HSK 4 vocabulary

How many words do you need for HSK 4?

Under HSK 2.0 the cumulative word counts are 150, 300, 600, 1,200, 2,500 and 5,000. HSK 4 needs 1,200, so you should know the 600 words of HSK 1–3 well and add about 600 new words from the list on this page.

The HSK 4 paper has no pinyin, so learn each word with its characters: read it on sight, recognise it by ear, and be able to write the common ones for the writing section.

Learn with spaced-repetition flashcards (SRS)

Spaced-repetition flashcards bring a word back just before you forget it: words you know well come back rarely, words you miss come back soon. Your review time goes to your own hard words.

A sustainable pace is 20 new words a day: the 600 new HSK 4 words take about 30 days for a first pass, and the rest is review. Each card should include an example sentence and audio, because HSK 4 listening is played only once and you need to recognise words instantly.

Once a week, check yourself in the dictionary on the words you are unsure about to see their usage and examples.

Use Sino-Vietnamese readings, but watch for false friends

For Vietnamese speakers many HSK 4 words share a Sino-Vietnamese reading with a Vietnamese word, which makes the meaning easy to guess: 复杂 fùzá (phức tạp – complicated), 讨论 tǎolùn (thảo luận – discuss), 态度 tàidu (thái độ – attitude), 经验 jīngyàn (kinh nghiệm – experience).

Some words, though, are misleading when read the Sino-Vietnamese way:

• 仔细 zǐxì (tử tế) means careful, thorough, not kind as tử tế does in Vietnamese.
• 理解 lǐjiě (lý giải) means understand, not explain.
• 安排 ānpái (an bài) means arrange or schedule, not fate.
• 大夫 dàifu (đại phu) is a colloquial word for doctor.
• Lower-level words trip people up too: 便宜 piányi (tiện nghi) means cheap; 工作 gōngzuò (công tác) means work or job.

Learn by topic, with measure words and separable verbs

Topic sets stick better than alphabetical lists. Hanzi Pass groups words into topics such as daily life, office, factory, study abroad, travel and health.

Learn each noun with its measure word. HSK 4 adds many, such as 份 fèn (一份工作 – a job), 座 zuò (一座桥 – a bridge), 棵 kē (一棵树 – a tree), 篇 piān (一篇文章 – an article), 趟 tàng (去一趟 – make a trip) and 遍 biàn (再说一遍 – say it again).

Separable verbs (离合词) are a classic trap in sentence building. Words like 毕业 bìyè (graduate), 散步 sànbù (take a walk), 报名 bàomíng (sign up) and 加班 jiābān (work overtime) do not take a direct object: say 大学毕业 or 从大学毕业, not 毕业大学. Elements such as 了, 过 or a duration can go in the middle: 散了一会儿步 – took a short walk.

Common trap: 的, 得 and 地

All three are pronounced as a light de, so they are easy to mix up in the writing section. Tell them apart by position:

• 的 comes before a noun: 我的书 – my book, 很重要的事 – a very important matter.
• 地 comes before a verb and turns an adjective into an adverbial: 认真地学习 – study conscientiously.
• 得 comes after a verb and links it to a degree complement: 他说得很好 – he speaks very well.

HSK 4 vocabulary under HSK 3.0

From 13 December 2026, HSK moves to the HSK 3.0 standard (per secondary sources). The new exams are written against the new exam syllabus (考试大纲), in which HSK 4 requires about 2,000 cumulative words (the exact figure quoted is 1,978), far more than the 1,200 of HSK 2.0.

Do not confuse this with the GF0025-2021 standard, which lists 500, 772, 973 and 1,000 new words for levels 1–4 (3,245 cumulative by level 4); the exams follow the syllabus list. If you test before the switch, study the HSK 2.0 list on this page; if after, read HSK 3.0 vs HSK 2.0 and browse the new lists under vocabulary. When you know most of the words, try an HSK 4 mock test.

Frequently asked questions