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Learn The HSK levelsChinese

Each band is a published list of words and characters, which makes preparation concrete and narrow, and makes the certificate say less than it appears to.

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5Min read
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What each band is for

The rungs, and who is actually asking for each one

Bands can be sat in any order and skipped entirely, so the only question is which rung somebody in your life has named.

  1. 05The speaking test, at any bandSeparate registration, separate date, and the only part testing output
  2. 04The upper bandsProfessional work, and where the paper stops being about vocabulary
  3. 03The band universities nameThe common threshold for studying in Chinese, and check which standard they mean
  4. 02The middle bandsWhere most learners sit, and where a scholarship application usually begins
  5. 01The first two bandsA few hundred words, and mostly evidence that you have startedstart here

The last rung is not above the others, it is beside them: the HSKK runs its own three band scale in parallel. It is drawn here because a learner reading a ladder of the written exam will otherwise never notice that it exists.

The HSK is a vocabulary scale wearing the clothes of a proficiency scale. Each band is defined by a published list of words and characters, so what the test asks of you is unusually concrete, and preparation for it is unusually narrow: learn the list, learn the format, sit the paper.

Which is worth knowing before you decide what the certificate is for. It is an excellent instrument for showing an institution that you have a stated amount of Chinese, and a poor instrument for finding out whether you can use it.

The examination, in six lines

  • HSK levels 1 to 6 in the long established scheme, with 6 the highest, and it is the certificate Chinese universities and employers actually ask for.
  • the newer scheme extends to 9, restructuring the upper levels and raising the requirements, and both schemes are referred to in current material, so check which one a requirement means.
  • HSK 4 is the common university threshold for foundation and some degree entry, with 5 or 6 for humanities subjects taught in Chinese.
  • listening, reading and writing are the three papers of the main test.
  • HSKK is the separate speaking test, taken independently, which means a candidate can hold a high HSK and have no assessed speaking at all.
  • the vocabulary lists are published for every level, which makes preparation unusually concrete: the set of words you can be asked about is a known, finite list.

Two standards are in circulation at once

The scale published in 2021 restructured the exam, moving from six levels to nine across three stages and raising the vocabulary requirement at every band, and it also added explicit character and grammar lists to what had been mainly a word list. The older six level version has not vanished from the world: preparation material, university admission pages and employers' expectations all move at different speeds.

So the first thing to check is not your level, it is which version the test you are booking is set against, and which version the institution reading the result has in mind. A band number without a version attached means less than it looks like it means, and the mismatch runs in the expensive direction, since the newer bands require more vocabulary for the same number.

The consequence for study is direct. Buy a word list only after you have established which standard it follows, because a list built for the older version is not a subset of the newer one and working through the wrong one costs a whole band.

Learning the list, and passing without being able to speak

Here is the stall, and it is caused by the test being honest about what it wants. Because the vocabulary is published, a determined candidate can learn the list, drill the format, and pass a band well above their working ability, and nothing in the process will tell them. Reading and listening are tested; the standard paper does not test speaking at all.

That is not a criticism of the exam, which does what it says. It is a warning about what the certificate then means to you rather than to an employer. A learner who lets the syllabus define their study will have optimised for recognition, and recognition is the half of Chinese that comes cheapest anyway. The correction is to buy output separately and deliberately, from the first year, because nothing in this system will sell it to you as part of the course. What that hour has to contain is set out in finding someone to speak to, and what to do in the hour.

What the certificate certifies

What each layer of the exam stops, and what walks through it

The right hand column is what an employer or a university will discover about you in the first month, and the certificate says nothing about any of it.

  1. The published word listAny argument about what will be on the paperWhether you can use any of those words in a sentence
  2. The reading sectionA candidate who cannot decode characters at speedA candidate who has only ever met the words on a page
  3. The listening sectionA candidate who cannot follow scripted, clear speechA conversation, an interruption, a telephone
  4. The band number itselfInstitutions having to assess you individuallyWhich version of the standard you were tested against
What the band number is actually evidence of

A figure listing only the left hand column would be an advertisement for the exam. The right hand column is not a failure of the test, which does what it claims: it is a description of what a learner still has to buy separately.

Two things to book and to read

The official sample papers, published by the examining body, are free and they are the only material guaranteed to match the current format at each band. They replaced the commercial preparation book, which reconstructs the format and is usually one revision behind, and that gap matters more than usual here because the standard itself changed recently.

The HSKK is the second, and it is the speaking test, and it is a separate examination with its own registration, its own dates and its own three bands. It replaced the assumption that the HSK included a spoken component, which it does not and never has. It is paid and it is booked separately, and it is worth sitting even where nobody has asked for it, because it is the only part of this system that will tell you whether the vocabulary you have learned can leave your mouth.

The mistake: choosing the band by your reading

Reading is almost always the skill that has run ahead, and in Chinese the gap is wider than in most languages because the writing separates words that speech does not. A candidate who picks a band by how the reading feels has picked by their strongest skill, and the listening section is the one that decides the result.

The honest way to choose is to sit a full past paper at the band you think you want, in one sitting and under the clock, and to look at the listening score rather than the total. If that section is the weak one, the extra months belong there and not in the word list, however much less satisfying that is. The word list is the visible part of the preparation and it is rarely the part that fails.

What the certificate stands in for

Everything the exam measures rests on vocabulary you can recognise, which in Chinese means characters and the words they build, and that machinery is two character words, and guessing the meaning of a new one. The listening section is the one that decides most results and it is testing the hardest thing in the language, which is hearing tone at conversational speed. The speaking test, if you sit it, is scored on tones that survive a sentence rather than a drill, in four of them, and what happens when you get one wrong. And whether a fee and a deadline are the right way to buy motivation is the general argument in turning a vague intention into hours on a calendar.

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