I’ve just registered and paid the fee for the CPT. Yes, I know it’s not well known or recognized. It still can’t hurt to have the extra line on my resume. I also took the mock test for intermediate level and I noticed a few things.
1- the font is tiny and hard to read against the ugly orange background. I am pretty sure it can’t be changed.
2- the chinese you hear during the oral test is very odd, both too slow and over-enunciated. It does not resemble anything I have ever heard in Taiwan. I would rather have the oral section read to me by a toothless cabbie from gaoxiong than try to decipher this schmuck’s “biaojun” pronunciation.
3- Syntax and character usage throughout the test are also very odd, bearing no resemblance to the “conversational chinese” I am used to. I can follow a conversation about the taiwanese education system between two public school teachers, why can’t i understand anything on this silly exam?
The test is in 30 days. Anyone know about conditions during the atual test? Keeping in mind the above concerns, how would you recommend I best prepare for the CPT? I’ve studied through chapter sixteen of PAVC, book 2B
I sat for one of their “trial runs” back when they thought they were “norming” their test, or something like that.
All I can say is that IMHO the way it is written is, well, strange. They don’t seem to be able to decide whether they want to test what they believe to be “standard Mandarin” (reflecting some of the phenomena you mention, like overenunciated speech of a type never before heard on the island of Taiwan) or whether they want to “go native” in an attempt to differentiate themselves from, you know, “that other Chinese test” (the HSK).
It is obvious that no matter how good your Chinese, you probably couldn’t get full marks without having lived in Taiwan for quite some time. I recall a question about duck shop vocab – something that boiled down to a student knowing what “san chi” meant in terms of ordering duck. It just seemed to me that with the breadth and history of literature and use of the Chinese language, they could pick things that are more representative of fluency and competence in the language.
But then gaain Shita is frequently a microcosm of the worst of Chinese culture – “5000 glorious years, unfortunately being the same 100 years repeated 50 times.”
It’s not easy to write this kind of test. I’ll certainly be the first one to agree to that. The thing is, people who write this kind of test (in the West, at least – think TOEFL, despite its flaws) are professional test-writers. The Shita people wanted to do it part-time with some teachers contributing items. I think this is a major source of its unevenness, at least at the point when I saw it. I can’t speak to how it is today, but based on what I know about their process and the intermediate product I saw, I couldn’t really enthusiastically recommend it either.
However, as you say, another piece of paper, another line on the resume, never hurts. You can always omit it if you don’t get the score you were hoping for.
[quote=“beautifulspam”]I’ve just registered and paid the fee for the CPT. Yes, I know it’s not well known or recognized. It still can’t hurt to have the extra line on my resume. I also took the mock test for intermediate level and I noticed a few things.
1- the font is tiny and hard to read against the ugly orange background. I am pretty sure it can’t be changed.
2- the chinese you hear during the oral test is very odd, both too slow and over-enunciated. It does not resemble anything I have ever heard in Taiwan. I would rather have the oral section read to me by a toothless cabbie from gaoxiong than try to decipher this schmuck’s “biaojun” pronunciation.
3- Syntax and character usage throughout the test are also very odd, bearing no resemblance to the “conversational chinese” I am used to. I can follow a conversation about the Taiwanese education system between two public school teachers, why can’t i understand anything on this silly exam?
The test is in 30 days. Anyone know about conditions during the atual test? Keeping in mind the above concerns, how would you recommend I best prepare for the CPT? I’ve studied through chapter sixteen of PAVC, book 2B[/quote]
I’m exactly where you are in PAVC… and just had a look at that CPT test online as well… you couldn’t have said what I was thinking, better! what to do?!.. :s
Find the bastard $#%@^ pipe wrench $%@#$^ colostomy bag @#$%@#$^ reconstructive surgery :fume:
No no, just kidding. It’s no use complaining about the system…gotta beat it. I’m going to buy their prep materials, review my characters and listen to the practice tests over and over until i get used to that schmuck’s voice. what else can you do?
I just completed another run of the intermediate practice test.
god damn!
i nearly had my eyeballs touching the screen trying to read that tiny font. looks like a bunch of damn tiny spiders crawling around up there.
most of the “reading comprehension” was crap like dry cleaning bills and day planners.
dammit I get confused about that stuff in my own language!
and there was more than one logical answer to some of the questions! there was a note to someone about some books she had to pick up. a phone number was listed and it said you could get the books after 5:00pm/
Which of the following is true:
“xiao zhen can call ahead before she picks up the books.”
“xiao zhen can pick of the books after work at 5:30.”
THEY’RE BOTH TRUE, YOU CRETINS :fume:
I have reading comprehension! I can read novellas in chinese! how about something that really tests reading comprehension, rather than organizationial skills? like, i don’t know, a story? gee what a concept. the toefl has stories…for the love of god kill me now.
You’ve hit the nail on the head…test design. It’s not something that anyone can do “just like that”. A test item should test precisely ONE thing and have ONE answer (except, obviously, essay tests or stuff like that).
I recall taking the grad school exam for Shida: listening comprehension question was something like, “Lao Zhang buys four three-cent stamps, two five-cent stamps and two eight-cent stamps. How many stamps did he buy in all?” Obviously I can understand this in Chinese, and I could even give the correct answer, assuming that I know they’re going to ask about the number of stamps instead of the total price, for instance, or something else. But even looking ahead at the answer choices (in the best take-that-standardized-test style) you couldn’t anticipate which it would be so that you could do the necessary calculations (are we testing math here, guys?) to get the right answer.
Same thing for reading comp: three paragraphs in prose, completely understandable, then the kicker: “Which of the following chengyu best sums up the meaning of the foregoing passage?” Didn’t matter if you knew what the passage meant; if you didn’t happen to have learned the chengyu in question, you were SOL. So what are they testing – “the student knows Chengyu X” or “The student can read and comprehend modern standard written Chinese”?
Of course if you complain about test design you look like a sore loser, making excuses. You can’t win. How’d you do on the test?
For a few weeks now i’ve been part-timing at Hess writing sample test questions for their GEPT/ TOEFL prep course. This is exactly the kind of thing they’re teaching me to do. Test one thing at a time. Multiple choice options for a reading comprehension question shouldn’t include hard vocabulary. That’s what the vocabulary section is for
it seems that Hess does a better job of writing tests than shi da!
If you want something for your resume, then why not just take the HSK? That’s the only test I’ve ever seen companies even mention on their HR pages. It’s also good for getting filling Chinese requirements for grad schools around the world.
I’m not sure about in Taiwan, but you can take the HSK at universities all over the world. In 2004, over half a million people took it, and it’s only grown since. Personally, I don’t get the whole rational behind making the CPT to begin with. I don’t really think a local test will further Taiwan’s goal of regaining its status as THE place to learn Chinese any more than making local romanization schemes does.
sadly, the information on that page is three years out of date. Johns hopkins no longer offers the HSK. The new testing site in the southeast is college park U of maryland.
For information on HSK testing in your area, contact the education dept. of the chinese embassy in your country.
Try the chinese language help line FIRST. I could never get anyone to answer the phone on the english line though i tried all day last thursday. then i called the chinese language help line, and they picked up right away
