How To Pass The HSK 4 With Style // Top Tips & Tricks (for 2026)

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Today we provide you with an ultimate guide on how to pass the HSK 4, complete with tips, tricks and hugely useful pointers.

To pass the HSK 4, you need at least 180 out of 300 points across three sections: listening, reading and writing, each worth 100 points. That means learning 1,200 words (600 from HSK 1-3 plus 600 new ones) and the core grammar patterns. Most students who have already passed HSK 3 need 3 to 6 months of steady study, finishing with timed full-length mock tests.

The HSK 4 exam is a major milestone in the learning journey of any serious Chinese language student. 

While the HSK 1-3 tests certify modest knowledge of the language, the HSK 4 is the first exam that can show working proficiency in the Chinese language. 

According to the official HSK test body (now Chinese Testing International, which took over from Hanban), an HSK 4 certificate is mapped to CEFR B2. In practice, that means you can talk about a wide range of everyday topics with native speakers.

A HSK 4 certificate can be good enough for many university programs and may be good enough for undergraduate and even graduate degrees entirely in Chinese.

For everyday life in China, HSK 4 is usually enough to get by on your own. You can order food, take the metro, shop, chat with neighbours and handle simple tasks at work in Chinese.

You’ll still want help with bigger jobs, like signing a rental contract, sorting out visa paperwork or a hospital visit. The vocabulary there goes well beyond the HSK 4 word list.

As such, passing the HSK 4 exam is no small feat. Learning all the vocabulary and grammar structures needed to pass the HSK 4 will take a lot of time, dedication, and effort. 

Regardless, thousands of students pass the HSK 4 exam every year, and there is no reason you shouldn’t be one of them.

This guide will walk you through the HSK 4 exam structure and show you how to pass the HSK 4. If you are interested in learning new study strategies and HSK tips, this guide is for you!

Want to practice HSK 4 vocabulary and grammar for free? Check out our HSK Quizzes here!

How to Pass HSK 4 | Understand the Structure of HSK 4

How to Pass HSK 4 | Study the HSK 4 Content

How to Pass HSK 4 | Master the Grammar

How to Pass HSK 4 | Utilise Books

How to Pass HSK 4 | Test Your Vocabulary

How to Pass HSK 4 | Work On Your Listening

How to Pass HSK 4 | Work On Your Reading

How to Pass HSK 4 | Work On Your Writing

How to Pass HSK 4 | Take Full-Length Tests

How to Pass HSK 4 | Understand the Structure of HSK 4

Paper vs Internet

The very first step in preparing for the HSK 4 test is to understand the test structure. This is particularly true if you have taken any of the HSK 1-3 tests since this test will have some key differences. 

Much like the HSK 1-3 exams, the HSK 4 is offered in two different versions: paper-based and internet-based.

These two versions have identical sections, and the difficulty of the questions is the same. 

The main difference between the paper-based and the internet-based test is that handwriting characters are necessary for the paper-based version of the HSK 4.

Handwriting characters can be very time-consuming and hard to learn for most Chinese students, so we usually recommend all students to take the internet-based exam instead. 

With the internet-based test, students can use their keyboards to type characters by using pinyin. This makes it not only much easier to write but also significantly faster. 

The HSK 4 exam does not give you extra time for handwriting. Both versions take about 105 minutes in total, including 5 minutes to fill in your personal details: 30 minutes for listening, 40 for reading and 25 for writing.

On the paper test, the 5-minute gap after listening is spent copying your listening answers onto the answer sheet. Since typing with pinyin is faster than handwriting, you’ll have more time per question on the internet-based test.

Thus, most students will be much better off taking the internet-based option instead of the paper-based as they will have more time to get through each question.

Besides handwriting, both versions of the test come in identical formats. 

HSK 4 Sections

The HSK 4 is composed of three major sections:

• Listening
• Reading
• Writing

Doing well in all three sections can maximize your chances of passing the test, so it’s important to be familiar with each of the sections and prepare accordingly.

Here is a breakdown of each of the three sections of the HSK 4 and the kinds of questions you will encounter.

Listening | HSK 4

The listening section will always be the first section of all HSK 4 exams. 

The listening section of the HSK 4 is 30 minutes long and consists of three parts with a total of 45 questions.

TOP TIP | Unlike with previous levels of the HSK, the audio in the listening section of the HSK 4 will only be played once. 

