What to study after HSK6?

I am slowly approaching a situation where I have completed the HSK6 word list and I wonder what next? What word list would you recommend to someone that has gone through HSK1 - HSK6 (+ some special lists)? Or should I try to add traditional characters to my learning set, so far I have only studied simplified

First off, congratulations. That’s awesome. :boom: My advice would be to continue reviewing HSK6, and then make a custom deck of words you pick up while reading/watching stuff, and personalize your vocabulary around things you’re interested in so you can talk about your passions in Chinese.

6 Likes

Gwilym has the best advice.

But if you still want to proactively study/acquire more general-use vocabulary, you could check out the TOCFL lists. By the top level, they contain ~3000 more words than HSK. In practice, I’ve noticed when The Chairman’s Bao uses a word that isn’t in the HSK, quite often the word will be covered by the TOCFL (for example, the article I just read had 12 non-HSK words, but 7 or 8 of those were in the TOCFL).

4 Likes

New or old HSK 6? Because as someone who sat and passed the new HSK 6 its basically a walk in the park compared to the old HSK. I would study the old HSK decks as they’re much more challenging

3 Likes

@tkoola haven’t gotten to a full HSK6 level yet, but most of my lists don’t come from Skritter anymore anyway, they are almost all custom lists.

I make them from new words acquired from: a) daily study of app subscriptions such as Du Chinese or Chinese Pod etc., b) correspondence via Line, Wechat or FB messages with friends in PRC and Taiwan, c) general reading online or from texts. I label the lists accordingly. Adding words from my actual Chinese life makes the characters more memorable because I associate them with things I have actually experienced.

BTW, I think it is a great idea to start studying traditional characters. I have always selected studying both at the same time, and I find learning traditional first makes learning simplified much easier (which is why I wish Skritter would offer this as an option when introducing new characters.)

This is because traditional characters have more components that usually make more sense of the word by introducing history and other ideas for making great mnemonics, while simplified characters are often so reduced there is much to go on, in terms of mnemonics.

However if you are at HSK6, you won’t have any trouble adding traditional at this point.

I’m with @Gwilym here. There’s a certain merit to focusing on vocabulary lists while you build basic vocabulary, as that makes sure you learn the most useful vocabulary first. However, the merit of using word lists created by other people decreases drastically the more advanced your level it is, and I would say you are definitely in the realm where listening and reading should be the main source of new words.

2 Likes