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simonlaing -

Good Luck Heifeng,

We're all rooting for you.
Work your chinese magic.

have fun,
Simon



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heifeng -

Thanks!...but uh-oh, now the pressure's on, some board members actually remembered I sight up for
this hehe! I was secretly hoping everyone forgot
I will have fun indeed...that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger right....right?
*crickets*chirp**chirp***










roddy -

Very true. Course, the fatality rate in the Putonghua Ceshi isn't exactly low . . .

Good luck again!










heifeng -

Yeah, I survived. Here’s my write up:

Ok, so I took the exam Saturday. I was bit nervous the few days before hand mostly b/c I wasn't
really sure what to expect in terms of how we could use our 'preparation time' and what books we
could bring. Worst case scenario I thought it would just be us given our test booklet and only
allowed to reference a dictionary. Thus I crammed and reread all 60 articles in the 2-days prior
to see if I forgot any characters. However it turned out that we could basically reference
whatever we wanted (maybe other exam sites are different, I dunno) so I didn't have to stress
myself so much in the long run. Basically at 10am I randomly pulled an article and 2 questions,
i.e. part 3 and 4 of the exam. (I ended up with article 15 and me and sports or my
company/oganization/school. I chose the later. I'll talk about these below**). Afterwards I had
about 10 minutes to prepare the question and reread the article from whatever books I had brought
along. (Note to self, next time I'll just bring the MP3 and read along hehe to get the feel for it
better)

Anyway, about 10 minutes later you are told to sit outside an office and given Part 1 and 2 of the
exam (100 characters and 50 words).

Thoughts on preparing for parts 1 & 2:
A majority of these characters are fairly common characters, but you definitely don't have much
time to look up characters so you really just need to know the correct pronunciation right off the
bat. In HINDSIGHT, there were a few characters and words I did not know and tried to look them up.
This proved pretty inefficient. Knowing what I know now, I would have just looked in my prep book
under the 'easily mispronounced' list of words because, as it turned out the ones I didn't know
were right there But once again, I wasn't quite sure of what reference materials we could or could
not bring, and the prep time went by super fast! By the way the few characters that I actually
remember that I completely didn't know was 羹...(oddly enough in the last 2 days I've seen it on
TV 2x's now...grr)..and I know I got the tones wrong for 寥and 袍。For part 1 if I got it wrong
it’s literally because I ‘thought’ I knew it, but didn’t. For part II I completely don't
remember any of the words that I didn't know during the exam. My brain must have blocked out my
memory of those.

Parts 3
This was my article which rates on the easier end of the 60...（see this to see the text and hear
a 'perfect' putonghua recording I guess)
The reading went fairly smoothly. I made 3 ‘avoidable’ mistakes that I can actually recall.
1) I automatically retracked and re-read 3 characters before I could stop myself (which equals
deductions for pronouncing it wrong in the first place plus a re-read deduction)
2) I made and awkward pause when reading 不一定...I think I was overly concerned on the tone
changes...oops
3) I added a 了in there somewhere, which FYI adding or deleting any characters also results in a
deduction.

So between parts 1-3 I am guessing I wracked up at least 2-3 points in the ‘stupid’ mistakes
category. Other deductions are just due to more deeply rooted problems…

Part 4
I just talked about my ‘school’ since I felt it kept the complicated vocab to a minimum.
Content isn’t the most important part of this section, so I figured I could minimize my
pronunciation mistakes better if I was talking about teachers and hanyu classes rather than
different sports and such. I really can’t predict how I did in this section, but all I can say
is those 3 minutes went by super slow which may have meant I spoke too fast…hmm. But it
‘felt’ like I was speaking quite slowly actually. It didn’t really sound that great to me
and I think my speaking ended up have a very bumpy feeling, but whatever, that’s what I need to
work on the most anyway. However I am convinced the proctors lost track of the time and I was
really speaking for 5+ minutes…I dunno…2 of the 3 test proctors (Yes there were 3 of them and
one of me in there) were seriously (quietly) talking throughout my whole section 4. It was quite
distracting. I am guessing that in section 1-3 they already know what to expect and are following
along (occasionally you can hear a pen scribble when you screw up) but section 4 they may go back
and listen to the recording in more detail so they don’t need to pay that much attention during
the actual exam. Ugh who knows! Exams in China are always interesting to say the least.

