Maria watched her daughter with a curious fascination as the child struggled to force the plastic green triangle into the space intended for the blue cube. Tears welled in her eyes as a quiet desperation set in. It had been ages since Jack had brought his old childhood playset home for their daughter, yet weeks of practice had brought her no closer to any basic mastery of shapes or colors.

Now, we're not actually comparing you to a toddler if you get these wrong, but for a native Chinese speaker, these positioning questions are about as difficult as fitting the square cube into the square hole. More advanced students should be able to ace these questions using intuition alone. If you haven't developed this feeling yet, focus on the part of speech of the proffered word and eliminate the ungrammatical possibilities until the only correct answer remains.
 said on
August 15, 2009
Good quiz - couple of tricky ones towards the beginning.

Can someone tell me why D is not also an acceptable answer for #1?

这次下乡,给我 A 最 B 深 C 的 D 是街上热闹的情景。 (印象)

Thanks!
 said on
August 16, 2009
@toneandcolor,

If you put 印象 in the blank D, the sentence will lose its subject. Right now, the subject is "sth which gave me the deepest impression". If it is D, "给我最深的印象" just means "give me the deepest impression", but we don't know "WHAT" gave you that impression.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
August 17, 2009
God, I'm hopeless at this. 6/15. Grammar just isn't part of my study at all, unless I go take up university classes (an option), it's hard to see how I can even learn it.

 said on
August 17, 2009
@mat,

加油啊!!

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
August 17, 2009
Hehe thanks. I'm surprised by the level of vocabulary in this. Is that really HSK beginner? I thought I was pretty good on vocab (for my level) but there's heaps of things I've never even seen before.

Not to worry, plenty more flash cards to add!
 said on
August 17, 2009
@mat - if you're struggling with the grammar why not just pick a single question on each test and we'll dissect it here in the discussion section. that could be really useful for a lot of people who browse but don't comment as well (you guys know who you are...).

i think Nathan is spot on highlighting question #1 as the most tricky here. Another tricky one for me was #13. I got it wrong by reading 简直 as 直接 and trying to use it to modify the main verb 跑. Turns out it means something closer to 非常, making C is the right answer. How obvious... in retrospect.
 said on
August 17, 2009
@mat

This is a good overall grammar reference for beginners. Very readable in my opinion.

This book is more advanced. Old, but extremely thorough and precise.

@trevelyan

Whenever I see 简直 I'm reminded of the Tina Turner song. Interesting correlation between "simply" and 简 between the two languages.

 said on
August 18, 2009
Thanks gents, I reckon this is about due for a focus shift for me. That book looks great, I've just kicked in an order. Thanks for the recommendation.
 said on
August 18, 2009
@toneandcolor - I grew up listening to her music thanks to my father, so this is a Tina Turner positive zone. She's a good performer and she hustles. Check out this concert she did in 2000 when she was over sixty.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjc1MDA5Mjg=.html

I can't load them here some reason (damn you, China), but there are some videos on Youtube of her performing earlier this year. At seventy! Totally awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYOvALOoWs

We should have a lesson on Tina. Maybe we can use it to teach 简直.... :)

 said on
August 18, 2009
David, no we shouldn't :-)

 said on
August 19, 2009
i dunno mat.... i sort of like the idea of a Popup 80s round-up. i could see a lot of useful vocabulary coming out of that.... : )

Can't say I'm much of a fan of her music, but Tina was good in Mad Max 3. And she keeps in shape. That's a pretty impressive voice for a sixty year old, even if it is just belting out beat-driven studio anthems.
 said on
August 23, 2009
Why B is not an acceptable answer for #3?

這一帶的城牆有十 A五米 B寬,七 C米 D高。(多)

What's wrong with

這一帶的城牆有十五米多寬,七米高。

??
 said on
August 23, 2009
In #6 "矛盾 máodùn contradictory" seems not to be in my opinion an HSK Beginner vocab item, and MDBG says it's HSK level 2.

How many vocab items am I supposed to know for HSK Beginner questions?

 said on
August 23, 2009
Yeah I asked that question earlier. I've got a flashcard list of so-called HSK level 1 characters. It's about a thousand characters and I finished this last month.

When I look at this quiz, almost every line has stuff I don't know.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest, it strikes me the quiz is a grammar test not a vocab test so I'm happy to use Mandarin Popup to tell me what these words are. That way I know me being genuinely hopeless is 100% me :-)
 said on
August 23, 2009
As I understand it, they don't generate the test questions using exclusively the vocabulary on the lists. There's always a bunch of additional words that creep in, especially in the reading sections.

It makes sense, as otherwise knowing 7000 words would be enough to master the advanced HSK when it clearly is not. What the core vocabulary should do is give enough context to figure things out. That said, I think Question #6 is a bit difficult for the beginner level too, although for a different reason - it's testing placement of 可 when being used for emphasis and I'd imagine that's pretty clearly an intermediate pattern for anyone who isn't living in China.

 said on
August 23, 2009
@beijingboy,

In this question, 多 is used after a number, which means add or more.And when you get two numbers in one sentence, it either goes with the second number or goes with both numbers.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
August 24, 2009
@Echo,

thank you for the explanation.

Now I ask myself, whether there is a book where I can find all these sophisticated rules. Can you give me a hint?

E. g. Ross/Ma: Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar, ch. 6.5, does not contain this rule.
 said on
August 24, 2009
@beijingboy,

There are a lot of useful books published by Beijing Language and Culture University and Peking University. I don't know if you can get any abroad though. I would also suggest you to buy one "The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary"(Chinese-English Edition) --现代汉语词典. It is very useful. If you are in China, you can go to some big book stores. I am sure they all have some learn Chinese books. If you are in Beijing (that would be great), I personally think the best store for getting these books is the book store in Beijing Language and Culture University. One 光合作用 book store in 五道口 is great too, since there are a lot of foreign students living near by. 王府井书店、外文书店 and 西单图书大厦 are good too.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
September 6, 2009
Hmm, I thought there was another explanation of the duo1 question:

這一帶的城牆有十五米多寬,七米高。

This sentence is incorrect because "duo" only comes after the measure word when the number is less than ten. For example, 两年多了 but 十二多年了. Therefore, 十五米多寬 is wrong--it should be 十五多米寬.

Is that wrong?

Because I thought you could have two numbers in the same sentence with the first one with "duo1":

这个城市有三千多年的历史,大概有三千个人左右。
 said on
September 6, 2009
@lewa,

There are two structures of adding 多 after the figure to express.

One is "integer + 多 + quantifier (+noun)", for example, 我们这里有四百多名外国学生. We need to pay attention here: the figure should be an integer, so we can't say "十二多年" or "十五多米宽", because the figure 12 and 15 are not an integer ended with 0.

The other structure is "figure + quantifier +多 (+ noun)", for instance, 这瓶水卖三块多钱. Attention: the quantifiers here must be continuous quantifiers (can be counted by 0.1, 0.2). In this case, we don't say "我买了两张多票".

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
Mark Lesson Studied