Placement Tests and Level Tests
John
January 20, 2010, 09:56 AM posted in General DiscussionAs promised, the new testing features are out! You can find them in the "Resources" section, and there is also a blog post about them.
Please feel free to leave feedback here.
go_manly
January 21, 2010, 07:39 AMWhen we see a problem with a question, how do we report it? After all, the number of the question in 'my' test would not necessarily be the same as the question number in someone else's test. I'm thinking of a question on my test that had the 4 options, but the question was blank.
simonpettersson
January 20, 2010, 11:51 AMSeems to me that both A and C are correct in number one. In number two, "tā huílái" and "tā chūqù" seem to both need a "le" to be correct. I guess you could say "ta huílái", but that would be the equivalent of saying "He returns. Please wait a moment". Technically correct, but unnatural.
zhenlijiang
January 20, 2010, 02:12 PMI just took the Intermediate Level Test (scored maybe just a bit lower than I should expect). I guess the virtual graded test sheet still needs a bit of adjusting. Mine showed only the first Multiple-Choice portion in entirety. I really wanted to see the second Multiple-Choice portion as I'd made the most mistakes there but that didn't show up at all, then in the Dictation portion the correct answers were illegible, appearing with the characters piled up on each other vertically. So am still mystified re those sentences I didn't get at all.
I enjoyed the test though. And it's good timing for me, to have a test like this just one year after starting here at CPod.
zhenlijiang
Duh. The Multiple Choice, both portions are showing up in entirety. I wasn't looking carefully. Still seems to be a problem displaying the Dictation answers though, in the Graded Virtual Test Paper.
OK so I've taken the Placement Test now and was placed Upper Inter. I'm not updating my profile though, not as long as Intermediate lessons remain challenging enough for me. I'll just have to push myself to go through the lessons more quickly than last year and start doing more Upper Inters.
By the way I scored exactly the same (percentage) in the Intermediate-level questions in this Placement Test as in the Level Test (Intermediate) that I took earlier. Consistent test results.
John
zhenlijiang,
What was the problem displaying the Dictation answers? The correct answers just didn't display? That's an issue I haven't seen before.
matthiask
John, same problem here: the characters in the dictation test line up vertically instead of horizontally.
IE8zhenlijiang
John, I was seeing a little vertical pile of the characters along the left margin for each answer (failing to line up horizontally is how it looked). I'm using IE8 too btw.
orangina
January 20, 2010, 04:33 PM哈哈！I was about to complain about the test because it is too hard when you can only see pinyin or characters but not both... (I was very good and took the character test without using Mandarin Popup to cheat. It was hard to not use it!)
But then I was placed at a higher level than I thought I would be. So now I say: Most excellent test!!!
But now no more coasting. I am not an ellie anymore. I landed squarely in intermediate, so now I have no excuses and need to get to work.
zhenlijiang
January 20, 2010, 05:09 PMDuh. The Multiple Choice, both portions are showing up in entirety. I wasn't looking carefully. Still seems to be a problem displaying the Dictation answers though, in the Graded Virtual Test Paper.
OK so I've taken the Placement Test now and was placed Upper Inter. I'm not updating my profile though, not as long as Intermediate lessons remain challenging enough for me. I'll just have to push myself to go through the lessons more quickly than last year and start doing more Upper Inters.
By the way I scored exactly the same (percentage) in the Intermediate-level questions in this Placement Test as in the Level Test (Intermediate) that I took earlier. Consistent test results.
calkins
January 21, 2010, 12:14 AMJohn (and team), these tests are really great...thanks!
You might already have this in the works for future tests, but what about incorporating Skritter so that there are some character-writing questions?
Again, thanks for the great resource. Nice job.
go_manly
January 20, 2010, 11:17 AMOK, I sat the Newbie test, and have two questions.
1. tā xiànzài bù _____ jiàn nǐ.
- A. fāngbiàn
- B. zǎoshang
- C. kěyǐ
- D. bùtài
2. tā _____.nǐ děng yīxià.
- A. zài
- B. shénme shíhou
- C. huílái
- D. chūqù
The yellow is CPod's answer.