The end.










roddy -

Interesting stuff, many thanks for the write up.

It was only recently that I realized there are only 60 possible readings - I thought the 60 in the
book I have were just examples of the kind of thing you might have. That piece you did isn't too
bad.

Anyway, have a well deserved rest










heifeng -

No problemo.

Yeah I definitely lucked out and drew a relatively easy one. As long as it wasn't number 25 I was
happy though!

Indeed, there are only 60 possible readings, and most of them are really quite enjoyable to read
(laoshe, maodun, etc..., and some translated pieces too...) so it's worth it to go through them
all...

Also, even if a student doesn't plan to take the exam I would highly recommend reading them.
Sometimes I see posts on the board from people looking for Chinese texts to read along with, I
would fully recomment these, and they are all online too

if rest = karoke, then yeah, already rested up










heifeng -

oh yeah, I was killing time yesterday and discovered that recordings for some of the pcs readings
listed on tudou are a bit slower for those of you who want to practice...here, or just search
普通话测试的朗读作品.

Fascinating discovery, I know, but actually, I think the female reader's voice is very sweet, much
more pleasant than the female voice on the mp3 included in the exam outline. (That reader on those
mp3's seriously has a granny voice...which is fine for listening to stories, but not when you are
trying to find a voice to imitate.)










heifeng -

So, I officially have my grade for the PCS. In my opinion it is a respectable grade and I am
actually quite happy with it…or to be more accurate I should just say I’m relieved. I didn’t
hit my target score but while I was studying I realized how much I didn’t know, so in the end my
score ended up in the range I ‘expected’:

Ladies and gentlemen, a 74.6, for the equivalent of a三级甲。


Now let’s take a look at this standard, according the putonghua ceshi website:
The bad news is mistakes are plentiful ~ 25%. True dat. I can’t really deny it. However I know
that the mistakes are 95% tones and not necessarily声韵母, but they are deducted the
same…wahh. Even so, this is actually a huge improvement for me. Back when I first came to China
my mistakes were hmm…(well let’s see 1 in four chance of getting the tones right, but then in
an actual word, the probability of getting it right is even lower plus factor in the second
character only has a one five chance if you count the qingsheng, so maybe I had a 1/4 * 1/5
probability of the tone being correct before…yeah, it was that bad. What can I say I learned
most of my Chinese outside of China with Fangyan speakers yo ) Moving right along, I think that as
a CSL learners we can’t really start from the top and think ‘how’ far am I from 100 points,
because I don’t think many of us will be news broadcasters any time soon and we weren’t raised
with putonghua. However, I think a more realistic way to look at the score is from the bottom up
and seeing how far up we can go, since learning a second language is basically starting from zero
and working your way up. Although I didn’t get my 二级，I think I am at an ‘ok’ starting
point to continue to improve. (Plus I secretly scanned the grade sheet and I was definitely not
the only student with a score below 80 wahahaha)


So, yeah, other than numbers and what the pcs website says about mistakes and tones and blah blah
blah, what does this score mean, hmm...well after a bit of googling, I found this which says:

1999年有了《国家通用语言文字法》，在法律里明确规定了国家机关工作人员
必须达到普通话的规定的等级。但不可能要求公务员达到播音员的一级甲等�
��水平，只是要求公务员达到三级甲等，三级甲等就是一个相互能够听懂，��
�至于产生误会的水平

hey, that's not too bad

Next time:
Although I didn’t win my lil’ wager with my Japanese friend who earned a 80.7, I know some of
the silly mistakes I made to at least loose 3-5 points this time and am convinced as long as I
haul a$$ next time I should be able to break into an 二级 level…Also, I think it is important
to note that the exam is really about perfect standard putonghua (not just slurring words like a
native or what not, that’s EASY!) you have to have a really strong knowledge base in general not
to loose points in sections 1 and 2 and need to be really aware of how you speak in general. This
requires some serious dedication and good speaking habits….and this just become incredibly
annoying after a while to be honest. Trust me, you start hanging out with Shifan students before
or after they graduate and HAVE to get an 二级甲 and you don’t even want to open your month.
J/k those are the students that you can learn the most from if they really studied for the exam
b/c they are not afraid to tell you exactly what you are doing wrong and why it’s wrong!

Now here are some other random reflections on the exam.

