Starting from zero, and after studying Mandarin full time for about 480 hours (3 semesters at 160 hours/semester) in Taiwan, I tried the TOCFL band B. I passed the reading part for level 3, but was short by 11 points for the listening part.
The TOCFL states that it takes about 360 hours of study in Taiwan to pass the level 3. In retrospect, I can say that grammar and vocabulary were fairly easy, but I was way too slow.
I was definitely not the worst student in my class, and I was quite diligent, so I am surprised that given the number of hours I studied, I failed the level 3. What’s wrong?
What’s wrong is that they have no idea about language learning. It’s not just a case of understanding the grammar and recognizing the vocab, but about the ability to make sense of strings of speech sounds. Obviously, part of this is knowing all the words in the speech stream, but not all. It takes time, and how much is difficult to pin down, for individuals. Listening skills are rarely taught well, and is often used just to exemplify vocab and structures in context, in textbooks.
You’ll get there. Hope you aren’t too disappointed. Just 'cos you failed a crappy test (I make crappy tests for a living), it doesn’t mean you are doing great with your studies.
When I studied HSK in China, I felt my spoken Chinese and functional fluency was way better than my Korean classmates. The Koreans were amazing at the HSK and I couldnt keep up, no matter how much I tried. The reason for this is partly similarities between Korean and Chinese but more the fact that Koreans had spent their lives preparing standardized tests and the test was taught and written by people who had also spent their lives learning languages through similar tests. So there
In Asian culture, test taking and actual knowledge are divorced. Your problem is that you studied to KNOW, not to PASS the test. The goal of taking the test is passing on to teh next level and so forth, not showing you can get by in teh target language. Hence, the problem at hand is that in taking the test, what you are being tested on, is test taking, not Chinese speaking/reading/grammar/language comprehension. You need to learn the system in which the test is written, not the actual functional daily life grammar rules, if your goal is to pass the test. That si why “worse” students than you passed that level. They know the test taking strategies. Standarized tests are like that.
Buxiban often have “access” to the tests. Or there are books around, real rubbish by any serious learning standards, but unfortunately accurate on that regard. The more counterintuitive the better.
And where can one learn about these test taking strategies?[/quote]
Sample tests are available both online for free and at a bookstore mentioned on the test’s website. You can also practice with the actual test system by taking the “pilot” test for $100. You’ll be given a score and told whether you passed or failed, but you won’t get a certificate.
Thanks for that mate. Made me feel better after I completely shat the bed today on a test, even though I thought my Chinese was just getting better and that I actually did well this semester.
One should ask themself why they want to pass any of the stupid Chinese “proficiency” tests in the first place. If you are going out in the world and trying to talk to locals about things you’ve seen or that you enjoy doing in your free time or why you love/hate Taiwan, or whatever other things you need to do in Chinese, passing HSK 7 or TOCFL band C isn’t getting you there. The only thing those tests do is open doors for some scholarships. Even then, the ACTFL OPI and WPT were accepted when I applied for one of those scholarships (and I got the scholarship), even though TOCFL Band B was a “requirement”
I agree, it’s a visa requirement though - need to pass the test to go to the next semester.
I bloody hate them. My classmates - all Asian - pass them with ease. I struggle every time. Feels like they design the tests to fuck with you not to test what You have actually learned. Anyway today was the last one I’ll ever take so there’s that.
I am 100% confident that all tests administered in Taiwan are designed to fuck with you. There are an approximately infinite number of better ways to administer tests of knowledge of any form, but rather than do that, the goal is to make the person sitting the test feel like they are incapable of anything. No worries. You have finished this one and you can move on to better and more important things
Two examples: I took the Mandarin for foreigners exam to apply for the Shita interpreting MA degree (awhile back of course, but tests don’t change very fast on the rock). I still remember a “reading comprehension” question. Three paragraphs of Chinese, and I knew every character and every word. No doubt in my mind at all about the meaning. Then the question: “Which of the following chengyu best summarizes the meaning of this passage?” Well, that doesn’t really answer the question of whether you can read Chinese; it tells them whether you happen to know the one chengyu that’s the answer.
And I’d studied for that exam, too – because I had to handwrite it, and I never handwrite, so I did like a month writing characters out over and over before the test. Still do that about every five years or so when I have to take some stupid language exam for some reason or other. (Now it’s Skritter.com, though, but still a month.)
Or a very, very talented student I had teaching interpretation at Taida a few years later. Really good English. He took the Shita Chinese test for native speakers to apply there, and came back to class and reported to us on like six characters they were asked to define. No one had ever seen any of them. It’s a weed-out exam, because they got too many applicants at that time.
With TOCFL, there’s also the added bonus of people wanting to make “their” test different from the HSK. Neither are proficiency-oriented exams. They missed a chance to jump ahead of the HSK on that one.
