So far, new Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi has been implemented smoothly and “orbit” gradually. It also caused a great reflection among the groups esp the students who study in China. That come into contact with the new HSK. Those scholars, experts and examiners who know about new HSK think that the new HSK is in keeping with the actual situation of Chinese teaching and helps to have scientific estimation for Chinese learners who study in China of advanced level and meet the test requirements of elementary Chinese learners who study in China. It can also increase the confidence of the learners in learning Chinese whose first language is not Chinese who study in China and encourage the examiners to learn Chinesecontinuously. This article focuses on the researching background, implementing tendencies and the corresponding relationship of the new and old test scores to interpret the new Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi ( abbr. “New HSK”).

The researching background of the New HSK

The researching background of the New HSK can be concluded into two points. One is the necessity of the self-development of HSK and the progress of language test theories; the other one is the new Chinese test requirements from the new situation of transferring Chinese teaching to foreigners who as international Chinese spreading.

Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) has been implemented in Chinese mainland since 1990 and spread abroad officially in 1991, which in total has 20 years’ history. In the early researching and experimenting period, HSKwas mainly designed for overseas students who were having preliminary Chinese education in China and brought in the conception of communication ability and defined it as the ability for using Chinese under a certain social culture background. The test met the requirements the Chinese learners in the overseas students dominated in China in a certain period. Even so, HSK had not got rid of the theory of structural linguistics essentially about the fundamental assumption for the language ability, whose test questions are mainly to check examiners’ pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar respectively. The HSK guided by structural linguistics emphasizes the check of language knowledge, but lacks the deep and complete analysis and estimation of language skills in practical use.

Meanwhile, taking the opportunity of the First World Chinese Conference, teaching Chinese as second language has entered into the period of Chinese international promotion. The traditional pattern of teaching Chinese as second language has transformed greatly from the unitary to the al-round, from “please come in” to “go out” and from professionalization to popularity and so on. The new situation also raised new requirements for the test of TCSL. During the second Plenary Session of the 7th Standing Council of the International Society for Chinese language Teaching, Xu Lin, director of the Office of Chinese language Council International suggested to reform the HSK itself in the principles of decreasing the difficulty of the test, stretching the test levels in order to meet the requirements of all-round Chinese learning and reform the HSK as an encouraging and stimulating test. After this, the reformation of the HSK has been fermented. In this period, the Office of Chinese language Council kept exploring and carried out new test patterns—— Business Chinese Test (BCT) and Youth Chinese Test (YCT) and self-researched the Standard of International Chinese Ability, which catches up with the CEF.