Home ESL Teachers Tourists Students of Mandarin OtherChina Survival Kit for Mandarin Students:Contents: 2. Are there any online resources? 3. Where is the best place to study? 4. Useful links
1. What is the HSK test?HSK stands for Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi （汉语水平考试） or literally "Chinese Level Test." In a nutshell it is a test aimed at those studying Mandarin Chinese as a 2nd language, in order to evaluate their level. Emphasis is placed on listening ability, reading comprehension, and grammar.
2. Are there any online resources for learning Chinese?Of course. Check it out: Also, many P2P file sharing programs (such as Limewire, Kazaa, or Morpheus) might be a great resource for those looking to track down Chinese Audio lessons in MP3 format. If it were legal, it would be very useful to download Pimsleur Mandarin Lessons. Alas it is not legal, so I must formally recommend that you buy them. There is also, Rosetta Stone software, which might be more difficult to find, but comes highly recommended from some friends of mine. 3. Where is the best place to study?The answer to this question is debatable. There are various universities with a reputation for having good Chinese Language Programmes, such as Peking University, or Beijing Foreign Languages University. But don't just limit yourself to Beijing. It may not be the best city for you. Keep in mind that there are countless dialects of Chinese all over the country, but it is widely agreed that the most standard Chinese (or putonghua 普通话）is spoken in Northern China, more specifically in the city of Harbin (哈尔滨). Don't buy into this "most standard Chinese" mumbo jumbo too much. It would be the equivalent of a Chinese student deciding to study in England as opposed to New Zealand, because he heard they speak "more standard" English there. Cities such as Shanghai, even with it's wacky dialect of Mandarin, are still popular destinations among students of Chinese, and perfectly legitimate places to study. 4. Uselful links:
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