with HSK4 you have a good understanding to Chinese already! but to be able to use it you not only need to know the words, also grammay, expression way etc HSK is more for test, there is still much more outside of it that you need to learn inorder to be able for the daily life converstaion and understanding

Update: now that I am starting to know HSK 5 vocab, I am beginning to understand native speakers on various topics.

the minimum is HSK-6

Honestly the Hsk tests are very...they’re not exactly bad, but they only cover a few very specific registers of the language. I have an HSK 6 certificate, and by itself it absolutely isn’t enough to understand real mandarin (as in, native speakers communicating with other native speakers): it doesn’t include casual speech, slang, or most proper nouns, much less cultural background or anything specialized or super modern..:You can reasonably expect to read newspapers and have interesting conversations if you pass hsk 5 or 6, but there will still be a LOT you won’t know. If you’re interested in listening to the news specifically, I recommend studying that, and listening to podcasts, rather than focusing on the tests.

Thanks! Do you mean poems and articles have a lot of words used in daily conversation?