HSK 2: Elementary Level

Objective: To communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a direct exchange of information on familiar topics.

• Vocabulary: Learn around 300 commonly used words.
• Listening Skills: Comprehend and follow simple instructions and dialogues about everyday situations, such as shopping, transportation, and hobbies.
• Reading Skills: Identify and understand basic sentence patterns, short passages, and frequently used phrases.
• Speaking Skills: Participate in brief conversations on familiar topics, with the ability to describe personal experiences and surroundings.

HSK 3: Lower-Intermediate Level

Objective: To handle most communication in daily life and work-related situations, describing experiences, events, and providing brief explanations or reasons.

• Vocabulary: Expand to about 600 words.
• Listening Skills: Understand the main points of clear, standard speech on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, and leisure.
• Reading Skills: Read and understand short, simple texts on everyday subjects, including descriptions, announcements, and brief narratives
• Writing Skills: Write simple connected texts on topics that are familiar or of personal interest, and form coherent sentences and paragraphs.

HSK 4: Intermediate Level

Objective: To interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.

• Vocabulary: Acquire knowledge of approximately 1,200 words.
• Listening Skills: Comprehend the main ideas of complex speech on both concrete and abstract topics, including discussions in specialized fields.
• Reading Skills: Read and understand a wide range of texts, including longer narratives, descriptive passages, and informational content.
• Writing Skills: Write clear, detailed texts on various subjects, and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue by giving advantages and disadvantages of various options.

HSK 5: Upper-Intermediate Level

Objective: To understand and express themselves fluently and spontaneously in most situations, including discussing complex topics, and understanding literary texts.

• Vocabulary: Master around 2,500 words.
• Listening Skills: Understand extended speech, even when it is not clearly structured or when relationships are only implied and not signaled explicitly.
• Reading Skills: Read and comprehend long, complex texts, appreciating subtle distinctions of style and implicit meaning.
• Writing Skills: Produce well-structured, detailed texts on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organizational patterns, connectors, and cohesive devices.

HSK 6: Advance Level

Objective: To express themselves fluently and spontaneously, even in more complex situations. They can comprehend and produce Chinese at a near-native level, suitable for professional, academic, and intricate social communication.

• Vocabulary: Know over 5,000 words.
• Listening Skills: Understand with ease virtually everything heard, even in demanding situations or rapid speech, and recognize implicit meanings.
• Reading Skills: Read with ease and accuracy any form of the written language, including abstract, structurally complex, or highly colloquial literary and non-literary writings.
• Writing Skills: Write clear, smoothly flowing text in an appropriate style, creating complex, coherent arguments, summaries, and reviews with a high level of grammatical accuracy.