{"id":12104,"date":"2020-07-21T23:42:51","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T21:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=12104"},"modified":"2021-06-01T16:07:45","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T14:07:45","slug":"what-important-words-are-missing-from-tocfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/what-important-words-are-missing-from-tocfl\/","title":{"rendered":"What important words are missing from TOCFL?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> I recently published an article where I analysed the HSK vocabulary lists with the goal of finding words that aren’t on the official lists, but that are actually very common. I also identified words that are on the lists, but are introduced much later than would be expected by looking at their frequency rank.<\/p>\n

This week, I have done something similar for TOCFL (Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language), which is the standard proficiency test in Taiwan (read more on the official website<\/a>). The goal and methodology is the same as for the previous article, so I will only repeat the most important bits here.<\/p>\n

I’ve recorded an audio version of this if you prefer listening instead of reading:<\/em><\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/What-important-words-are-missing-from-TOCFL.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

If you’re focusing on HSK yourself or want to read more about the background to this project, you can read the HSK article here: What important words are missing from HSK?<\/a><\/p>\n

This article is about TOCFL, though, so if you’re interested in finding out words you might be missing if you’re studying the word lists for this test, you’ve come to the right place!<\/p>\n

What important words are missing or delayed in TOCFL?<\/h3>\n

To answer this question, it’s necessary to first define what “missing” means. I wrote about this at great length in the previous article, but to put it very briefly, I checked all high-frequency words to see if they were also included on the TOCFL vocabulary lists, and if they were, I checked when they were introduced.<\/p>\n

To make sure that I only found words that are more common than those on the test, I looked for words that were ranked twice as high on a frequency list as they were on TOCFL.<\/p>\n

For example, I checked the most frequent 2500 words to see which were actually on TOCFL level 4, which covers 5000 words. You should not use word lists to expand your vocabulary, but they are useful for plugging holes!<\/a><\/p>\n

Mapping the terra incognita of Chinese vocabulary<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n