How to read the CEFR for Asian languages
The CEFR was written for European languages, where an English speaker reads at roughly the level at which they speak. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean the skills drift apart, and a learner can be B1 in conversation and A2 on the page for a long time. Kungfucius's advice is to state your level per skill and to be suspicious of any single letter and number, including your own.
The second caution concerns exams. Only some Asian-language tests are officially tied to the CEFR, and the rest are matched to it by habit, marketing or hope.
How other frameworks relate to the CEFR
- ILR scale: the US government scale from 0 to 5, rated separately per skill; its level 3 sits around C1, and there is no official conversion.
- ACTFL scale: the American classroom scale from Novice to Distinguished; ACTFL has published research that assigns CEFR ratings to its own tests, in that direction only.
- FSI categories: not a proficiency scale at all, but a ranking of languages by the class hours English speakers need, with the target at about C1 in speaking and reading.
How the Asian exams relate to the CEFR
- HSK: the nine-level Chinese test has no official CEFR mapping, and the mapping once claimed for the older six-level test was rejected by European teachers' associations as far too generous.
- TOCFL: Taiwan's test is the most direct fit, since its Levels 1 to 6 are presented by the organisers as A1 to C2.
- JLPT: since December 2025 its score reports show a CEFR level for reference, from A1 to C1, based on reading and listening only.
- TOPIK: the Korean test publishes no official CEFR conversion, and its six levels are usually lined up with A1 to C2 as a convention.
- Equivalence table: all of these side by side, with every row marked as official, approximate or disputed.
Kungfucius's own reading is stricter than most tables for Chinese. He places HSK 4 at a high A2, for the reasons given on the B1 page.
What to do next
Open the level you think you have reached, read its four can-do descriptions, and test the speaking one on a real person this week. If an institution asks you for a CEFR level in an Asian language, ask which exam and which score it accepts as proof.
