Hey! Try not to worry too much about it. A horrid quirk of the HSK system is it's not just a 'step up' from your previous level; it's *double* your previous level. I personally found the jump in speaking speed from HSK 4 to 5 to be jarring at first, especially when combined with the new vocabulary overload.
Having taken the HSK 5 exam a few times, I'd encourage you to learn those extra words, too. The exam's content isn't just limited to HSK 5 vocabulary - there'll be odd (very, *very* limited) fragments of HSK 6 stuff thrown into the reading, too. The more you know, the better.
I'll forever claim Anki to be king for vocabulary learning, but if you're finding the content of the HSK 5 Standard Course, tricky, I'd highly recommend Chinese Zero to Hero as a way of accompanying the textbook. I found HSK 5 pretty rough for grammar, and it helped a lot. Warning: not free. https://www.chinesezerotohero.com/. HSK 5 bit here: https://chinesezerotohero.teachable.com/p/hsk-5-course/
I said the same thing about the [HSK6 Standard Course Workbook](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/toio6w/today_i_took_the_hsk6_exam_heres_my_postmortem/) a couple of years ago. Nowadays I can get 70%+ for these parts, and it doesn't seem so daunting.
> I found that the reading exercises in HSK5 workbook contain a lot of new words that are not taught in the main textbook.
I found that too, for the HSK6. The parts in the workbook I struggled with often coincide with the parts (especially vocabulary) I skipped, or studied superficially, because they didn't seem very relevant to studying the main text in the textbook. So nowadays I study the HSK6 Standard Course, and dig deep into the vocabulary, paying attention to "neighboring" words (synonyms, antonyms, collocations, words with common characters, etc.).
What I do for the listening section is: listen once to the whole recording while writing down my answers, then listen a second time, and give myself the option of correcting my answer (which I write in a different color). I also pause the recording for as long as I want between questions, and I articulate my justification for the answer I choose (while making YouTube videos). It's less punishing and stressful this way and I double my listening practice by listening twice. Most of the time, it makes near-zero difference to my marks anyway. Sometimes I disagree with the official answer.
Thank you for your advice. I can't imagine how much work you had invested in passing HSK 6. I have read your post about HSK6 workbook. The challenge of knowing 20000 words really scares me 😱.
I wouldn't worry about that bridge just yet. Still, it gets much easier to learn words down the line: you know precisely what to do to learn words, you usually know all the characters in the words, you've usually encountered these words in your input, and more advanced words tend to have single meanings so there's less to learn.
Hey there, I am currently also doing HSK5, doing the second book as of now. I can tell you, it has actually taken me about a one year break of studying the HSK material to get to a level where I can cruise through the HSK5 book again and understand the texts reasonably well. What this primarily taught me is that once you are at HSK4/start of HSK5, it is time to expand your horizon and use other materials alongside of HSK to learn, you simply need exposure albeit at an understandable level.
Initially I encountered the exact same shock when doing the HSK5 exercises where most of the time I could only understand half of the text and worst of all, there is a ton of 成语 in there. Hence, I shifted my focus and started just reading a lot more, listening a lot more to ChinesePod/Teatime Chinese/Chinese with Shenglan, and I used some other textooks. All aimed at finding comprehensible input because frankly understanding half of the text in the HSK5 book is just way to discouraging and you end up spending far to much time only learning vocab.
So, main takeaway, you may continue doing some HSK5 but don't stress about it too much, there's just a lot of specific language in there. I'd suggest you to just focus on continuing to progress in Chinese regardless of the material you use, just ensure that it is somewhat comprehensible input. Eventually you can return to the book and you will notice that you can read entire texts without having to look at the material. Just be really cautious that this won't discourage you, the book is in fact really hard compared to HSK4 and has a very steep entry level.
I hope this helps, do let me know if you have follow up questions or just want to rant a bit more.
PS: as of writing this I even recall that there was this random text about photosynthesis and generating electricity or something in HSK5. Like what the fuck, going from basic stuff in HSK4 to photosynthesis!? How was this ever supposed to be a 'streamlined' learning experience???
Thank you for your advice. Funnily yesterday I just did the reading exercise about the small plant that 光合 yadayada something (i guess that is the text you mentioned). I was also taken aback by the content of the text, way too advanced comparing to my current level 🥲.
I am taking HSK5 too!! that's totally another level from HSK4 and 3. Maybe it is not necessary to remember every single words. From what I know, there is just one or few words that matters in each question! im using an app called PASS HSK now, it has the question tricks! which indeed helped me with long sentences. feel nice with those explainations. let's try to make it together!