Part I of the listening section consists of 10 monologues. After listening to each monologue, the student will listen to a statement (which will also appear on the screen or paper) and determine if the statement is true or false based on the monologue.

Part II of the listening section includes 15 multiple-choice questions. The student will listen to 15 short dialogues followed by a question posed by a third party, which will not appear on the test screen/paper. The student will be presented with four answer choices (which will appear on the screen/paper), from which only one will correctly answer the question.

Part III of the listening section includes 20 multiple-choice questions and is very similar to Part II.

The main difference is that the audio in Part III will be significantly longer, consisting of four or five sentences in the form of a dialogue or monologue. Each audio may have one or two questions.

Again, the student will be presented with four possible answer choices for each question.

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Reading | HSK 4

The reading section will always be the second section of all HSK 4 tests, whether paper-based or internet-based. 

For the internet-based test, there will be a 5-minute break immediately before the reading section. For the paper-based test, students will be given 5 minutes to fill out the listening section answer sheet immediately before the reading section.

The reading section is 40 minutes long and contains a total of 40 questions. Like the listening section, the reading section of the HSK 4 consists of three parts.

Part I of the reading section includes 10 fill-in-the-blank questions. For each question, one or two sentences will be presented with a total of one blank. A list of options will be provided, from which the student will need to select the word that correctly completes the sentence or dialogue.

Part II consists of 10 questions. For each question, the student will be presented with three sentences in jumbled order. To score correctly, the student will need to arrange the sentences in the correct order.

Part III consists of 20 questions based on short passages. The student will read short passages followed by 1-2 questions along with four possible answer choices. Note that this section contains twice as many questions as Part I and Part II. 

Writing | HSK 4

Finally, the writing section will be the last section of all HSK 4 tests. 

The writing section of the HSK 4 is 25 minutes long and includes a total of 15 questions in two parts.

Part I of the HSK 4 writing section consists of 10 questions. For each question, the student will be presented with several words in jumbled order. To score correctly, the student will have to arrange the words in the correct order to form a sentence.

Part II of the writing section consists of 5 tasks. For each task, the student will be presented with a picture and a single word. The student will then have to write a complete sentence using that picture and that word as guidance.

There are 300 total points available for the HSK 4 exam, with each of the three sections corresponding to 100 points. That means that even though writing is the shortest section of the test, it is still weighed just as heavily as the listening and reading sections.

To pass the HSK 4 exam, the test-taker will have to score at least 180 out of the 300 total available points.

That means that the student must earn a combined 60% of the available points, but not necessarily 60% of the points for each section. 

How to Pass HSK 4 | Study the HSK 4 Content

Once you have decided that you want to pass the HSK 4 exam, you need to come up with a way to learn everything that the HSK test body (Chinese Testing International) expects you to master by the time you take the test. 

For the current HSK 4 (HSK 2.0), you need 1,200 words: the 600 from HSK 1-3 plus 600 new ones, along with the grammar that goes with them. If you’re sitting the new HSK 3.0 version, the target is a lot bigger.

Check which version your test centre runs before you build your word list.

There is a huge jump from the HSK 1-3 to the HSK 4 test in terms of content.

The HSK 4 test includes 600 new words, which is just as many as all the words from HSK 1-3 combined. 

Although students of this level should have a much easier time memorising words than, say, HSK 1 students, a 600-word vocabulary jump is still quite sizeable.

Please do not expect it to take you the same amount of time to move from HSK 3 to HSK 4 as it did from HSK 1 to HSK 2.

So how long does it take? The official HSK guidance pitches HSK 4 at students who have studied for about two academic years at 2-4 classes a week. If you’ve already passed HSK 3, most students need around 3 to 6 months of steady study.

Can you get HSK 4 in 6 months? From HSK 3, yes: 600 new words over 24 weeks works out at about 4 new words a day, plus review. From zero, 6 months is only realistic with full-time intensive classes and immersion, and even then it’s a big push.

Here’s what an intensive 12-week plan from HSK 3 can look like. On a 6-month pace, double the length of each block.

With that said, mastering the HSK 4 content is a manageable task that thousands of students manage to do every year. 

Here are our recommendations for studying HSK 4 content. Remember that the HSK 4 is a hard test, so you will likely have to take a combination of our suggested routes to be well-prepared for the exam!

Face-to-Face Classes

The traditional way of learning languages is through in-person instruction.

In-person classes have many benefits and thus end up being the preferred mode of instruction for many Chinese students. 

