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ISTQB K-Levels Explained: K1, K2 and K3

Every learning objective in the CTFL v4.0 syllabus carries a cognitive level - K1, K2 or K3 - that says what the exam may ask you to do with that material. The levels are not difficulty ratings. They are a promise about the kind of question you will face, and knowing which level an objective sits at tells you how to study it.

This matters practically because the three levels fail differently. A weak K1 score is a reading problem. A weak K2 score is usually concentrated in one or two chapters. A weak K3 score is almost always a practice problem - you know the technique and cannot execute it under time pressure.

K1 – Remember

about 20% of the exam, roughly 8 of 40 questions

You are asked to retrieve something the syllabus states directly: a definition, a term, or the members of a list. There is no reasoning step, which means there is nowhere to recover from a gap. Either you have read it or you have not.

How to spot one: The stem asks what something is, or which item belongs to a named category, and every option is a plausible piece of testing vocabulary.

Syllabus verbs: remember, recall, recognise, know

Drill K1 questions only

K2 – Understand

about 60% of the exam, roughly 24 of 40 questions

You are asked to do something with a concept rather than repeat it: say why it holds, tell it apart from a neighbouring concept, or decide which category a described situation belongs to. No calculation is involved, but recognition alone is not enough.

How to spot one: The stem describes a scenario and asks what it is an instance of, or offers four statements about one concept and asks which is correct.

Syllabus verbs: explain, compare, classify, distinguish, give examples, summarise

Drill K2 questions only

K3 – Apply

about 20% of the exam, roughly 8 of 40 questions

You are given data - a range, a set of rules, a state model, a set of historical figures, a defect report - and asked to run a procedure on it and report the result. These are the slowest questions on the paper and the most common place to run out of time.

How to spot one: The question carries something to work on: a table, a model, numbers, or acceptance criteria. If there is nothing to work on, it is not K3 however hard it looks.

Syllabus verbs: apply, use, prepare

Drill K3 questions only

There are only eight K3 objectives

This is the most useful single fact about the K-levels. The apply level - the one that takes real time in the exam room - has a finite and small surface, listed in full below. Nothing else in the syllabus can ask you to compute or derive anything.

  1. FL-4.2.1 Apply equivalence partitioning to derive test cases (chapter 4: Test Analysis and Design)
  2. FL-4.2.2 Apply boundary value analysis to derive test cases (chapter 4: Test Analysis and Design)
  3. FL-4.2.3 Apply decision table testing to derive test cases (chapter 4: Test Analysis and Design)
  4. FL-4.2.4 Apply state transition testing to derive test cases (chapter 4: Test Analysis and Design)
  5. FL-4.5.3 Use acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) to derive test cases (chapter 4: Test Analysis and Design)
  6. FL-5.1.4 Apply estimation techniques to calculate the required test effort (chapter 5: Managing Test Activities)
  7. FL-5.1.5 Apply prioritization to create a test execution schedule (chapter 5: Managing Test Activities)
  8. FL-5.5.1 Prepare a defect report (chapter 5: Managing Test Activities)

Five of the eight sit in chapter 4, which is already the heaviest chapter on the paper. That concentration is worth exploiting: drill K3 chapter 4 questions on their own.

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