I checked my chinese vocabulary at hsklevel since I'm going to start preparing for TOCFL and I'm extremely pleased with the results! First of all, to make sure I can get a more accurate result but I took the test until I finished 150 words. I actually took it twice because my internet died the first time and I had to take it all over again!

I know 6750 words in Chinese:

Old HSK 2.0 level 4/6

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New HSK 3.0 level 4/9

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You can see on the graph my result was slightly under 6000 words at the beginning of 2026, when I started only answerimg words known IF I knew both the hanzi and pronunciation. So I have learned 750-1000 words (known in reading AND speaking) since then wooh!

I am excited seeing words known go up on this. Now this is words I can confidently say I know in reading and listening.

Back when I was focusing on reading, it was exciting seeing the number go up too. You can see at my height of reading I could recognize around 16,000 words. 8,000 words is the last result I got when I answered yes if I could simply read a word (not necessarily know the pronunciation), after not reading for months. So I think 8000 words is my reliable reading level of vocabulary. Even if I take breaks.

I did the HSKlevel.com test again. To get an estimate of where I am right now. When I answered the questions with ''yes I know the word" if I could read it and recognize it in reading, and pronounce it, I got around ~8000 words.

But I wanted to also establish an estimate of words I know only from sound. So I went through the test again, and only marked "yes" the words I could recognize from the pronunciation only. The result is interesting, as it gave me the estimate ~5250 words known (from listening). This is right in line with where Dreaming Spanish roadmap would put me: 5000+ words known once you reach Level 5. I'm in Level 5 for Mandarin (double the DS Roadmap so instead of 600 hours, after 1200 hours for level 5).

My key takeaway, is that apparently my listening skills still needed the recommended hours (so far). My prior reading-only practice did not significantly speed up my acquisition for recognizing words in listening. (My reading experience DID make more interesting stuff comprehensible input though, so I didn't have to use beginner-learner materials nearly as much as someone with no prior reading experience). And the 547 prior hours of listening I had in Mandarin, from listening-reading, DID contribute to my listening skills.

(There's probably an angle to explore there, of if you do listening-reading as ALL of your study time if both improve at similar rates, or if you end up leaning on one skill and still need to practice the other skill on it's own... my gut guess is that reading can develop alongside listening for a while, but eventually the listening-reading practice would primarily be reading practice and you'd tune out the listening. Based on my own experience practicing each skill. Even the Listening Reading Method, which I researched, includes a step of just listening to audio totally on it's own, I would guess to practice listening without the text as an aid to parse the sounds.)

My Chinese level statistics

I know 5250 words in Chinese

HSK level 4/6

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New HSK level 3/9

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