For our column, Ask an Educator, we turn to educators, whether teachers, tutors, or principals, to answer frequently asked questions from parents. To send in your question, email jessicasuotmaa@beijing-kids.com.

This week, our question is:

“Can children take the HSK? If not, what is the equivalent Chinese proficiency test for kids?”

Answering for us is Miyee Woon, a private HSK tutor who prides herself on being able to teach foreigners as a non-native Chinese speaker.

When we decide to book our ticket to China, we probably thought that we should at least learn some basic Chinese in order to help us explore more in the country, and that our kids should be exposed to the new language as well. In today’s society, mastering Chinese (especially mandarin) is considered one of the essential elements to make one more competitive.

HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) test is designed for those who aim to gain the qualification proving their ability to understand the spoken and written Chinese (Mandarin).

The HSK Test aims to assess your ability to understand spoken and written Chinese and consists of six levels:

Level 1, 2, 3 (HSK Threshold): Acquire 400-1000 Chinese characters, plus master the most basic HSK grammar requirements.

Level 4 (HSK Basic):  Acquire 400-3000 basic Chinese characters, plus Level A and B in HSK grammar requirements.

Level 5 (HSK Elementary-Intermediate): Acquire 2000-5000 basic Chinese characters (Level A, B, and C in HSK Vocabulary). Master Level A, B, and C in HSK grammar requirements.

Level 6 (HSK Advanced): Acquire 5000-8000 Chinese characters (Level A, B, C, and D in HSK Vocabulary). Master Level A, B, C, and D in HSK grammar.

(Source: 孔子学校 )

The HSK lesson plan would be a bit too boring for young children (4-6). Young children tend to have shorter attention span compared to grownups. Thus, an innovative lesson plan would be more appropriate to them, for instance, a story book reading accompanied by basic Chinese characters would catch their interest. The lesson can be taught in the form of game playing or storytelling. With the basic knowledge gained from home study, parents would have the option to send their children either to the local Chinese kindergarten (for pre-school lessons), or a private tutor to teach at home in order to systematically build a solid foundation of the Chinese basics.

If parents hope their children will have a certificate of Chinese level qualification, they might have to enroll their kids into a Chinese school, or bilingual school with a Chinese department, from grade 1 to grade 6. After the first six years of elementary study, our children can apply and take the HSK test. Then, the children would obtain the qualified mandarin level certification, which can be used in university admissions or job applications in China.

Photo courtesy of Miyee Woon

Last week, the new Standard Assessment Test (SAT) format and details were released to the public. This comes one year after the College Board announced that there was going to be an extensive makeover to one of the most commonly used college entrance exam. However, the new SAT will start to be used from spring of 2016 but before then the College Board has teamed up with the Khan Academy to provide the free online test preparations. The change does not only affect those in the United States of America but for all those applying to US based universities. Here is a breakdown of the key structural changes as highlighted by The Atlantic:

Scores
The exam will return to the 1600-point scale that was used before 2005, and test takers will no longer lose points for a wrong answer. In the past, each wrong answer received a quarter point deduction, while an unanswered question resulted in no deductions. This method led SAT tutors to encourage students unsure of a question to guess only if they could eliminate one of the five answer choices. The new model will encourage students to answer every question on the test to maximize their potential score.

End of SAT words
The era of “SAT words” is over: The exam will now focus on words that “are widely used in college and career.” The press release uses “synthesis” and “empirical” as examples and explains, “‘SAT words’ will no longer be vocabulary students may not have heard before and are likely not to hear again. Instead, the SAT will focus on words that students will use consistently in college and beyond.”

Essay is Optional
The essay section, which was once a required and controversial part of the writing section, is no longer required, and will be scored separately from the rest of the exam. The release gives two reasons for this change: one, the essay has not historically been predictive of college readiness and success, and two, College Board member admission officers couldn’t agree on whether the essay was useful

The optional essay will ask students to analyze evidence. It will be graded based on the “strength of the analysis as well as the coherence of the writing.” The previous version of the essay asked students to answer a prompt using their own background and experiences, and evaluators did not verify the accuracy of their argument or examples. The previous essay had to be completed in 25 minutes; students will now have 50 minutes to write the essay.

Reading Passages
Source documents on the SAT used to be a perennial surprise for students: Reading passages could come from any source and be about any topic. Now, each exam will include a passage drawn from what the College Board is calling a “Founding Document” or a “Great Global Conversation.” They use the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream speech” as examples. The other documents used on the exam will also now be from a wider range of academic disciplines; in particular, historical and scientific material was not required to appear on the old SAT. Now students will read source texts from science, history, and social studies and be asked to “analyze them the way they would in those classes.” Data will also appear more on the new SAT: Students will encounter questions about text and data, including questions about “identifying and correcting inconsistencies between the two.”
 

Other changes include:

• The SAT will be offered in both print and digital formats.
• Calculators will only be permitted on certain portions of the math section. The math section will focus on fewer topics.
• Income-eligible students will receive fee waivers for their applications to four schools.

There pros and cons of these changes are sure to be a source of debate in the days to come. The president of the College Broad admitted in a press conference that the SAT was archaic and disconnected from high schools in the US. For parents, the need to higher expensive tutors just to prepare for the SATs will be a relief for most.

Photo courtesy of wikimedia commons

But recently, the “no test” philosophy for young children has been coming under assault, as new government programs strongly promote the practice. In 2003, the No Child Left Behind program took effect and required states to give all students standardized tests. Now, President Obama’s Race to the Top educational competition encourages more reliance on “formative tests”. Unlike the SATs, these are not the big one-off exams, but a stream of smaller tests designed to help students and their teachers measure their progress.

Some education experts hail the change as a step forward from the “ideological dark ages”. “Research has long shown that more frequent testing is beneficial to kids, but educators have resisted this finding,” said Gregory J. Cizek, a professor of educational measurement and evaluation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Of course, the tests have to be age-appropriate, Professor Cizek notes. And “high stakes” tests should be avoided, as they create anxiety and may unfairly hurt a youngster’s future based on poor performance on a single day.

Moreover, Professor Cizek disagreed with prevailing philosophy of offering young children unconditional praise and support. “What’s best for kids is frequent testing, where even if they do badly, they can get help and improve and have the satisfaction of doing better,” he said. “Kids don’t get self-esteem by people just telling them they are wonderful.”

Some educators, of course, strongly protest the recent changes. However, life is full of all kinds of tests so, at some point, "you have to get used to it", argues the article. “When testing is commonplace and the teachers are supportive, the tests felt like so many puzzles; not so much a judgment on your being, but an interesting challenge.”