Comparison And Analysis Of New HSK Chinese Language Proficiency Test

With the popularity of learning Chinese in the whole world, we have launched new HSK (HSK is the abbreviation of Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) to meet the requirement of new situation of Chinese international promotion. In the meanwhile, the new version of TOCFL (TOCFL is the abbreviation of Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language) also appears in Taiwan. Corresponding to CEF(CEF is the abbreviation of The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages:Learning, Teaching, Assessment), it makes the comparative study of new HSK and TOCFL. The aim of this paper is to compare the listening test and the reading test between new HSK-Level5and TOCFL-Level5, and we hope it can advance the research and development of new HSK in the future. This paper has explored some questions among the format, content, length and so on, and we propose some solutions to the design of the listening test and the reading test.First of all, on the common basis, CEF serves as a bridge to communicate between new HSK and TOCFL, which offers a comparison platform of their grades and scores. CEF is suitable for European language, but not Chinese all the same. Compare with the alphabet writing, Chinese character has its own distinguishing feature, and the current existing standards for CEF do not put the Chinese characteristics into consideration, thus CEF is not applicable to Chinese teaching.Second, on the principle of question topic, because of test concept and teaching model is similar to each other, new HSK puts forward the principle of "combination between teaching and testing", which not only puts forward new requirements to the current teaching idea and teaching mode but also highlights the positive effect of language test. For example, information feedback of testing results can not only measure the abilities of Chinese learners’ language level but also reflect the achieved degree of the teaching purpose, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of teaching materials, teaching methods, curriculum,etc.In the third place, on the test form, tie-in-test of listening and reading still has not a corresponding theory. The listening test examines the examinee to listening ability, and the reading test examines the reading ability of the examinee. However, those two kinds of capacities of the examinee are not the same, for some examinees, listening is good, yet reading is poor, and vice versa. Therefore applying the tie-in-test of listening and reading, there is a phenomenon that some examinees can not pass the listening test or the reading test, but pass the total test. So the total scores can not accurately measure their abilities of listening and reading.Fourth, new HSK uses the traditional way of semi-listening test, which means that the examinee reads the choices presented in Chinese characters while listening to the contents and questions. And the examinee should react to the above presentation. This kind of test can measure the examinee’s abilities of listening and reading. TOCFL adopts a new way of "semi-listening test", in which the examinee receives all the information by way of listening, including contents, questions and choices. In the meanwhile, the examinee also can read all the choices and part of questions. In the new "semi-listening testing", the examinee who is not good at reading Chinese characters can also choose the right answer. Therefore, the listening test should examine the examinee’s listening comprehension, not reading comprehension.In the end, on the test questions, the reading section of new HSK and TOCFL are all objective topics, namely single choice on the listening test. Because the disadvantages of single choice outweigh its advantages in the test, we suggest that single choice should be replaced by mixed choice. For example, in the cloze test, examinee can refer to eight words before a short paragraph with five blanks, in a word, a examinee should select five proper words from eight words to fill in the blanks respectively. Compared with single choice, the mixed choice has two advantages:on the one hand, the alternative answers of mixed choice are greatly less than those of single choice, also substantially reduce the probability score; on the other hand, when doing mixed choice, a examinee does not make right choice until he understand the whole passage. To a certain extent, such design of reading test can reduce the negative effects of single choice, so that the reading test can truly measure the examinee’s level of reading comprehension.