The most popular type of in-person classes consists of traditional group classes. These usually come in the form of semester or quarter courses. Many colleges and universities offer Chinese classes these days, making Chinese group classes accessible to many. 

One-on-one classes, or private tutoring, are another popular way to learn Chinese. Hiring an experienced tutor is a great way to learn Chinese very efficiently since the tutor can create a personalised study plan that addresses the student’s weaknesses. 

Private classes can work extremely well in combination with group classes and self-study, as the time with the instructor can be used to hammer out details like pronunciation and syntax. 

Study Abroad in China

Another highly effective way to learn Chinese is studying in China, Singapore, or any other Chinese-speaking country. 

Being surrounded by Chinese 24/7 is the best way to test what you have learned in class and expose you to many different aspects of the language that you would not otherwise learn in a classroom. 

LTL offers in-person classes in both group and one-on-one settings. We believe immersion is the best way to learn a language, especially when it’s combined with classes with experienced teachers. Our aim is simple: help you live, breathe and dream the language.

We offer in-person classes at our following schools:

• Beijing
• Shanghai
• Taipei
• Singapore
• Chengdu
• Xi’an
• Beihai

We also offer more non-traditional ways of studying Chinese in China, like spending a summer studying Chinese on the Great Wall.

Our more adventurous students may also choose to enroll in our extreme Chinese immersion program, where you will be submerged in Chinese all day, every day.

Online HSK 4 Classes

Sometimes work, family or budget means you can’t travel to study in person in Beijing, Shanghai or Chengdu, and that’s completely fine.

Online classes can be a great way to study efficiently from the comfort of your home without sacrificing quality.

Thanks to video platforms like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, finding the right Chinese class online is easier than ever.

Many universities in China also run online Chinese courses, usually in larger groups.

LTL is committed to offering the most accessible online Chinese classes for our students, which is why we have many options available:

• Flexi Classes is our online platform for students who can’t, or don’t want to, relocate. By pooling students from all over the world, we run small group classes 24/7, so you can join a class with a certified teacher at any hour, any day.
• Fixed Group Classes are great for people who enjoy having a regular schedule. When you sign up for our standard courses (4 hours a week) or our intensive courses (10 hours a week), you will enjoy having classes at the same time with the same teacher every week. We offer two levels for HSK 4 students: HSK 4 and HSK 4+.
• Fixed 1-on-1 online classes are the best option for people who want to maximise the efficiency of their time spent in class. If you have a busy schedule and want to get the most out of your study sessions, there is no better way than to work with one of our certified teachers on a one-on-one basis. 

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

As we mentioned before, passing the HSK 4 is going to require a combination of different study strategies.

A great way to reinforce the vocabulary and grammar structures that you learned in class is to see them in many different contexts. This is where MOOCs come in. 

Most MOOCs are free (or very low-cost), self-paced, and generally consist of a series of pre-recorded lectures and assignments that are made available for students.

The biggest downside is that students enrolled in a MOOC generally do not have the opportunity to interact with the instructor, which is crucial for learning languages.

If you’re looking for a MOOC to supplement your studies, you have many options. 

We recommend starting with Peking University’s Chinese for HSK 4 course on Coursera. The course is available for free and is broken down into 10 weeks.

The entire course is self-paced, so students can choose to watch the videos and complete the assignments at a pace most convenient to them. 

Once you’re done with Peking University’s HSK 4 course, we recommend taking Peking University’s Intermediate Chinese Grammar course on EdX.

The EdX Intermediate Chinese Grammar course is slightly more advanced than the one on Coursera as it is entirely taught in Chinese, with very few English translations.

This course is also focused a lot more heavily on grammar, as opposed to vocabulary, so it will cover different topics altogether. This course is also self-paced and available for free. 

While you can learn a lot of the HSK 4 content through MOOCs, remember that you need instant feedback from a teacher to truly increase your level.

While watching videos can be great for improving listening comprehension, nothing will help your speaking and writing ability like classes with live certified teachers will. 

How to Pass HSK 4 | Master the Grammar

Vocabulary gets most of the attention, but grammar decides reading Part II and writing Part I, where you put jumbled sentences and words in the right order. These are the patterns we see students trip over most often at HSK 4.

TIP💡 A 把 sentence needs a finished action. 我把作业写 (wǒ bǎ zuòyè xiě) sounds incomplete, so add a result or 了: 我把作业写完了.

For explanations and more examples of each pattern, visit our Chinese Grammar Bank.

