HSK 3.0, Levels 2 to 6: what is in each level, and how many words
HSK 3.0 is the standard published as GF 0025-2021, which replaced the old six levels with nine grouped into three stages. This is what Levels 2 to 6 hold in this catalogue.
How many words are in each HSK level?
| Level | Themes | Lessons | Words | Characters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HSK 2 | 27 | 106 | 740 | 494 | characters |
| HSK 3 | 35 | 139 | 972 | 651 | characters |
| HSK 4 | 35 | 140 | 972 | 821 | characters |
| HSK 5 | 38 | 152 | 1,059 | 939 | characters |
| HSK 6 | 41 | 161 | 1,125 | 975 | characters |
| Total | 176 | 698 | 4,868 | 1,780 | all themes |
The character counts overlap between levels, because a character met at HSK 2 turns up again in longer words later; 1,780 is the number of distinct characters across all five levels.
Is HSK cumulative?
Yes. A Level 5 candidate is examined on the vocabulary of Levels 1 to 5, not on Level 5 alone. That is why the map here runs as one road: a learner placed at Level 4 still has Levels 2 and 3 behind them, and the word book keeps every word met at any level.
Why does this catalogue start at Level 2?
Level 1 is the first 500 words — greetings, numbers, the pronouns — and it is taught by nearly every beginner course and app there is. This catalogue starts where that material ends. Level 1 words still appear inside sentences and reading passages, because Levels 2 to 6 are written in the whole language, not in a fenced-off subset.
What does each level cover?
Broadly, in this catalogue's own themes:
- HSK 2 — home, school and the day: family, classroom, food, weather, going out.
- HSK 3 — the wider week: travel, shopping, health, plans, describing people and places.
- HSK 4 — work and study: opinions, comparisons, cause and effect, formal arrangements.
- HSK 5 — abstract and social: society, culture, institutions, attitudes, longer argument.
- HSK 6 — formal and literary register: idiom, nuance, written style, extended reasoning.
The exact list is public: every theme, with every word, its pinyin, both meanings and an example sentence.
How is the vocabulary practised here?
Each lesson takes its words from pronunciation to exam-ready through ten stages — read the pinyin, match word to meaning, choose the English, find the word in a sentence, build the sentence, fill the gap, explain the meaning in Chinese, write from memory, and answer questions on a passage read and a passage heard. Alongside them: 听写 spelling on a grid, 默写 dictation of whole sentences from memory, 口试 reading aloud, and 1,780 characters to write by hand.