AP Chinese Practice Test

Nowadays, the amount of foreigners learning Chinese is increasing. And many of them prefer to choose attend the AP Chinese Practice in their high school. So, in this class, I will show some exemplary questions in the AP Chinese Practice Test.

Now, the following is a multiple choice. “64.我只喝茶〔〕不喝咖啡。  A.或者    B.然而    C.或      D.而” (wo3 zhi3 he1 cha2, bu4 he1 ka1 fei1. A. huo4 zhe3 B. ran2 er2 C.huo3 D er2)

Which answer will you choose? Actually, it is concerning the conjunction in mandarin language learning. There are a lot of Chinese conjunctions in the language system. We are supposed not only to learn to write Chinese, but also to figure out the actual meaning and usage of them. So, let’s have an analysis of this question. Apparently, the previous sentence contains one conjunction that is “只(zhi3)”, so the second one must be a collocated one with “只”. What is the collocation on earth? Now, you need to keep it on your mind. We use “而” here to form the collocation. “只…而…” is frequently used in daily communication, which means “do something only for… but not for…”. Besides, let’s check the meanings of other three. The answer A means “or”, which is not appropriate here. B means “while” and C means “or” as well. All these three are not suitable. So far, do you understand it?

The easiest way to learn Chinese is to practice it more and use it more. There is another example for you. “这时兰兰突然在身后叫他，冷不防        。 A.吓了他一跳       B.吓了一跳他     C.他吓了一跳       D.一跳吓了他”(zhe4 shi2 lan2 lan5 tu1 ran2 zai4 ta1 shen1 hou4 jiao4 ta1, leng3 bu4 fang2  A xia4 le5 ta1 yi2 tiao4 B xia4 le5 yi2 tiao4 ta1 C ta1 xia4 le5 yi2 tiao4 D yi2 tiao4 xia4 le5 ta1). This one is mainly focused on the Chinese sentence order. It contains some oral usage of Chinese. “冷不防” means “out of expectation”. As for the question, you just need to memorize the fixed phrase that is “吓了某人一跳(xia4 le mou3 ren2 yi2 tiao4)”, which is equal to “to one’s surprise or amazement”.