You guys are amazing with all your work on flexi courses! I am years away from HSK 4+ but the structure seems good to me, especially news reading/speaking. If it were up to me, I’d also be interested in cultural/historical and just random interesting stories and facts to read and discuss. Hope to get to HSK 4 one day myself!
Awesome to hear! If I continue with my current rate I would hope that I am finished with the HSK4 lessons by September time, although HSK 4+ still sounds quite intimidating at this point… haha.
When you say : “two cultural news items taken from a WeChat account to be discussed”
I don’t use WeChat so I don’t know what that would look like, could you give some examples?
The general format sounds really good though. I tried to do something similar with my bf recently, we would read some Yahoo新聞 articles together and I would read the summary while he read the article, then try and talk about the summary together. Even just interpreting news headlines I find a complex task in itself though…
This is really exciting to hear! I’m somewhere around the HSK 4+ Level (somewhat permanently haha), and this structure sounds like it would be really useful for me. I especially like the idea of integrating news articles into the class. I don’t have experience using WeChat for that, so I can’t really speak to it (I usually just search for random articles on the Internet). That being said, I do use WeChat somewhat regularly, so the format would work for me. Also, if there were ways to connect current events/authentic resources to the lesson material as a supplement to the vocab/grammar (to review in the future), that could be helpful too!
Thanks so much for the feedback. It does not have to be WeChat, it could be any other current event source (culture, life etc/ - no politics).
Do you have a website or the like you find useful? We can try to integrate that.
And dont worry, HSK 4/5 is a time where it is easy to feel like you are on a “learning plateau” because improvements cannot be “felt” as strongly as for lower levels, where everything you learn immediately has a use and improves comprehension visibly.
That does not mean you are not progressing, it just doesnt feel like it as much. Keep studying and you will definitely get there. HSK 5 is planned after HSK 4+, I will see you there then
For HSK4+ it would be really good to have one about using common apps - e.g. facebook/instagram in Chinese, including common words (e.g. comment, follow, like, etc). I switched before but then I was put off because I didn’t really feel like it helped me learn Chinese, since I didn’t really know what each thing was and was just doing things automatically
I think this is a great idea, and like Sonja said there are some basic courses in HSK1. Maybe the HSK4+ courses could include the Chinese social media apps? I’ve been trying to use Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douban, etc but I’m kind of lost haha. Even WeChat I’m still not super comfortable with.
I think that a HSK4+ level would be great. Would this level still be offered as group classes? But for those of us that don’t have WeChat, would we still be able to participate?
I have taken a few HSK4+ speaking test classes already and I’m very excited about them. HSK4+ classes going to be a bit challenging since we’ll be using real world material but no worries, the teachers are specifically trained to be excellent tour guides. It’s going to be a lot of fun! I can’t wait for the launch!
Very eager to sign up as soon as it’s launched!