There was an old discussion about advanced vocabulary lists in which the HSK vocabulary lists came up. I happen to have these the character lists for the new HSK are available at http://huamake.com/1to6Lists.htm . You can find links from there that lead to the actual vocabulary lists. I typed them in by hand, but performed a number of cross-checks for accuracy. The character lists for the old HSK are somewhat more extensive and are available at http://huamake.com/ABCDLists.htm . The combined vocabulary list for the old test is available at http://huamake.com/HSK_Vocabulary_List.html . There are some errors in this last list because I extracted the raw data from a pdf file and there are errors in the mapping table between Adobe's truetype font and UTF-8. I have fixed most of these in the character list, but not gotten around to fixing the original vocabulary list, yet. Basically, a few similar looking Japanese Kanji and some alternate forms of characters slipped into the mapping table. Anyway, the vocabulary list for the old HSK is divided into four levels of difficulty 乙， 丙，甲 and 丁， but it one list, which kind of fits with the testing style of the old HSK.

The highest level of the new HSK has a vocabulary list of 5000 words, and the old HSK has an 8822 word vocabulary list. As a test taker, the new test is less intimidating, in that regard, but it also lacks words for such things as dragonflys, spiders and uranium, which I think a native speaker would know.

Hm... That is slightly unnerving. I was sent a copy of the new test as well as a word list for it. It appears that my friend sent me the old word list but the new test by accident. If the new test is only 5k words, then that explains why when I scanned the new test, I didn't have that hard of a time with it. The word list you are describing is definitely the list I have. There is nothing wrong with going all out for the old list, but I think I will do the new list first and then just run the old list afterwards...

That is good to know. Thanks.

Hi Mak, I have re-generated the new L4 and L5 lists and uploaded them to skritter a while back. I found your version of these lists afterwards and found that there are a few small mistakes, but not many. It would be good to have the L6 uploaded here as well!

I sat the Level 4 test on saturday, first time taking a Chinese test of any type and no worries at all. Thanks skritter :)

Hey folks,

Someone has already went the trouble of making word lists for the 6 new HSK levels. This should make it easier to get all the lists up and posted alongside the Old HSK on the Textbook page.

http://blog.lingomi.com/hsk-lists-2010/

They're available as decks on Anki too.

Just made vocabulary lists for all 6 levels. You can see them posted in the Custom List page, or at the links below.

I read that the old HSK is expected to be fazed out within a year. This means the new lists will be increasingly important for new students of Chinese. If these HSK lists can be fine-tuned and added to the Textbook page, that would be great.

1 - http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjEn6cWDA
2 - http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjb4aYWDA
3 - http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxih5acWDA
4 - http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxijtKYWDA
5 - http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjx36UWDA
6 - http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxi_2agWDA

Is there any guarantee that these lists are 100% correct? Even the number of words in the lists do not add up - too many... there should be slightly less than the headline number, because words such as 得 are listed twice in the official list.

100% guarantee? No. As you noted, each list is a few words over the official tally. I made my lists from the spreadsheets posted here:

http://blog.lingomi.com/hsk-lists-2010/

A 100% guarantee seems unlikely. The closest to an official source I've seen is the pdfs at the Confucius Institute:

http://www.confuciusinstitute.qut.edu.au/study/proficiency.jsp

Short of counting or copying the words from these pdfs and making your own lists--a grueling and still fallible process--I don't any better way. How did you put your lists together? What if the pdf's themselves are slightly off?

I can deal with my lists being slightly over-represented. At least all the words that should be there are there. It makes sense that characters like 得 are on more than one list, since it has multiple definitions and pronunciations.

That being said, if you have a more accurate list by all means let's use it. My purpose in making my own was having all 6 in one place, and something workable to put on the Textbook page.

By the way, congrats on passing the HSK 4 :-)

For what it is worth, I checked the lists that I put up in the following ways: 1. When a word appears multiple times, I entered it multiple times. This makes checking that the advertised number in the list is reasonable. 2. Each level is a superset of the next lower level. So, I generated the level 6 list first and eliminated words to get to the Level 5, then Level 4 ... The result is that the lower levels have had multiple passes of inspection. 3. I checked the word counts page by page.

My original source was the pdf's posted on a Confucius Institute site, basically photocopies of a book. I have since found the original books at 北京图书大厦 (the Beijing Big Building for Books). The are published individually as the "HSK Syllabus for Level X" and contain the vocabulary list for that level, as well as, a complete sample test, even the recording for the listening section.

Interestingly, there is some variation in the order that words appear in the vocabulary lists between different levels. e.g. At level 6 three words might be ordered a>b>c, but at level 4, they might be ordered a>c>b. When I encountered this, I preserved the order from the level 6 list, which might look like an error in the lower level lists when comparing against the original pdf, but I did double check that the list contents are the same.

It is still possible that some errors slipped through, but I did put in quite a bit of effort to prevent that.

Thank you for a fantastic work compiling those list and making them available for us all! I am very grateful. I have been looking for those lists since I too will take one of the tests. This is most helpful. Sort of like the old lists better so I am still studying those as well even though i now focus more on the new ones.

