The HSK Guide to Vocabulary, Chinese characters, and Grammar Points : For all the six Levels of the Chinese Language Proficiency Exam

Text Sample:
Preface:
The [...] (HSK) "Chinese Language Proficiency Test" is a test that, regarding ist status, can be compared to the TOEFL and similar English language proficiency exams. It is overseen by the Chinese Ministry of Education and by the State Commission for the HSK [...] exam in the People's Republic of China. This test was originally introduced in 1990 in Peking with another, earlier format than the current one, the latter of which was launched in 2010 and revised in 2012. It is the latter that is also known as the "New HSK" (_ HSK). The older pre-2010 HSK format was divided into the four levels of Basic, Elementary/Intermediate, and Advanced; the current HSK test format from 2010 has the three following levels, sub-divided into two sub-levels each:
Beginner: Levels 1 and 2.
Intermediate: Levels 3 and 4.
Advanced: Levels 5 and 6.
The philosophy behind this new format was a test that would cover "comprehensive language and communication ability" and would move towards a more communicative approach as the current standard in the Western foreign language teaching industry with ist impacts on textbooks and foreign language proficiency exam formats.
For the Hanban, the Common European Language Proficiency Framework (CEF) served as a strong point of orientation in this, and in 2010 it was stated that these six levels of the HSK exam corresponded exactly to the levels A1 - A2 (Beginners/Elementary), B1 - B2 (Intermediate) and C1 - C2 (Advanced) of the CEF. Criticism put forward by the German and French associations of Chinese language teachers, however, lead to questioning of this statement; for the HSK Level 6, the French association of Chinese language teachers stated that it corresponded roughly to a level between B2 and C1 of the CEF; the estimate of the German association of Chinese language teachers was even lower by being estimated to be roughly equivalent to the B2 level of the CEF. In 2012, the new HSK test format from 2010 underwent some

Muhammad Schmidt was born in 1950. He graduated in Linguistics, Chinese and African Studies, Language Pedagogy and Comparative Religion/Theology, made his Ph.D. in Chinese Studies (Sinology) and post-doc degree (Habilitation) from universities in Germany, the USA and China.
In Korea, South and East Africa and China he gave Linguistic and Chinese Language classes. At first he did this as a Lecturer, later as Associate and Full Professor. The author published numerous research works, textbooks and interactive digital language learning programmes for Swahili, Chinese and English.
Schmidt retired in June 2015 from the active professional life in the academic world. In January 2015 his well-known annotated German translation of the oldest Chinese classic on acupuncture was re-published by Viademica Publishers in Berlin (4. ed., ISBN 978-3-939290-81-0).