South Korea exam chief quits over ‘insane’ English test

The English section of South Korea’s grueling university entrance exam, or sunyeong, is so difficult, some students likened it to deciphering an ancient text, while others described it as “crazy.”

Criticism over this year’s test was so severe that the top official in charge of its administration resigned to take responsibility for the “chaos” caused by the test.

“We wholeheartedly accept the criticism that the difficulty of the questions… was inappropriate,” said Oh Seung-gul, president of Sunyoung, adding that the test “failed” despite going through several rounds of editing.

Among the more difficult questions are those related to Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of law, and others related to the language of games.

The last, worth three points, asks students to choose where a sentence should fit in a given paragraph. Here is the sentence in bold, followed by the paragraph:

The difference is that movement in the game world can only be explored through the virtual physical space of the avatar.

The video game has its own model of reality, internal to itself and separate from the external reality of the player, from the physical space of the player and the physical space of the avatar. (1) The physical space of the avatar, and the possible actions of the avatar in the game world, is the only way in which the reality of the external reality of the game world can be perceived. (2) As in the real world, perception requires action. (3) Players extend their perceptual field into the game, to include the actions available to the avatar. (4) One step has now been removed from the perception-action feedback loop that enables you to navigate the world around you: instead of perceiving primarily through your body’s interaction with the outside world, you perceive the game world through your avatar’s interaction. (5) The entire perceptual system has been extended to include the game world.

The correct answer is 3.

The way the question was worded was criticized by many and many others. One user on Reddit called it “fancy smart talk” while another said it was “terrible writing.” [that] It doesn’t convey a concept or idea well.”

Students are given 70 minutes to answer 45 questions. Just over 3% of test takers this year received top scores on the English section, compared to 6% last year.

“It took me a long time to figure that out [several questions] Understanding the texts themselves was difficult… [Some] The answers seemed similar to each other. “So I wasn’t sure until the last minute,” said Im Na-hee, a student at Hanyeong High School.

But English professor Jung Chae-kwan says calling the English test difficult is a misnomer.

“The texts are not necessarily impossible, but they are… insanely confusing,” says Professor Young, who previously worked at the institution that runs Sunyeong and now teaches at Incheon National University. “It’s painful because it makes the material useless for actual teaching.”

“Teachers end up teaching tricks while taking exams instead of teaching English… You don’t even need to read the full text to get points if you know the tricks,” he said.

Some pointed out that some of the passages used in the questions are excerpts from books that have been taken out of context, making them difficult to understand. The clip above, for example, comes from Game Feel, a game design guide written by Steve Swink.

However, others believe that the difficulty of the test reflects its intended purpose.

“It measures students’ reading comprehension and whether they can handle the level of material they will encounter at university,” says Kim So-yeon, a professor of English literature at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

She told The Korea Times that the selected passages have a “certain degree of specialization,” allowing the test to assess these comprehension skills.

South Korea’s Sunyeong exam, held every November, is an infamous eight-hour marathon of successive exams that not only determines whether people can go to university, but can also affect their future job prospects, income and relationships.

Students attempt about 200 questions in various subjects, including Korean, mathematics, English, social and natural sciences, among others.

Many teenagers spend their whole lives preparing for these exams – and some are sent to special education centers known as “intensive schools” from the age of four.

Suneung is a huge event for the rest of South Korea as well, as it brings much of the country to a standstill for a day.

Construction stops, aircraft are grounded, and military training is suspended to facilitate the ideal testing environment.

Only four of the 12 Sunyeong presidents since the examination began in 1993 have served their full three-year term. While most of them quit due to mistakes in the test questions, Mr. Oh is the first to quit due to the difficulty of the test.

Additional reporting by Hyojong Kim and Jake Kwon in Seoul

Another question read:

Kant was a strong advocate of the rule of law as the ultimate guarantee, not only of security and peace, but also of freedom. He believed that human societies were moving towards more rational forms organized by effective and binding legal frameworks because only such frameworks enabled people to live in harmony, prosper and cooperate. However, his belief in inevitable progress was not based on an optimistic or lofty view of human nature. On the contrary, it comes close to Hobbes’s view: man’s violent and conflict-prone nature makes it necessary to establish and maintain an effective legal framework in order to secure peace. We cannot rely on people’s benevolence or good will, but even a “nation of demons” can live in harmony in a legal system that binds every citizen as equals. Ideally, law is the embodiment of those political principles freely chosen by all rational beings. If these laws prevent them from doing something they would not rationally choose to do anyway, then the law cannot be:

(1) It is perceived as reasonably restricting a person’s freedom (2) It is seen as a strong advocate for the justice system (3) It is understood as a restriction on one’s freedom (4) It is effectively imposed to suppress his evil nature (5) It is acceptable within the assumption of ideal legal frameworks