HSK 4 is the level that gets written into requirements. It is the one named most often by universities teaching in Chinese and by employers who need Chinese used rather than mentioned — which means that for a lot of candidates this is the first HSK that has to be passed rather than merely attempted.
HSK 4 at a glance
- New words
- 1,000
- Grammar points
- 76
- Lessons
- 98
- Units
- 20
- Exam length
- 95min
A thousand new words on top of roughly 2,200 already — so an HSK 4 candidate is carrying around 3,200. That is the point at which vocabulary stops being a list you can audit and becomes something you maintain.
What the paper asks
HSK 4 四级
- Questions
- 100
- Testing time
- 95 min
- Plus admin
- 10 min
- Sections
- 3
- 听力Listeningaudio
Dialogues and monologues at close to natural speed, four options each.
- 阅读Reading
Word-bank cloze, paragraph ordering, and passages with comprehension questions.
- 书写Writing
Build sentences from given words, and write a sentence about a picture using a prompt word.
The listening audio is played once, for the whole room. You cannot pause it, replay it, or go back to a question after its recording has finished — which is why practice under the clock matters more at HSK 4 than any amount of extra vocabulary.
What is actually hard at this level
- Natural speed, with no concessions — HSK 4 listening is close to how people actually talk: elision, filler, and sentences that restart. There is no slow-and-clear register any more, and the recording still plays once.
- Paragraph ordering — You are given several sentences and must put them into a coherent paragraph. It tests cohesion — connectives, pronoun reference, the logic of 先/然后/于是 — which is a thing most self-taught learners have never deliberately studied.
- Writing a sentence to a picture — You get an image and a word, and must produce a sentence that uses the word and fits the image. It is the first genuinely open-ended production task in the HSK, and there is more than one right answer, which paradoxically makes it harder.
- The 40-minute reading section — Forty questions in forty minutes, including passages. This is where the paper is won or lost, and the failure mode is reading every word of every passage rather than reading the questions first.
How to prepare for it
- Read the questions before the passage — Always, at this level and above. You are not reading for pleasure or even comprehension; you are locating four specific facts. Reading the passage first and then hunting is how candidates run out of time.
- Work the course in order — The HSK 4 course is 98 lessons across 20 units. HSK 4 grammar is mostly about joining ideas rather than forming them, so the lessons build on each other more than at lower levels.
- Listen to things not made for learners — Graded audio has done its job by now. Use the listening studio for structure and then add something authentic — the gap between graded and real is exactly the gap HSK 4 tests.
- Write 90 seconds of opinion, then rewrite it — Say it, then write the same idea down, then improve the written version. Opinion and narration are the two registers HSK 4 asks for, and both are production skills that reading will not build.
- Drill near-synonyms deliberately — The four-option format lives on them. Words that share a gloss in English but not a context in Chinese are the single most reliable source of lost marks from here upward.
Why HSK 4 is the one people ask for
HSK 4 is roughly where a person becomes usable in Chinese: able to follow a meeting, read a notice, and explain a problem without the other party having to slow down. That is why it recurs in requirement lists for degree programmes taught in Chinese and in the language component of work-permit assessments.
The important caveat: thresholds are set by the individual institution and often by the individual programme, and they change. HSK 4 being commonly asked for is not the same as HSK 4 being sufficient for the thing you want. Check the actual requirement, in writing, from the body that will decide.
Registering and sitting it
Which HSK should you sit?
Pick the level you are considering. You will get what the paper asks of you, what the syllabus behind it contains, and what the certificate is typically used for — before you pay a registration fee.
Not sure where you stand? The grammar placement check puts you on a band in a few minutes, and every level above has one free mock paper you can sit without an account.
Registration, fees, dates and the list of test centres are handled by CTI, not by us. Source: www.chinesetest.cn.
Common questions
HSK 4 is reported out of 300 across listening, reading and writing, with 180 the conventional pass. Institutions that require HSK 4 frequently require a score above the pass mark as well — 210 and 240 both appear — so read the requirement rather than assuming a pass is enough.