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Chinese Proficiency Samples - Speaking - Novice

Novice Low

  • Given familiar cues and redundancy or restatement, this speaker could exchange greetings, identify herself and name her teacher’ name, and her family members.
  • Responded to questions with two to three isolated and memorized words.
  • Could ask a highly formulaic question (e.g., 你叫什么名字?)
  • Could not participate in a true conversational exchange.

Novice Mid

  • Given familiar cues and redundancy or restatement, this speaker could exchange greetings, identify herself and family members and their age (e.g., 两个弟弟。 七岁,八岁;) and name calendar times (e.g., 今天是星期二;星期三;三月二十五(二十六)号; 2003 年).
  • Responded to direct questions and communicated with great difficulty by using a number of isolated and memorized words and phrases.
  • Could ask a few familiar and predictable questions (e.g., 请问,你叫什么名字?你喜欢美国菜还是中国菜?你有姐姐吗?).
  • Because of hesitations and lack of vocabulary, could be understood with great difficulty even by interlocutors accustomed to dealing with non-native speakers.

Novice High

  • The speaker was able to handle a variety of tasks pertaining to the Intermediate level much of the time, such as family members and what they do (e.g., 我的家有六口人。我有爸爸、妈妈、弟弟、妹妹、姐姐和我。...他 们 都上学。我的姐姐去Salt Lake Community College,和我的弟弟去Lehi chusheng (?),和我的妹妹去小学。
  • Could ask simple questions pertaining to a social situation, such as making inquiries about a party he was invited to.
  • When called on to handle topics or perform functions at the Intermediate level, could not sustain sentence-level discourse by respond consistently with complete sentences or strings of sentences (e.g.,我喜欢中文; 也喜欢; 但是我不喜欢学校。我觉得学校还好。为什么?--  学校很多。我喜欢学校, 可是三年...三级是很多。你学中文学了多久了?--  一年还是,但是,二年,这个年。)
  • Could generally be understood by interlocutors accustomed to dealing with non-native speakers.