How long does HSK 1 take under the new syllabus?

Level 1 has 300 words and 246 characters. At ten new words a day a first pass takes a month — but a pass is not knowledge: words hold only while something keeps testing them. With review and grammar, two to three months of daily study is realistic.

Should I start with words or characters?

Characters, at the lower levels. Counting over the syllabus lists: the 246 characters of level 1 unlock 884 of the 11,000 words, and the 1,096 characters of level 4 unlock half of them. Every new character combines with all the ones already learned, so early on a hundred characters buys more than a hundred words. Near the top it reverses.

Do I need to learn to write by hand?

Not everything. The syllabus separates the lists: 3,088 characters to recognise, 1,200 to write. Writing is worth more than the exam credit, though — the hand learns stroke order, and through it the structure of the character, after which lookalike characters stop being confusable.

Can I prepare for free, without a teacher?

For vocabulary, characters and reading — yes, the lists, the practice sheets and the pinyin chart are enough. What that will not train is speaking and listening: those need a partner or at least audio. Better to know that now than to find the gap a week before the exam.

How to prepare for the new HSK: a plan by level

The syllabus changed on 1 July 2026, and most study plans in circulation were written for the exam before it. This one is built for the current syllabus: volumes, order and timings all come from the official lists.

Updated 2026-09-05

Start with the arithmetic

How long preparation takes is set by how much there is, and how much there is is known exactly. Below: how long each level’s vocabulary takes at three paces. This is division, not a promise — it covers a first pass through the words, with no review, grammar, listening or speaking. Realistically it runs one and a half to two times longer.

Level	New words	New characters	5/day	10/day	20/day
HSK 1	300	246	2 mo	4 wk	2 wk
HSK 2	200	125	6 wk	3 wk	1 wk
HSK 3	500	284	3 mo	2 mo	4 wk
HSK 4	1,000	441	7 mo	3 mo	2 mo
HSK 5	1,600	431	11 mo	5 mo	3 mo
HSK 6	1,800	413	12 mo	6 mo	3 mo
HSK 7–9	5,600	1,148	37 mo	19 mo	9 mo

Cumulatively that is 5,400 words to the end of level 6 and 11,000 to level 9. The jump from level 6 into the advanced band is bigger than the whole road up to it — that is the shape of the syllabus, not a mistake in the table.

Order: characters before words

The most underrated move early on is to learn characters rather than whole words. The reason falls out of the lists: a word is readable only if all of its characters are known, and every new character combines with all the ones already learned.

HSK 1246 characters→ 884 words fully readable (8%)
HSK 2371 characters→ 1,531 words fully readable (13.9%)
HSK 3655 characters→ 3,221 words fully readable (29.3%)
HSK 41,096 characters→ 5,848 words fully readable (53.2%)
HSK 51,527 characters→ 7,855 words fully readable (71.4%)

At 1,096 characters — the HSK 4 set — half the entire syllabus opens up. Past that the return on new characters falls and the weight shifts to words and collocations.

A day’s work

一Ten new characters, written by handNot “look at the stroke order” — write them. The hand learns the structure of the character, and lookalikes stop being confusable. A sheet prints on A4 with a model character, faded ones to trace and blank squares.
二Ten new wordsA word is learned not when you recognise it but when you can pull it out of memory in both directions and from a gap in a sentence. Recognition flatters you; recall does not.
三Review yesterday and the day beforeThe dullest part and the one that decides the outcome. Without it a first pass through a level leaves a list of words that evaporates faster than it grew.
四Five minutes on tonesA tone is part of the word, not an accessory: 八 bā “eight” and 把 bǎ are different words on one syllable. A tone learned wrong is harder to fix later than to get right now.

What this plan does not cover

Vocabulary, characters and reading — yes. Listening and speaking — no. Both are on the exam and neither can be trained from word lists: they need a partner, a teacher, or at minimum recordings of speech. Better to know that now than to discover the gap a week before the exam.

Grammar has its own section in the syllabus too. Words without it give you the individual characters in a text, not the text.

Start today

Everything the plan refers to is open on this site and needs no account: character lists by level, printable practice sheets, the full pinyin chart and a tone drill.

HSK 1 lists Practice sheets Tone drill How many characters you need

Frequently asked

How long does HSK 1 take under the new syllabus?: Level 1 has 300 words and 246 characters. At ten new words a day a first pass takes a month — but a pass is not knowledge: words hold only while something keeps testing them. With review and grammar, two to three months of daily study is realistic.
Should I start with words or characters?: Characters, at the lower levels. Counting over the syllabus lists: the 246 characters of level 1 unlock 884 of the 11,000 words, and the 1,096 characters of level 4 unlock half of them. Every new character combines with all the ones already learned, so early on a hundred characters buys more than a hundred words. Near the top it reverses.
Do I need to learn to write by hand?: Not everything. The syllabus separates the lists: 3,088 characters to recognise, 1,200 to write. Writing is worth more than the exam credit, though — the hand learns stroke order, and through it the structure of the character, after which lookalike characters stop being confusable.
Can I prepare for free, without a teacher?: For vocabulary, characters and reading — yes, the lists, the practice sheets and the pinyin chart are enough. What that will not train is speaking and listening: those need a partner or at least audio. Better to know that now than to find the gap a week before the exam.