Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education (hereinafter referred to as the Standards), a national standard in the new era, is the first foreigner-oriented Chinese proficiency standard that comprehensively describes and assesses learners’ Chinese language skills and competence. It is a set of guidelines that international Chinese language learning, teaching, testing and evaluation can base on and teachers, students and experts in this field can refer to. Schools, institutions and enterprises which provide international Chinese language programs can use the Standards as a normative reference.

The Standards is co-proposed by the MOE Center for Language Education and Cooperation and the MOE Department of Language Information Administration and reviewed and finalized by the Language and Writing Standards Examination Committee of the State Language Commission. It was issued on March 24th, 2021 and will take effect as from July 1st, 2021.

The Standards classifies learners’ Chinese proficiency into “three stages and nine levels”, uses four basic elements of the Chinese language – syllables, characters, vocabulary, and grammar – to form a “four-dimensional conception” and verbal communicative competence, topic task content and quantitative linguistic indices to form three evaluation dimensions, and makes Chinese listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation/interpretation the five language skills, to accurately determine learners’ Chinese proficiency.

The Standards is composed of 8 sections – Preface, Scope, Terms and Definitions, Grade Descriptors, List of Syllables, List of Characters, Vocabulary List, and Appendix A (normative): Syllabus of Graded Grammar. The section of Grade Descriptors evaluates learners’ performances from the three dimensions of verbal communicative competence, topic task content and quantitative linguistic indices and specifies the basic performances of learners at each level in terms of the five basic language skills. The List of Syllables, List of Characters, Vocabulary List, and Syllabus of Graded Grammar respectively specify the syllables, characters, vocabulary words, and grammar points that learners at each level should master.