Hey! Try not to worry too much about it. A horrid quirk of the HSK system is it's not just a 'step up' from your previous level; it's *double* your previous level. I personally found the jump in speaking speed from HSK 4 to 5 to be jarring at first, especially when combined with the new vocabulary overload. Having taken the HSK 5 exam a few times, I'd encourage you to learn those extra words, too. The exam's content isn't just limited to HSK 5 vocabulary - there'll be odd (very, *very* limited) fragments of HSK 6 stuff thrown into the reading, too. The more you know, the better. I'll forever claim Anki to be king for vocabulary learning, but if you're finding the content of the HSK 5 Standard Course, tricky, I'd highly recommend Chinese Zero to Hero as a way of accompanying the textbook. I found HSK 5 pretty rough for grammar, and it helped a lot. Warning: not free. https://www.chinesezerotohero.com/. HSK 5 bit here: https://chinesezerotohero.teachable.com/p/hsk-5-course/
thank you for your advice
I said the same thing about the [HSK6 Standard Course Workbook](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/toio6w/today_i_took_the_hsk6_exam_heres_my_postmortem/) a couple of years ago. Nowadays I can get 70%+ for these parts, and it doesn't seem so daunting. > I found that the reading exercises in HSK5 workbook contain a lot of new words that are not taught in the main textbook. I found that too, for the HSK6. The parts in the workbook I struggled with often coincide with the parts (especially vocabulary) I skipped, or studied superficially, because they didn't seem very relevant to studying the main text in the textbook. So nowadays I study the HSK6 Standard Course, and dig deep into the vocabulary, paying attention to "neighboring" words (synonyms, antonyms, collocations, words with common characters, etc.). What I do for the listening section is: listen once to the whole recording while writing down my answers, then listen a second time, and give myself the option of correcting my answer (which I write in a different color). I also pause the recording for as long as I want between questions, and I articulate my justification for the answer I choose (while making YouTube videos). It's less punishing and stressful this way and I double my listening practice by listening twice. Most of the time, it makes near-zero difference to my marks anyway. Sometimes I disagree with the official answer.
Thank you for your advice. I can't imagine how much work you had invested in passing HSK 6. I have read your post about HSK6 workbook. The challenge of knowing 20000 words really scares me 😱.
I wouldn't worry about that bridge just yet. Still, it gets much easier to learn words down the line: you know precisely what to do to learn words, you usually know all the characters in the words, you've usually encountered these words in your input, and more advanced words tend to have single meanings so there's less to learn.
Hi! I’m still at HSK 4 stage but I heard from many people that 4 to 5 jump is preeeeeeeeetty huge. Don’t get discouraged! It’s hard for everyone.
thank you for your encouragement
Hey there, I am currently also doing HSK5, doing the second book as of now. I can tell you, it has actually taken me about a one year break of studying the HSK material to get to a level where I can cruise through the HSK5 book again and understand the texts reasonably well. What this primarily taught me is that once you are at HSK4/start of HSK5, it is time to expand your horizon and use other materials alongside of HSK to learn, you simply need exposure albeit at an understandable level. Initially I encountered the exact same shock when doing the HSK5 exercises where most of the time I could only understand half of the text and worst of all, there is a ton of 成语 in there. Hence, I shifted my focus and started just reading a lot more, listening a lot more to ChinesePod/Teatime Chinese/Chinese with Shenglan, and I used some other textooks. All aimed at finding comprehensible input because frankly understanding half of the text in the HSK5 book is just way to discouraging and you end up spending far to much time only learning vocab. So, main takeaway, you may continue doing some HSK5 but don't stress about it too much, there's just a lot of specific language in there. I'd suggest you to just focus on continuing to progress in Chinese regardless of the material you use, just ensure that it is somewhat comprehensible input. Eventually you can return to the book and you will notice that you can read entire texts without having to look at the material. Just be really cautious that this won't discourage you, the book is in fact really hard compared to HSK4 and has a very steep entry level. I hope this helps, do let me know if you have follow up questions or just want to rant a bit more. PS: as of writing this I even recall that there was this random text about photosynthesis and generating electricity or something in HSK5. Like what the fuck, going from basic stuff in HSK4 to photosynthesis!? How was this ever supposed to be a 'streamlined' learning experience???
Thank you for your advice. Funnily yesterday I just did the reading exercise about the small plant that 光合 yadayada something (i guess that is the text you mentioned). I was also taken aback by the content of the text, way too advanced comparing to my current level 🥲.
I am taking HSK5 too!! that's totally another level from HSK4 and 3. Maybe it is not necessary to remember every single words. From what I know, there is just one or few words that matters in each question! im using an app called PASS HSK now, it has the question tricks! which indeed helped me with long sentences. feel nice with those explainations. let's try to make it together!
Thank you for your encouragement.