Learn Chinese Chinesimple HSK5

You may already know how to say “exceed” in Chinese. How would you say that an interview ran fifteen minutes over?

Build on your Mandarin with Chinesimple, the app from Khanji School. In the HSK 5 course, you’ll practise describing exactly what happened. Explanations in English help you pick out what happened, when it happened and which detail changes the meaning.

FIFTEEN MINUTES OF WHAT?

超过 (chāoguò) means “to exceed” or “to go beyond”. Read 那次采访超过规定时间十五分钟 (“That interview ran fifteen minutes over”). The fifteen minutes tell you how much longer the interview lasted than planned. You’d need another detail to work out how long it lasted in total.

Now read 比赛到傍晚才结束 (“The match didn’t finish until dusk”). “The match finished at dusk” tells you when it ended. In the Chinese sentence, 才 draws attention to the wait: the speaker makes it sound as though the match ended later than expected. Try putting that sense of waiting into your own words in English.

LISTEN FOR THE DETAIL THAT CHANGES THE MEANING

Listen to a native speaker say the sentence about the interview without looking at the text. When you hear 十五分钟 (“fifteen minutes”), ask yourself: is that the whole interview or just the extra time? Listen again and see if you can pick out 规定时间, the time set aside for the interview.

If a word makes you lose the thread, look it up in the Chinese dictionary. Listen to its pronunciation, use the pinyin as a guide and read an example. Then listen to the whole sentence again. Can you explain what happened in your own words?

CHANGE ONE DETAIL AND TELL IT AGAIN

Imagine the interview only ran five minutes over. Replace 十五分钟 with 五分钟 and say the whole sentence aloud. Now think of a meeting that went on longer than planned. How would you tell someone about it in Chinese?

Add a word to your flashcard deck if it won’t come to mind when you’re speaking. Spaced repetition helps you revisit them over time. If you find it hard to tell one character from another, look at the stroke order for one of them, write it yourself and find it again in the sentence.

PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF

Move on to the next course module or spend a few minutes revising. Daily practice suggests what to work on next. You can track your progress and see how many days in a row you’ve studied.

PREPARE FOR HSK 5

Planning to take the HSK 5 exam? Practise with vocabulary, sentences and exercises from this level. Go back to the two examples. Which one tells you how long something overran, and which tells you when it ended?

GET STARTED

Try Chinesimple with the sentence about the match. Listen for 才, then look up a word in the dictionary and save it for your next review. You can do all of this in one app.