Lessons come in units, and a unit ends with a review and an exam. That structure is the difference between having read a lot of Chinese and being able to demonstrate it — which is the same difference the HSK exam itself tests for.
What a unit is
A themed group of lessons with a shared vocabulary and a stated set of outcomes. Its overview page has three parts: the outcomes (what you will be able to do), the lesson list, and the review.
Read the outcomes before starting. Knowing what a unit is aiming at makes the individual lessons stop feeling arbitrary.
The unit review
Between the last lesson and the exam sits a review page that pulls the whole unit together:
- Outcomes — The same list you read at the start, now as a checklist of what you should be able to do.
- Vocabulary — Every word the unit introduced, in one place, with audio.
- Grammar — Every pattern, with its template.
- Exercises — Mixed practice across the whole unit rather than one lesson at a time — which is harder, and the point.
The unit exam
Written in the official HSK format, so sitting one tells you something about the real exam and not just about the unit. Depending on level it draws on five question types:
- Listening — A passage plays, then questions on it.
- Reading — A passage to read, then questions on it.
- Writing — Produce Chinese, not select it.
- Translation — Faithfully and naturally, which are not always the same thing.
- Speaking — The response you would say aloud.
Multiple-choice and matching answers are marked by the app instantly and free. Open written and spoken answers go to an AI marker, at 3 credits each, and come back with a per-question explanation rather than just a score.
Reading your result
You get a band rather than a bare percentage, an explanation for each question you got wrong, and the correct answer with reasoning. The explanations are the valuable part — a score tells you that you failed, an explanation tells you what to re-read.
You can re-sit. Nothing is one-shot and a second attempt does not overwrite the fact that you did the first.
Unit exams vs mock tests
A unit exam checks one unit. A mock test is a full-length paper for a whole HSK level, sittable under timed exam conditions — per-section timers, single-listen audio, forward-only, transcript locked — or untimed in practice mode.
Mock Test 1 of every level is free. Browse them.
Common questions
No. Nothing downstream is locked behind it. It is the only honest measure of whether the unit landed, though, and skipping it tends to mean finding out two units later.