How to Pass HSK 4 | Utilise Books

Self-study is another realistic way of passing the HSK 4.

If you are organised and disciplined enough, it is entirely possible to pass the HSK 4 by studying on your own. You will, however, need to find the right books for self-study.  

The most obvious choice of books for the HSK 4 is the HSK 4 Standard Coursebooks.

These are the official books authorized by Hanban, so the content here is what most closely resembles the content on the actual exam. 

Note that for HSK 4, there is a textbook for HSK 4 Level A and another for HSK 4 Level B. You should study both of these textbooks before taking the HSK 4 test.

Please note these links are affiliate links and LTL Mandarin School take a small cut of any sales made, with the rest going to Amazon and the lister of the product.

If you strictly care about passing the HSK 4, then you should probably stick to the Standard Course textbooks only.

However, if you’re at an HSK 4 level and are genuinely interested in becoming fluent in Chinese, then you can broaden your horizons by studying HSK 4 level textbooks that don’t strictly adhere to the HSK 4 curriculum. 

Paradoxically, these textbooks can help you pass the HSK 4 by not overly focusing on the HSK 4 vocabulary.

One of the faults of HSK 4 textbooks and HSK 4 courses is that they adhere to the HSK 4 curriculum, whereas other textbooks can teach you relevant words that can help you contextualise the vocabulary you are learning. 

One of the most common textbooks for low-intermediate and intermediate students is A New China: An Intermediate Reader of Modern Chinese.

This textbook is structured almost as a graded reader, where the bulk of each chapter consists of a long text with vocabulary and grammar explanations sprinkled through it.

This is a very effective way of presenting new vocabulary words since it places them in the right context from the get-go. 

Another popular series of textbooks is the Boya Chinese books.

These textbooks are regarded as one of the best resources for learning Chinese as they tend to stick to vocabulary that would be helpful in day-to-day activities as opposed to vocabulary that will only help you pass a test.

If you are studying for the HSK 4 test, you should grab the Boya Chinese: Elementary 2 textbooks.

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How to Pass HSK 4 | Test Your Vocabulary

You should be testing yourself as you’re working your way through all the vocab and grammar structures for the HSK 4.

The road to HSK 4 success is a long one, so making sure that you are testing yourself constantly is a good way to identify your weaknesses and make sure you don’t forget what you already learned. 

Remember that the HSK 4 is a very comprehensive exam that will test your mastery of 1,200 words.

This is very different from studying for your Chinese class’s weekly 听写 tīngxiě (dictation) quiz. 

These are our recommended ways to test yourself as you study. 

Take a HSK 4 Quiz

Take a HSK 4 vocabulary quiz. This is especially important if you’re just getting started as it will give you a clear idea of where you’re at and how far you need to go. 

You can use the results from an HSK 4 vocabulary quiz to create a study plan that addresses all of your weaknesses. 

If you haven’t taken a full HSK 4 quiz yet, you can check out our HSK 4 vocabulary quiz. 

Use Spaced Repetition Software (SRS)

Spaced repetition software (SRS) apps are flashcard tools that schedule each review based on how well you know a word. SRS apps are perhaps the most popular way to test your knowledge as you go.

The beauty of these apps is that they learn how easy or difficult a particular word is for you. Thus, the system will automatically show you the hard words more frequently than the easy words. 

This works wonders for vocabulary retention, as you can create flashcards for all the words that you want to study.

The software will then show you each flashcard until it determines that you have learned the card well enough to not see it as often. 

The popular dictionary app Pleco has a built-in SRS flashcard system where you can create your own flashcard decks or import a pre-existing HSK 4 vocabulary deck. 

Hack Chinese is another great option for SRS flashcards that has built-in decks for HSK vocabulary, and even for popular textbooks such as the Standard Course and Boya Chinese textbooks

How to Pass HSK 4 | Work On Your Listening

Of all three sections of the HSK 4, listening has the most questions (45), and every audio track is played only once. That makes it a crucial section for passing the HSK 4.

Two habits help the most. First, use the few seconds before each track to read the four answer options, so you know what to listen for. Second, practise dictation (听写 tīngxiě): play one sentence from an HSK 4 listening track, write down every character, then check the transcript.

Dictation trains you to catch fast speech the first time, and it shows you exactly which words you recognise on paper but miss by ear. In the exam, if you miss a question, pick your best guess and move straight on, because dwelling on one track can cost you the next two.

Pay Close Attention to Tones

The four tones are one of the main reasons why many students consider Mandarin to be a very hard language to learn.

English speakers may find it considerably hard since there is no equivalent concept of tones in English. 

At the HSK 4 level, many words may sound similar if you’re not paying attention to the tones. For example, we all know and love the city 上海 – Shànghǎi. However, you might come across the word 伤害 – Shānghài, which means to inflict harm. 

Thus, being able to correctly identify the tones is going to be extremely important for understanding those questions in the listening section. 

A great way to fine-tune your ear to the tones is to listen to audio that is below your current level of Chinese.

This way, you won’t have to spend time thinking about the vocabulary in the audio and can instead focus on discerning the tones. 

A great app for this is The Chairman’s Bao, which publishes short news stories from China and categorises each story by HSK level.

Thus, if you are studying for the HSK 4, you should be able to understand the audios from the HSK 1-3 articles pretty easily.

This can give you the opportunity to hammer out those tones before you keep growing your vocabulary. 

Watch Chinese Movies & TV Shows

At HSK 4 level, watching Chinese TV shows starts becoming less daunting.

It’s not going to be easy, and you will probably still miss a lot of (or most of) what is going on, but watching TV shows in Chinese can boost your listening comprehension even if you’re not catching every single word. 

Passive input will help your brain get used to listening to Chinese sounds.

Once you start recognising words and phrases, you will be more likely to recall and reproduce those same words and sentences in your Chinese conversations. 

Check out our guide on the best Chinese dramas for learners.

Listen to Chinese Podcasts

Listening to Chinese podcasts is another great way to increase the amount of comprehensible and passive input that you consume. 

There are many Chinese podcasts that function almost like a small Chinese lesson. You listen to a dialogue or audio in Chinese, and then the host (or hosts) translates what was said in the audio. 

Then there are some podcasts that are geared towards foreigners where the host narrates a short story entirely in Chinese.

TIP💡 | A great example of this is a podcast called Mandarin with Nana, with short stories of no more than 5 minutes each.

These types of podcasts are usually written with foreign language learners in mind, but some of them might still be a little too advanced for HSK 4 students. 

Regardless, the beauty of podcasts is that you can play them in the background while you’re busy with other stuff, like cooking, cleaning, driving, or showering. Getting in the habit of listening to Chinese podcasts while you’re doing busywork can do wonders to improve your listening comprehension. 

You can check out our full guide to Chinese podcasts to find out which ones we recommend.

If you’re looking for even more tips on improving your listening comprehension, you can check out our complete guide to improving Chinese listening skills.

How to Pass HSK 4 | Work On Your Reading

The reading comprehension section contains 40 questions in 40 minutes, just five fewer than listening, which gives you about 1 minute per question.

On exam day, these tactics save the most time:

• In Part III, read the question first, then scan the passage for its keywords.
• Don’t stop on an unknown word. Guess from the context and the radical: a character with 氵 often has something to do with water.
• In Part II, look for clues to the first sentence. It rarely starts with 但是 (dànshì), 所以 (suǒyǐ) or a pronoun like 他 (tā) that refers back to someone.
• If a question takes more than 2 minutes, mark your best guess and come back at the end.

Part III has twice as many questions as Parts I and II, so keep moving through the first two parts and save your time for the passages.

This makes your reading comprehension skills pretty much just as important as your listening comprehension skills.

Here are some ways to improve your Chinese reading comprehension skills.

Read As Many Graded Readers As You Can

Graded readers are books, generally fictional novels, that are written specifically for foreign language learners.

That means that if you’ve passed the HSK 3 and are studying for the HSK 4, you can find plenty of graded readers written using only the 600 words included in the HSK 3 exam.

You might be thinking that you should shoot for graded readers with a bigger vocabulary since the HSK 4 tests you on 1,200 words. The problem with this is that you’re currently learning half of those 1,200 words. 

The most effective way to use graded readers is when your comprehension is at about 98%. That means that you should only be missing about 1 out of every 50 words you read. 

Thus, reading 600-word or 500-word graded readers can solidify what you have already learned and give you many soft skills that you will need to ace the HSK 4, like improving your reading speed, improving your parsing skills, and getting a better sense of Chinese syntax.

Check out our blog on Chinese graded readers to see our recommendations.

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Use Different Reading Apps

Besides graded readers, there are plenty of apps that can help you read at your level. 