In 1, isn't my answer kěyǐ the correct one, or am I missing something?
In 2, why aren't 1, 3 or 4 all correct?
Also, it would be good to have the option of having both pinyin and characters. I don't know a lot of characters, so I need the Pinyin. On the other hand, these sentences lack context, so it would be good to see the characters sometimes.
At the top of each page, there seems to be an option to change between Simplfied, Traditional and Pinyin, but it is not active.
simonpettersson
Seems to me that both A and C are correct in number one. In number two, "tā huílái" and "tā chūqù" seem to both need a "le" to be correct. I guess you could say "ta huílái", but that would be the equivalent of saying "He returns. Please wait a moment". Technically correct, but unnatural.
John
While C is correct, it's less likely than A, because it would be saying "he/she is not allowed to meet you," which is kind of strange. Sounds kind of like the parents of a girl telling her bad-boy boyfriend that their daughter is no longer permitted to see him. Possible, bot unlikely.
Our team has had to go over the multiple choice sections of over 1300 lessons' randomly generated exercises, eliminating "extra correct answers." While they do good work, there may be a few slip-ups.
tonyjh
January 21, 2010, 03:37 AMThe tests are great. I think they will be very useful for me.
Most of the questions were fine, but just a few seemed to have issues:
- In the multiple choice section, one of the questions was completely blank.
- On another one of the multiple choice questions, the question was not blank, but one of the choices was blank.
- On at least two "fill in the blank" questions, there was no blank to fill in. The correct answer was already shown as part of the sentence.
I used the pinyin option. I think it would be nice if there was a "convert to tone marks" button available in the dictation section. Could that be added?
pchenery
January 21, 2010, 04:30 AMExcellent work on the new tests CPOD.
I scored zero out of 25 on the dictation section since there was no "convert to pinyin to tone marks" option. Is there a way around this ?
bababardwan
January 21, 2010, 04:33 AMI took the long test and scored 0 out of 25 on the dictation because something came up and I had to abandon the test at the start of the dictation section and shut the computer down.I suppose there is no way to save where you're at part way through a test and finish it off later?
bababardwan
Hey,I've just started to check out the blog and came across this partial answer to my question:
"Partial saving of the test, just in case you get interrupted (answers are saved when you go to the next page of the test)"
..so the question remains ..how would I have saved where I was up to?..was there something I needed to do or if I'd just exited outta there would it have automatically saved it [actually it sounds like this automatically occurs ]..and by partial you mean you can just save at the end of page one or the end of page two? ..what happens if you shut down part way through a page?
John
The test saves your answers anytime you click on a button at the bottom of the page (either "Next" or "Save"). So if you're on the last page, I think it would work to click on the little "back" arrow. I'll have to check this.
bababardwan
Thanks John.That's really cool.I was in a rush at the time and didn't have time to look for a solution like that but it's great to now know it's possible. :)
bababardwan
January 21, 2010, 05:21 AMHey,I've just started to check out the blog and came across this partial answer to my question:
"Partial saving of the test, just in case you get interrupted (answers are saved when you go to the next page of the test)"
..so the question remains ..how would I have saved where I was up to?..was there something I needed to do or if I'd just exited outta there would it have automatically saved it [actually it sounds like this automatically occurs ]..and by partial you mean you can just save at the end of page one or the end of page two? ..what happens if you shut down part way through a page?
xiaophil
January 21, 2010, 06:52 AMI just took the test. Fun! I do think that some of the recordings are a tad on the distorted side. However, I guess people in the real world don't sound perfect, so perhaps recordings don't have to sound perfect either.
zodboyer
January 21, 2010, 07:01 AM第一道题我做错了……现在很多中国人说汉语都不是很规范。
I got wrong in first tast...And now,losts of Chinese can not speak canonically.
matthiask
January 21, 2010, 02:15 AMJohn, same problem here: the characters in the dictation test line up vertically instead of horizontally.
IE8
henning
January 20, 2010, 10:39 AMI love tests.
Curious: Did anyone get to 100% in the long version of the Placement test (without cheating)?