Gaokao English study guide
Gaokao English · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
Gaokao English (高考英语) is the English component of the National College Entrance Examination, the exam that governs admission to undergraduate programmes at Chinese universities. It is sat by senior high school students in their final year, and the English score is combined with Chinese, mathematics and elective subjects to produce the total used for university placement. The Gaokao English study guide has 7 sections and about 2,544 words.
01Listening Comprehension: Predicting, Filtering and Catching the Correction
Listening is fast and played a limited number of times, so the skill is not translation but prediction and filtering . In the pause before each item, read the question stem and options and predict three things: the topic, the relationship between the speakers, and the type of answer needed (a time, a price, a reason, a place, a feeling).
368 words, about 2 min02Reading Comprehension: Locating Evidence and Respecting the Text
Detail questions, inference questions, main-idea or best-title questions, vocabulary-in-context questions, attitude/tone questions, and organisation questions ("why does the author mention X?"). Each has a different evidence standard: a detail question must be checkable in one or two sentences; an inference must be forced by the text, not merely possible.
344 words, about 2 min03Gapped-Text Matching: Cohesion Before Content
In this task five sentences have been removed from a passage and you choose them from seven options. The passage is usually organised by paragraphs, and each gap must be filled by the option that is linked to the sentences around it.
376 words, about 2 min04Cloze Passage: Collocation, Cohesion and Word Class
The cloze is not a vocabulary quiz in isolation. Each blank sits in a sentence, and the sentence sits in a paragraph.
345 words, about 2 min05Grammar and Vocabulary Completion: Form Follows the Slot
This part asks you to fill blanks either with a grammatical form (verb tense, non-finite verb, article, preposition, conjunction) or with a derived word (noun from verb, adjective from noun, adverb from adjective). In both halves the same discipline applies: identify the slot, then choose the form it demands.
367 words, about 2 min06Guided Writing: Cover the Points, Control the Register
The prompt gives a situation and a bulleted list of points to include. Markers reward full coverage , correct format and register , coherent linking , and accurate language - in that order.
366 words, about 2 min07Reading-to-Write Continuation: Story Logic and Voice
The passage is cut off and you are given the first sentence of each of two paragraphs. You must write about 150 words in total that continue the story coherently.
378 words, about 2 min