I am planning to take the HSK 6 in a few months and, while I do know more than 5,000 words, it seems they are not the right words, as there are still very many in the HSK lists that I don't know. The thing is, I don't want to just study the list blindly, as I find it much more effective to learn words in context as I come across them.

If I recall correctly, Mandarinboy created a programme that would allow you to identify all the words you didn't know in a text by comparing it with your "My Words" list from Skritter. Could it also do the opposite and identify all the words that WERE in a given list, such as the HSK 6 list? Or if not is there another way to do this? Thanks.

Do you have a link to the program you mentioned? It sounds very useful.

I've just had a look in the forums, and I think maybe I was thinking of Byzanti's Chinese reader: http://www.byzanti.co.uk/. Sorry for the mixup Byzanti! Unfortunately it only works on Mac, and I don't have one.

My forum search also lead me to this: http://www.zhtoolkit.com/apps/wordlist/create-list.cgi?rm=makevocabform

It looked like just what I wanted, as it's supposed to give you the HSK level along with lots of other useful info about the words in a text, but I just tried it and it doesn't seem very accurate. I put in this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/chinese_news/2012/07/120724_vincente_china.shtml
and was surprised to see that there were no HSK 5 or HSK 6 words. Then I checked a few words at random in MDBG and found that 台风 and 登陆 were labeled as 4 but are really 6, and 树木 was labeled as 3 but is not an HSK word at all according to MDBG.

junglegirl, have you checked, whether they use the old or the new HSK list, they are quite different. The old one only uses HSK 1 - 4, whereas the new one 1 - 6.

@Roland: I'm not sure, I'll look into it. But I thought the old HSK had more levels than the new one, not fewer?

I just checked on Skritter Vocab list under HSK.

Ok, I guess I'm confusing the "score" (which I believe was from 1 to 11) with "list" or "level" in old HSK. This could explain it; perhaps zhtoolkit is using the old levels.

junglegirl, if you were to borrow a Mac off someone, you could certainly do this with the Chinese Reader.

What you would do, is that rather than adding your Skritter words to the program, you would select 'I don't have a Skritter account' and then add the HSK words in as words you already know.

Alternatively, I'm adding HSK data to the next version, so it would do much what the zhtoolkit does, except with both the new and old HSK.

Thanks Byzanti, but I found a solution I can use on a PC. It turns out zhtoolkit has another tool called Chinese Word Extractor, which can filter by both old and new HSK levels: http://www.zhtoolkit.com/apps/Chinese%20Word%20Extractor/

Good luck on the HSK 6 by the way. I just took the 5 on Sunday, and I felt like it ripped me apart.

@atdlouis: Ooh, really? I may well be aiming too high with level 6, but I like to have high goals to keep me motivated.

Well judging from your character & word count you're more advanced than me. You mentioned you took a Chinese Media course; I'm sure you'll do fine on the test.

Have you done any practice tests for the 6? There's a pretty good book series of practice tests for the HSK out there.

@atdlouis: I'm just starting now to think about preparing (I'll be taking it next March) but I did seek the book of practice tests on Amazon and plan to get it.

@junglegirl that's an interesting-looking tool. By the way your last link doesn't work (due to a bug in this forum software) but the link below has the same link, plus instructions for installing the tool on Linux (which I haven't tried yet):

http://www.zhtoolkit.com/posts/2011/09/new-software-chinese-word-extractor/

@atdlouis (and very off topic): Is this photo for real? If so I'm very upset that I didn't know about it when I was in Zhangye.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=255121214604930&set=a.154326594684393.31547.154045071379212&type=1&ref=nf