unless of course, you are planning to nail your HSK 6 exam).

Okay, hope my analysis is helpful to anyone wanting imprive chinese vocab lol
DarkLink

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As long as you are making tangible progress, it is all good. Good to hear that your reading of Harry Potter is getting easier.

Were you just trying to learn the wordlist without context? Was the challenge just about learning the words and not about attempting to pass the exam?

Even if that were possible, I would think it absolutely impossible to pass an HSK6 test in one month. It’s not just a matter of memorizing a wordlist. There are listening and reading comprehension portions, a tough grammar portion with trick questions, and a writing portion.

Supposedly, HSK6 should be the equivalent of C2, which is basically native level fluency. However, many people who have taken and passed it said it wasn’t actually that hard at all, and they still feel their ability in Chinese is lacking, especially speaking skills. Still not something that can be achieved in one month though.

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It wasnt about passing an HSK 6 and have no intention to take any such exams. yeahs no context. It was just about ‘learning’ lots of words quickly! I doubt it would be enough words for fluency.

And how many do you still recall now?

im getting around 70% correct atm

Wow…may I ask how you actually study it — do you use the words in some kind of flashcard system? Your story is so fascinating and I just really started to learn…

It’s better for the Chinese learners to learn HSK online with professional Chinese teachers. Taking a HSK course is the best choice. With the teacher’s help, you could know the strategies to answers the HSK test question, learn more faster than just by yourself.
Here is a HSK course recommended, you could take a free trial class if you are interested: