Study your HSK vocabulary

Study the vocabulary you could be tested on in your next HSK with our interactive lists. Explore the characters, sounds and meaning of each item.

Find an item

Navigate to the vocabulary list for the HSK level that you are working towards (see here if you are unsure) and find the item you want.

For example, for the last item here you can see the characters 开心, click to hear the pronunciation, see the Pinyin transcription, the part of speech, an English translation and which HSK or YCT level the item is introduced in.

Explore an item

To explore an item further, simply click to open it:

At the top you see the information from the list repeated.

You can add or remove a bookmark to this item in the top right corner.

Underneath there are example sentences in characters, with audio, Pinyin transcription and English translation. The vocabulary item is highlighted in both the Chinese characters and the Pinyin.

Below the sentences each different character in the word is highlighted along with its pronunciation. If the character also appears in the HSK and YCT lists as a word on its own, its English meaning is given and the level in which it first appears as a word. Otherwise, “only used in compound words” is shown.

Explore the characters

Click on a character here (or on a single character word in the vocabulary list) to explore the character:

There are 3 tabs here. The right tab, beneath the meaning in English (example shown above), gives:

• Example sentences in characters, with audio, Pinyin transcription and English translation. The character is highlighted in both the Chinese characters and the Pinyin.

• Compound words in the HSK and YCT vocabulary lists which contain the character. These words are clickable for further exploration.

The middle tab, beneath the Pinyin transcription, highlight the pronunciation of the character. The colours draw attention to the tone (red = 1, yellow = 2, green = 3, blue = 4, grey = neutral). Other characters in the HSK and YCT vocabulary lists which have the same or similar pronunciation are also shown.

The left tab, beneath the character, shows details of the character itself:

• The number of strokes and an animation of the strokes in order

• Component parts of the character, and which other characters share the same components

These interactive features can help you to remember the vocabulary by connecting new material to things you already know; to disambiguate similar items; and to better understand words and characters by seeing how they are used.