A) First of all, my hat goes off to the PCS office at shoudushifan daxue because they are really
organized. They must test at least 200 students each month yet you get your result really quickly
and the office peeps really know what they are doing. (Not to trail off course too much, but a
CERTAIN exam I took in NOV last year still doesn’t have my certificate because they keep
screwing up my name…no hurry it’s only been over 1/2 a year now). However, I think I did run
into ‘satan’ at the office when I picked up my certificate today (AKA the bitter old lady who
answered the phone the first time I called and managed to really p%^& me off**), but the rest of
the staff is quite nice so no big deal. (Yeah, they even broke my score to me even before I picked
up my zhengshu…oh yeah your score is 70 sumfin….hmmm golly. thanks for announcing it, do you
think you need a megaphone while you’re at it…haha j/k. They were nice about it) So, as much
as I’m sure many of us have had ‘interesting’ experiences in China taking exams, the PCS is
a nice, tightly run ship in my opinion!

[**Ok, so even though this lil' old lady has an attitude problem, I'll admit she has a good ear
for putonghua. If you refer to my 10/16 post she actually said I could probably only get a 60
something, at highest a 70-something. Sure that turned out to be true, but it wasn't as bad as she
made it out to sound, and that was only following me 'really' studying for 3 months. Anyway,
interested persons could probably call the office and see if she picks up to have her yell at you
too and get a 'free' evaluation. ]

B) So, why did I take the PCS. Well, now I ‘really’ know where I stand in terms of standard
putonghua. I really don’t trust the HSK since it’s designed for foreigners and puts a greater
emphasis on content rather than pronunciation and I definitely don’t trust what people off the
street say since that is clearly skewed and they themselves do not necessarily speak properly
either, so I took the exam to get an idea of how I compared with the best of the best. Of course
it’s not pretty, but that’s why it’s probably the most useful feedback so far.

Conclusion: To me this exam was like peeling off the rough outer skin of an onion. The good news
is that I think my putonghua is much more shiny and polished now. Sure there are more layers and
levels to get through but I’ve already stuck with studying this language so long already so
I’ll have plenty of time to work on it more in the future.

Phew!










heifeng -

Oh, fun, I just found these sample links here
Look at the lower left column, under 最 新 推 荐
and wala:
普通话一级甲等语音示范
普通话一级乙等语音示范
普通话二级甲等语音示范
普通话二级乙等语音示范
普通话三级甲等语音示范
普通话三级乙等语音示范

There are student sample exam recordings corresponding to the different levels of the exam. Its
kind of fun to hear how standard the mandarin gets as the level gets higher. Or maybe I'm the only
one nerdy enough to be entertained by this

[edit, I realize that not everyone is as familiar with this exam, so here is some more general
information], i.e.

普通话水平划分为三个级别，每个级别内划分两个等次。其中：
97分及其以上，为一级甲等；
92分及其以上但不足97分，为一级乙等；
87分及其以上但不足 92分，为二级甲等；
80分及其以上但不足87分，为二级乙等；
70分及其以上但不足 80分，为三级甲等；
60分及其以上但不足70分，为三级乙等。

oh, and here is another interesting puthonghua site www.pthxx.com, it also describes industry
requirements for the exam here

根据各行业的规定，有关从业人员的普通话水平达标要求如下：
中小学及幼儿园、校外教育单位的教师，普通话水平不低于二级，其中语文�
��师不低于二级甲等，普通话语音教师不低于一级；
高等学校的教师，普通话水平不低于三级甲等，其中现代汉语教师不低于二�
��甲等，普通话语音教师不低于一级；对外汉语教学教师，普通话水平不低��
�二级甲等。
报考中小学、幼儿园教师资格的人员，普通话水平不低于二级。
师范类专业以及各级职业学校的与口语表达密切相关专业的学生，普通话水�
��不低于二级。
国家公务员，普通话水平不低于三级甲等。
国家级和省级广播电台、电视台的播音员、节目主持人，普通话水平应达到�
��级甲等，其他广播电台、电视台的播音员、节目主持人的普通话达标要求��
�国家广播电影电视总局的规定执行。
话剧、电影、电视剧、广播剧等表演、配音演员，播音、主持专业和影视表�
��专业的教师、学生，普通话水平不低于一级。
公共服务行业的特定岗位人员（如广播员、解说员、话务员等），普通话水�
��不低于二级甲等。
普通话水平应达标人员的年龄上限以有关行业的文件为准。












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