Hello everyone,
I am currently at HSK2 level and would like to know if it is possible to reach HSK5 level within ten months. I am looking for advice or experiences from people who have managed to achieve this goal.
Are there specific strategies, resources, or study techniques I can follow? How many hours should I dedicate to studying each day? Also, are there any challenges I might face on this journey?
Any opinions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!
Steve Kaufmann speaks about how he did it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3qSuT5-Xrg&ab_channel=SteveKaufmann-lingosteve
I also had a friend who learned Chinese to HSK4 in 8 months from 0. I think at the top university of China you practiced 100 characters a day until you learned them. You would need about a thousand more characters than they would. It’s harsh, but I honestly think a lot of it’s overblown. Depends on if you learn traditional or simplified.
The real X factor here is you. If you can devote several hours a day to learning Chinese you can probably do it. Even if you fail, it doesn’t mean you need to start all over again, you start from where you ‘failed’ and that means, if you are 200 characters short, you are still only 200 characters away.
What I heard from both is an 8-10 hour a day practice regime. From my menial experience with learning Chinese in high school and LingQ. Not at all to fluency, I managed to learn quite a few characters just by reading them. Such as 世界。Most Chinese people only know the pinyin since they use their phones and laptops so I think maybe you could explore and evaluate if you need to know how to write characters by hand.
One positive by learning how to recognize and type is that it saves time and leads to faster learning of characters.
One positive on learning how to write characters by hand, is that if you learn them that way, you have a much clearer understanding of how they look and work. Much more thorough understanding in other words.
It depends on what you want and how you wanna prioritize it. But Vietnamese according to the FSI only requires 44 weeks to B2. It has more tones and a more complex politeness system. So I think it’s doable.
Your fastest route to HSK5 is to acquire the necessary words needed to get there as fast as mentally possible. I would probably say the Advance 1 equivalent on Lingq at least. Then focus on listening and speaking. The biggest obstacle will be the listening and producing the words when needed on will.
About 2 hours overall is what I recommend.
Time wise, at least
Source: Being a crazy chinese learner that could of done things better if I had the experience that I have now
What do you mean by prepared sentences if I may ask?
Think of the sentence you think you will have to use in a future conversation, then try to find out how to say it. If you don’t know, use some translator to get the fastest feedback. Then that’s just one sentence but it’s easier to recall if that situation ever occurred. It’s what people usually call sentence mining if we want to use the formal term
Well It sounds quiet hard ,Its enssential know how many time you spend in this hard task due to the fact that how many time you spend exposing to the language It will be more factible ,nontheless i recall see in a video from steve that he reached an advanced level of this language in about a year however he dedicated six daily hours three with a personal teacher and another three studying alone ,so i suppose it is a matter of time and effort. In conclusion work hard
Hsk2 :: 300 words
Hsk5 :: 2500 words
Difference :: 2200 words → 10 months → 220 words per month
Totally doable! Learning 8 words per day in ten months is possible, if you use a Space Repetition System (SRS) Method.
I would recommend:
Download the HSK word lists for levels 3, 4 and 5
Install Skritter and pay for it (one of the few apps worth paying, for this very specific purpose) and take their course on HSK3, then HSK4 and then HSK4 vocabulary lists, 8 words per day. their SRS method will make sure you practice enough.
Regardless of the above, print those HSK lists in a physical sheet of paper. Then grab a blank sheet and a pen and practice to write the words by hand. Memory is more properly stimulated this way. Drawing the character with the finger on the phone’s surface with Skritter is not enough, extra practice by hand is required.
Entering the list in an additional SRS flashcard method like Quizlet may further help, since the answer there may require you to actually type in your computer the words with your keyboard
So you would have a double SRS system (Skritter and Quizlet)
And an extra handwriting practice for better fixation of the knowledge in your brain.
Chinese grammar is not that hard, if you have a strong foundation in characters and words up to HSK5, then you can afterwards learn in a more organic direction after that (I would not recommend this for HSK6 so much)
Also, for passive input at all levels, we have Lingq