The aforementioned app The Chairman’s Bao publishes news articles written using the various HSK levels, so you should be able to read plenty of articles if you are currently studying for the HSK 4. 

Another great app for reading Chinese content is DuChinese.

DuChinese publishes stories of varying lengths in different levels, such as elementary and intermediate.

The beauty of DuChinese is that it comes with a built-in SRS flashcard feature, so you can quickly and easily add flashcards into your study decks. 

Check out our full review of DuChinese here or watch our video review below.

How to Pass HSK 4 | Work On Your Writing

The writing section is the shortest part of the exam, but it’s worth 100 points, a third of your total. It’s also where we see students lose the most avoidable marks.

Part I: Putting Words in Order

1. Find the verb first, then work out who is doing it.
2. Put time words and places before the verb: 我明天在图书馆学习 (wǒ míngtiān zài túshūguǎn xuéxí) = ‘I’ll study at the library tomorrow’.
3. Look for grammar signals: 把 or 被 comes before the verb, and 得 links a verb to how well it’s done.
4. Pair up connectors like 虽然…但是 and 不但…而且 before placing anything else.
5. Read your sentence back once. If it doesn’t sound like something you’ve heard, try again.

Part II: Picture Sentences

Write a short, correct sentence rather than a long, risky one. A clean sentence of 10 to 15 characters that uses the given word properly is the safest way to score.

Check the word’s role first: if you’re given 打扫 (dǎsǎo, to clean), use it as a verb. Then add a time word or adverb to fill the sentence out, for example 他每个周末都打扫房间 (tā měi gè zhōumò dōu dǎsǎo fángjiān) = ‘He cleans his room every weekend’.

On the internet-based test, check that your pinyin input picked the right character, as 在 (zài) and 再 (zài) are easy to mix up.

💡 Pacing: spend about 1 minute on each Part I item and about 2 minutes on each picture sentence. That leaves you around 5 minutes to check your answers.

How to Pass HSK 4 | Take Full-Length Tests

Last but certainly not least, taking full-length tests is a fantastic way to study. The good news is that there are plenty of free and inexpensive official full-length tests available online and in print form. 

First, the official HSK website, run by Chinese Testing International (which took over the HSK from Hanban), has offered a full-length online practice test for a small fee.

Not only are the exam questions and conditions as realistic as possible, but even the writing section is graded. This will ensure that your results from this test can reasonably predict what you can expect from the real test. 

To book it, create an account on the official Chinese Test Service website, log in and look for the mock test or practice section to register for an HSK 4 mock test.

The free mock tests from the Silk Road International Education Center in Beijing are a good way to practise without spending any money.

While these are official tests, they are not handled or administered by Chinese Testing International, the official HSK test body, so the writing section will not be scored.

The book series Official Examination Papers of HSK contains 10 retired HSK tests for each level.

These are official exam papers with questions that may closely resemble the ones you’ll find on test day, and the Level 4 book is good value if you want official HSK 4 practice. Note that these papers follow the current HSK 2.0 format, so they suit exams booked before HSK 3.0 takes over.

Aim for 3 to 5 full-length mock tests under real exam conditions: timed, no dictionary, no pausing the audio, and ideally at the same time of day as your real exam. Once you’re scoring comfortably above 180 (we’d suggest 200 or more) across several mocks, you can head into exam day with confidence!

If you’re not yet getting the results you want, look closely at which answers you got wrong and adjust your study strategy. These are the most common mistakes we see at HSK 4:

• Learning words as English translations only, then not recognising them in a sentence.
• Learning new words without their tones, so similar-sounding words blur together in listening.
• Putting time words after the verb in writing Part I.
• Getting stuck on one unknown word in reading and running out of time in Part III.
• Leaving writing practice until the last week, even though it’s worth a third of your score.

Remember that the HSK 4 is a hard test, but with the right resources and dedication, it is not an impossible test to pass! 

If you have any more questions or would like more help passing the HSK 4, get in touch with us. You can also prepare for your language proficiency exam with one of our HSK courses.

One of our certified Chinese instructors will be able to help you through an HSK 4 study plan. 

If you’d like a more immersive experience beyond the exam itself, you can study with LTL in cities such as Taichung, Kaohsiung and Beijing, where daily conversation helps you lock in what you’ve learned. With a 98% HSK pass rate, we know what it takes to get you through. Find your perfect Mandarin program.

Think you’re ready to step up to the next level? Check out our guide to reaching HSK 5 in a year.

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How to Pass HSK 4 | FAQs

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