<p>Okay...i speak and listen Chinese fluently, but i can't read squat...however i can read pinyin...what is the SAT 2 chinese like? thanks!</p>
<p>SAT 2 Chinese is divided into 3 sections.</p>
<p>The first section is listening, so I don't think that should be a problem for you.</p>
<p>The second section is 'grammar' (it mainly deals with things like word order, idioms, common phrases...etc. This section is presented in 4 systems: traditional characters, simplified characters, pinyin, and bopomofo.</p>
<p>The third section is reading comprehension. The material in this section is only presented in traditional and simplified characters, so if you don't know how to read characters, you will probably have a lot of problems in this section - and note that this section accounts for a huge chunk of the test.</p>
<p>Personally I find taking it to be not very prestigious, as anything below 800 is regarded pretty much as "Bad", since it would be below the 50th percentile. The avg score for all test takers is like 750 after all!!! 50% of test takers get perfect scores too!!!!</p>
<p>That's just because a mad rush of native speakers (like me o___o) takes it and ruins the curve.</p>
<p>I think colleges would take into account your ability in Mandarin and assess the percentiles differently. It would be stupid to discredit an Caucasian who took 3 years of Mandarin in HS and got a 750. I think that speaks way more about his education than the percentile number next to his score.</p>
<p>Some colleges (like the UC system) have a computerized system, so they don't count percentiles against you. A 750 on SAT II Chinese is the same as a 750 on SAT II Biology. But as oasis says, if you can't read characters, you probably won't do very well on Section III of the SAT II Chinese test.</p>
<p>How hard exactly is the reading section III? Examples of the words?</p>
<p>I myself is from China and I'm planning to study in the US.
If there's anything I can do to help you guys with SATII Chinese, please feel free to contact me by email.
<a href="mailto:-------------chenlizi19910428@hotmail.com">-------------chenlizi19910428@hotmail.com</a>-----------------</p>
<p>hey OP i'm in almost the exact same situation, only i can read a little bit cause i went to school in china until 2nd grades so i still have a little basic knowledge of reading. but i don't know your background, becasue if you knew how to read chinese at a time just forgot like most of us, you can pick it up easily, just get a old chinese text book and start flipping throught them and in a month you will see huge inprovements. if you have a vocab of about around 400-500 words you should be fine, that doesn't mean that you will know every word that they test but it would make it a lot easier to figure out the rest of the passage out of context. </p>
<p>you can find practice online that would show you the difficulty of the words, personally, i can barely read the chinese newspaper but i can understand the passage just based on what i had learned a long time ago, and use that to answer the question. </p>
<p>good luck to all my azn friends</p>
<p>I think if you have a decent vocabulary you should be able to guess pretty accurately.</p>
<p>Personally I think Chinese is different from English for there is NO way for you to improve it dramatically in a short period of time. The grammar of Chinese is mysterious and you need your intuition to judge whether a sentence is right or wrong. Cramming for the test is simply useless.</p>
<p>here is a link to all the SAT subject tests... they also provide some sample questions so u have a better understanding. </p>
<p>I can read, write, speak, and listen chinese, so this test is like a easy 800 no doubt. btw, this is my first comment, haha, yay me. ^_^</p>