progress report

I finished the first book which is for the new HSK 1 exam.  I did the mock test in the back and got 100% of the problems correct.  I have started on the second book which is for the level 2 test of HSK. This book is much thicker than the first, but it seems to have just used more pages on testing.

The HSK books are in Japanese, but I'm not bothering to read much of the explanations in Japanese when I already understand the Chinese example sentences. I basically just copy all of the Chinese words and sentences and then listen to the audio, and then I do the test at the end of each lesson.

This series is kind of bad, in the way it uses words in examples that it has not yet introduced. First, it has a list of words at the beginning of the lesson. But it also has a supplementary list of words at the end of the lesson. These words are then used in the testing section which appears right afterwards. So there's no real chance to learn the words or get used to them before you are tested.  Hopefully no users of these books are only learning Chinese from just these books. Although, both the first book and the second book started out with lessons on pronunciation, which I skipped.

strengthen your neural connections

Lately, I have been strengthening my neural connections, and it feels good.  I'd like to tell you what I've been up to lately.

an order of magnitude (HSK)

I ordered the following 3 books from amazon.co.jp yesterday. They will be arriving tomorrow.

   

These are for the HSK test levels 1 & 2. Those are the lowest two levels. I bought one text for level 1 and one text for level 2. The third book is a collection of 5 previous tests of level 2. Both of the the textbooks have a mock test at the end of the book.

In case you are unable to tell, the books are written in Japanese.  Each book has a CD as well.

The level 1 test requires knowledge of only 150 words.  The level 2 test adds another 150 words for a grand total of 300 words!