The HSK 5 Essay Structure That Scores
The HSK 5 writing section is short, but it punishes people who improvise. You get two tasks: write a passage of about 80 characters using five given words, and write a passage of about 80 characters based on a picture. Both reward a writer who walks in with a structure already in their head.
The mistake most candidates make is treating these as creative writing. They are not. The grader is checking whether you can use the target words correctly, build coherent sentences, and stay on topic. A plain, well-organized passage scores higher than an ambitious one full of errors.
This post gives you a four-part scaffold you can drop almost any prompt into.
What the section actually asks
There are two writing tasks at HSK 5, and they test slightly different things.