Dirk Pitt spat out his last mouthful of gravel and sized-up the underground bunker into which he had just emerged. After two weeks of intense burrowing, the world-famous oceanographer had finally succeeded in gnawing his way through the five miles of solid granite that protected the private sanctum of the HSK Consortium from prying eyes and nuclear attack. His colleagues in the Navy had called his plans to "take on the HSK" ludicrous, but what did they know....

HSK Tip #724: no matter how difficult the test might seem now, it is considerably easier than gnawing through five miles of solid granite. Keep things in perspective.
 said on
September 14, 2009
gr8
 said on
September 15, 2009
Good test - again it seemed to get easier as it went along. The blurbs are also getting better. :)
 said on
September 22, 2009
Sorry I am a little late on asking this, what's the difference between 常常 and 往往 ?
 said on
September 22, 2009
@luolin,

往往can not be used in future tense, and in other cases 往往 and 常常 also emphasize on different things. the rules are not clear, we will check out. and tell you then, ok?
 said on
September 24, 2009
Okay, thanks, I am trying to figure out why I get some of these questions wrong. I think I spend too much time on listening. To get some of these rules in context, I should read more. 你 想 怎么样 or should I say 你 想 什么?
 said on
September 24, 2009
@luolin,

listening is quite important. and reading, too. Personally i think reading is the best way to know new words. But everybody study in a different way....o(∩_∩)o...
 said on
September 24, 2009
Watching 快乐大本营 every Saturday night with my pen and paper is the best and most 牛 way to learn new words. I can small talk anyone now, while giving them an unending line of flattering compliments.

Ok, so that's a joke. I just like watching the show to see the hosts dress up in ridiculous matching costumes.

But I think watching 快乐大本营 and 快乐女生 on a regular basis will have you talking like a teenage girl in no time. 讨厌!

 said on
October 2, 2009
Hi, is there any chance of adding a vocab section for these tests? Sometimes words come up that aren't in the lessons and I'd like to be able to quickly add them to my review vocab, just for completeness. On the subject of vocab, I know that when you do the HSK flashcards, the words you get wrong are added to your personal vocab. But do all of the words that you've attempted stay in the HSK vocab? I think it would be a nice touch to move the words from the HSK list to your personal list after you've attempted them, to save having to add the whole list in one go or scroll through and add them gradually (I guess you'd have to personalise the HSK lists first). Just a thought.
 said on
October 3, 2009
@Barnaby - we don't have vocab lists for the tests now as there's a lot of vocab in all of the questions. i like the idea of moving towards a more customizable way to track the HSK vocab ("we think you know this, and don't know this..."). Perhaps that means putting together a very structured set of tests for vocab review and giving them vocab lists.

We'll give it some though. If anyone else has suggestions please let us know as well. Right now it's possible to work through the lists manually, but it does take a bit of time. Would be nice to have the system track things over time, or maybe recommend words that people haven't seen yet based on our knowledge of which questions they've answered correctly.

 said on
December 10, 2009
does ‘不得吃’mean 'forbidden to eat'? and '吃不得‘ mean 'cannot eat' ?
 said on
December 11, 2009
@foxkyle2003,

Usually people don't use "不得吃" in modern Chinese, and it used to have the meaning "forbidden to eat" in ancient times. "吃不得”means "can not eat".

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
 said on
December 11, 2009
@Echo,

我想吃好吃的,但是不得吃。呜呜。。。
 said on
December 12, 2009
@Gail,

晕倒了 ...

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com
Mark Lesson Studied