The books/pdf's are the new HSK syllabus so i guess by definition they are the right lists. I spent days typing out the level 5 list and then deleted half to get level 4, and published these lists to skritter in May. Level 2 and 3 were already there too. So to avoid doubling up efforts, do you want to check my lists word for word and I will check the Level 6 word for word? Nick was looking to mark these as textbooks a while back but wanted to order them according to usage frequency and didn't have the time.

As for words in the exam, I found they were all from the L4 list except for a Chinese name which had other characters in it. The difficulty was similar to the sample exam too.

Ok, deal. Where do I get your level 2 and 3 lists?

I have two general neophyte questions.

First, I'm not planning to take the exam, and I've been studying the "stock" Skritter HSK list for a while now (level 1). If the HSK exam and lists are changing, are there better lists to study? Should I add a new HSK to my study regime?

Second, what's the utility of the HSK exam in the first place? Just as a general question, since we're on the topic at least loosely. For those who've taken it, why did you do it?

For some companies, it is used as proof that you can speak Chinese. Many companies don't bother with this, though. For some colleges it serves the same purpose. For example, I was chatting with a former teacher now friend of mine the other day, and she said her new student wants to go to 清华college. At least I think it is that one. He needs to pass a six for them to consider him.

I am playing around with the idea of taking it, but I have already studied eleven text books. For me, the word list serves the function of patching up holes in my vocabulary. Even with a rather well rounded vocabulary, Skritter has me at 6k roughly with a 90% retention rate, I still only know half the words on the test. I bring that up just to point out that part of the test's vocabulary is just that. It is test vocabulary. Some of these "basic" words I am seeing are words I have never seen before even though I have been studying for a year and a half. However, since the school I studied Chinese at went out of business before I graduated, the last 9+ months of training have all been with private tutors, it would also serve as some form of academic documentation for me.

Since your wording implies you are a beginner, I feel compelled to bring up that all of the teachers I have talked to seem to agree that in the beginning you should stick to one or two series of textbooks. Study the complete series. After that is done, you can use word lists to supplement what you learned. Many students abandon text books very quickly. It may sounds like a great idea since they get to learn interesting words, but there is more to a text book than just a word list.

@Mark - go vocab - custom lists - search for hsk and grab one of the lists. Then when you are on the page for that vocab list, go more actions - export words. I will be loading the two sources of HSK6 into an excel to check for differences and then just go through them all.

@jcdoss- probably stay with the old HSK 1 list. The old lists try to be comprehensive but the new ones are more geared towards a test that assumes a general level.

I had no intention of studying HSK until March this year. I saw that it was available locally, levels were there that I could achieve, and was worth trying something new. The major side-effect is that it kickstarted my Chinese study again which had stagnated for the last 2 years. I wouldn't read textbooks or take HSK if I was still living in China, just learn from real life.

there are errors in both sources of level 6.... misery...

Well, the result is that the level 2 and level 3 lists that I exported from Skritter are both missing about half of the words from the corresponding PDF. I double checked this against the character counts and that seems to be right. The level 2 list also contains 马上 and shouldn't according to the pdf.
My level 3 list seems to be missing 简单，which is in the skritter list, and I didn't find any spurious words in the level 3 skritter list. I only spot checked the items that were in my lists, but not in the skritter lists, but didn't find any errors that way. I could send you the results of the script I used to perform the comparison, if you tell me where you want it sent, but it is too lengthy to post here.

If it's missing half it might be missing all the words from the lower levels.

We might have to do this with a top-down approach - the liguomi list 6 has a column with a number stating the level. After 6 is checked, we can filter and export 1-5. I've checked and re-ordered 500/5000 so far.

Interested to see your script - if you could pass it through spuds747 at hot mails

@Nick, after seeing your note, I started on a similar procedure in checking the Level 6 lists against each other. First, the list I exported from skritter has only a little over 2500 words, while the syllabus contains 5000. After checking about half of the discrepancies I found 9 omissions from my list ( 为期 保卫 修养 充当 可观 啰唆 圈套 威风 廉洁), and two spurious entries in the list skritter exported (复盖 团员) .

I think this implies there are probably about 2 (for checking the other half of the list) * 2 ( spurious entries that are sitting in the list in place of the omissions ) * 2 (for the skritter list being about a 50% sample) * 9 (the number of errors found so far) = 72 errors out or 5000 words, or around 1.5% error rate. I wish the error rate were zero, but I should be able to fix it up in not too long, and that should be easier and more reliable than entering another 2500 words.

@ Mark - the lists from murrayjames on skritter are not cumulative...

i'm at 1800/5000

Does anyone happen to know where in the Los Angeles area the HSK Level 1 test will be given?

I'm unable to find a list of test locations and dates. I thought that Pasadena City College was the answer, but from what I read on thier site they are only offering Level 4 and above.

@Nick, that the lists were incremental should have occurred to me. duh. Anyway, I emailed you some materials that should help produce completely correct lists. (Although, my current opinion is that the errors in both sets of lists are few enough, that it is pretty unlikely to affect anyone's test score significantly.)

OK we now have a 100% correct 5000 word HSK Level 6 list... I will do some more fiddling, use this to check the lower levels, then upload.

I posted the HSK lists on the blog mentioned above (http://blog.lingomi.com/hsk-lists-2010/ ). I've been correcting mistakes as soon as I find them, so if you have found some specific mistakes, please let me know (through my blog page or by email-- blog at lingomi.com).

Hope it's been useful.