My First Attempt at the TOCFL Exam
A detailed write-up of my experience, and thoughts on the CAT format
On April 13th I took the TOCFL (Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language) Listening & Reading exam at the Chinese Culture University in Da’an, Taipei City.
The TOCFL is a Mandarin Chinese exam administered by the Taiwan authorities.
I booked the exam a month or two prior, having never taken a TOCFL exam before.
Goal
Despite exclusively speaking Mandarin Chinese with my wife at home, and with my colleagues at work for many years, which in my opinion has brought my everyday speaking level up closer to TOCFL Level 5, my goal was to achieve Level 4 due to my slow reading speed and lack of exposure to the very formal and academic kind of Chinese used in many of the higher level TOCFL exam questions that I don’t often encounter in real life situations or even during meetings at work.
Below is a chart I made roughly comparing the TOCFL to HSK 3.0 and HSK 2.0.
Preparation
Having never studied Chinese at a school, and being completely self taught, I decided to prepare for the exam in the same way I had learnt Chinese previously, with apps.
Flashcards
My main worry was that my character recognition and speed of recognition was not fast enough, so I signed up for the 21 day free trial of Hack Chinese. It is essentially a slightly fancier version of Anki and Pleco flashcards with tons of pre-assembled lists. In my opinion, the example sentences are weird (and not always available in Traditional Chinese), the definition order is often not sorted from most common to least common and the dictionary search is poor, but the platform’s value for me lies in its progress tracking. For example, I marked thousands of words that I already knew as assumed, then added the TOCFL Level 4 word list to my queue, which enabled me to see how many of the TOCFL Level 4 words I already knew, and how many I had left. The queue would then add some new TOCFL Level 4 words to my daily sessions automatically. I personally think this is a terrible way to learn normally, but since I already knew the definitions of most of the TOCFL Level 4 words, and only needed to force myself to remember the characters, it seemed to work well for me.
Throughout the month and a half before the exam I didn’t actually have much time to study with Hack Chinese, because we just bought a new apartment and I was busy decorating up until the exam date, so when the exam came, there were still over a thousand words in the TOCFL Level 4 word list that I wouldn’t be able to recognize according to Hack Chinese. This would come to bite me later on during the exam…
Podcasts
I also listened to a lot of podcast episodes, primarily from Dashu Mandarin and Learn Taiwanese Mandarin. Learn Taiwanese Mandarin is a better podcast for learning Chinese in my opinion, because the host goes over the vocabulary and explains the content more, but I think it is too basic for me. I can probably understand around 99.9% of the content in an average Learn Taiwanese Mandarin episode, so it was an excellent form of comprehensible input, but I wasn’t really learning anything new. Dashu Mandarin is more suited to my current level, and introduced me to a lot of vocabulary that isn’t often used in the Taiwan Area, but for some reason is still on the TOCFL exams. My critique of Dashu Mandarin is that there are too many episodes interviewing other foreigners who can speak Chinese, and although the guests speak very well, their accents are often worse than mine, and I don’t want to hurt my current accent, which often gets me mistaken for someone who went to school here in China.
Graded Readers
The third resource I used to prepare was Du Chinese. I personally think the Upper Intermediate and Advanced grades on Du Chinese are roughly equivalent to the kind of content you will see on the Band B of the TOCFL exam, which covers Level 3 and Level 4. Reading is my weak area, so reading the Advanced grade on Du Chinese is quite a challenge. Due to decorating my new apartment, I didn’t actually get much time to spend on Du Chinese, but I am very happy with the platform so far.
Mock Exams
I also completed two Band B mock exams, and passed with a Level 4 grade. A couple of days before my exam I realised there was a CAT mock exam, which seems to be new. CAT (Computerised Adaptive Test) is a type of TOCFL exam that adjusts the difficulty of the questions based on your answers to the previous questions, and decides your level at the end. The advantage of this type of exam is that no matter what level you are, you sign up for the same exam, and you don’t even need to know what level you are before you sign up. My April 13th scheduled exam was a CAT exam.
The Exam
Location and Exam Room
My exam was at the School of Continuing Education, Chinese Culture University in Da’an District at 10:00 on April 13th, 2024. I got there early at the instruction of the TOCFL website, but was told that I couldn’t check in or enter the exam room until 10:00 anyway so I just waited downstairs. When the time came, I went up to the third floor and queued up to sign in. The full English and Chinese names of everyone who was taking the exam were printed on a large poster for everyone to see, which I felt was weird, but did give me an opportunity to roughly estimate the ethnicity breakdown of the other test takers. In my classroom, it seemed around 80 to 90% of the test takers were Vietnamese, and the rest were mostly Japanese, with the exception of myself and two non-ethnically Asian women.
The classroom floor was very squeaky and the TOCFL staff were constantly walking around during the exam making a lot of noise, which was quite distracting. Other test takers leaving when they finished their exam was also very loud, as they almost all dragged their chairs across the floor when tucking them in. Overall it was not a good environment to focus in and next time I may ask if I can use ear plugs during the exam.
The CAT Format
My exam used the CAT format, so the exam difficulty was adjusted based on my answers to the previous questions. Personally I think this format makes the exam much harder and produces less accurate scores. When I started the exam I felt like the first few questions were Band B, but after I got them correct, I was given question after question of what felt like Band C. After I likely got many of the Band C questions wrong, instead of giving me Band B questions again, which are easy for me, I think the system gave me a few Band A questions. After getting the Band A questions right, I felt like I was getting Band B questions again, but then suddenly the system gave me what felt like Band C questions once more, and the cycle would continue throughout the exam. All in all, I felt like I hardly answered any Band B questions, which was the band I was trying to pass. Due to all the Band C questions I was answering, I spent a lot of time and energy reading multi-paragraph texts, which I felt hurt me later on in the exam when I was answering questions relevant to my ability. Unfortunately it seems that most of the TOCFL exams available in Taiwan are using the CAT format.
My Mistake
Despite going to the bathroom 20 minutes before the exam, I was desperate to go again about 10 minutes into the reading section, which was a big distraction and also caused me to guess on the last 3 or 4 questions because I needed the exam to be over. I wish there was a short bathroom break between the listening and reading sections. Next time I take the TOCFL I will not drink anything for a few hours before the exam.
My Result
At the end of the CAT exam, your score and level is shown on screen. I got 550 on listening and 560 on reading. To pass Level 4 I needed 555 for listening and 570 for reading, I was 5 points off on the listening section and 10 points off on the reading section, so unfortunately I only passed Level 3. I think I probably would have got the required points for passing Level 4 on the reading section if I didn’t guess on the last few questions due to needing the bathroom, but the missing 5 points on the listening section would still have held me back so it is not an excuse for failing to attain Level 4.
Next Steps
My next TOCFL exam, which also uses the CAT format, is on May 18th, 2024. I will once again try to get TOCFL Level 4. Following this CAT exam, I also have a Band C speaking and a Band C writing TOCFL exam scheduled for May 19th, 2024. Ideally I would have liked to have taken the Band B speaking and writing tests, but there aren’t any available for sign up at the moment so I will take the Band C tests first. I stand a small chance of passing the Band C speaking test, because my speaking in Chinese is excellent and my accent is very native-like, but I will likely fail the Band C writing test.