#language test

Yesterday for fun, I took an HSK level test from hsklevel.com–I hope it is accurate because I am quite pleased with the results haha!

I will say that this test felt REALLY HARD. It shows you words/characters and you indicate whether you know the word or not. I felt like I was saying no to over half! But I guess it learned from my answers and was showing me more and more difficult words to find my “breaking point,” which is what my teachers have said a language assessment is supposed to do.

I actually took it twice. I got very similar results the second time, so I’m just going to show the scores from the first time.

I don’t really know how to assess if the 11,030 words is accurate, but it sounds like a lot so I am fine taking their word for it :) 

I wouldn’t say I’m at 90% comprehension for movies, social media, blogs, and literature…I’m guessing maybe the HSK words are sorted into categories, so it’s supposed to mean something like “you can understand 90% of literature written at an HSK 6 level.” Which isn’t quite as impressive. As it’s been said, HSK 6 only gets you halfway there. 

I will say it is definitely true in my experience that my news comprehension is lower. But I have some resources I’ve gathered that focus on news articles, so I know I can strengthen that skill later on.

This above is the HSK which is going to be phased out. I’ve estimated previously that I am in the HSK 6 zone because a fair number of new words I encounter are HSK 6 words (I think most are not in the HSK vocab list at all). So this feels pretty accurate to me!

I have been curious about how my ability maps onto the new/incoming HSK, so this is quite interesting to see. I know people reacted to the new levels with some disappointment that they might be bumped down in terms of the “number,” so I will admit I am pleased to see these results.

When I took the test a second time, it estimated my HSK 3.0 level as 6 instead, but the number of HSK 6 and 7-9 words it estimated I knew was not that much lower, so I guess I am somewhere around the cutoff. I’m happy either way.

I don’t know that much about TOCFL so I don’t really have anything to say. Does it correspond to CEFR levels?? It kinda looks like it might.

Now I am thinking I should look over the CEFR guides again…whenever I do look at them, I’m never sure if I’m under or overestimating myself, you know? I feel like it’s better to underestimate your ability and then surprise people, but also you wouldn’t want to miss out on opportunities due to this. And overestimating might push you to grow more.

Obviously this is just an estimate test, and even the real HSK test isn’t a perfect assessment of language abilities. But since the HSK is so commonly talked about as a metric, it can be useful in some contexts. I’ve never used HSK-oriented materials or done specific HSK prep, so I’ve never been sure where I would fall on the HSK scale.