South Korean exam chief resigns over ‘crazy’ English test

The English portion of South Korea’s college entrance exam is so difficult that some students compare it to deciphering ancient texts, while others call it “crazy.”

Criticism of this year’s test was so intense that the senior official responsible for administering it resigned, taking responsibility for the “chaos” it caused.

“We sincerely accept the criticism that the difficulty of the questions… was inappropriate,” said Oh Seung-geol, head of Suneung, adding that despite several rounds of edits, the test was still “not up to standard.”

One of the most daunting questions concerns Immanuel Kant’s legal philosophy, and another involves gaming terminology.

The latter, worth three points, requires students to choose the position of a sentence in a given paragraph. Here are the sentences in bold, followed by paragraphs:

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

Video games have their own reality model, which is located within it and is separate from the player’s external reality, the player’s body space, and the avatar’s body space. (1) The body space of the virtual character, that is, the potential behavior of the virtual character in the game world, is the only way to perceive the authenticity of the external reality of the game world. (2) Like the real world, perception requires action. (3) Players extend their field of perception into the game, including the avatar’s available actions. (4) The feedback loop that allows you to navigate perception and action in the world around you is now one step removed: you no longer perceive primarily through your own body’s interaction with the external world, but rather through your avatar’s interaction with the game world. (5) The entire perception system has been extended to the game world.

The correct answer is 3.

Many criticized the way this question and several others were worded. One user on Reddit called it “fancy smart talk,” while another said it was “bad writing that doesn’t convey a concept or idea well.”

Students have 70 minutes to answer 45 questions. This year, just over 3% of test takers achieved the top score in the English section, compared with 6% last year.

“It took me a long time to figure out (several questions), and understanding the text itself was tricky… (some) of the answers looked similar. So I wasn’t sure until the last minute,” said Im Na-hye, a senior at Hanrong High School.

But English professor Chung Chae-kuan said calling the English test “tough” was a misnomer.

“The texts are not necessarily impossible, but … maddeningly confusing. It’s a pain because it makes the material useless for actual education,” said Professor Chung, who worked at the agency that ran Sunneung and now teaches at Incheon National University.

“Teachers end up practicing test-taking techniques instead of teaching English… If you know the techniques, you don’t even need to read the full text to get a grade,” he said.

Some people pointed out that some passages in the question were taken from books and were taken out of context and difficult to understand. For example, the paragraph above is from Game Feel, a guide to game design written by Steve Swink.

However, others believe the test’s difficulty reflects its intended purpose.

“It measures students’ reading comprehension skills and how well they can handle the material they encounter in college,” said Kim Soo-yeon, a professor of English literature at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul.

She told The Korea Times that the selected passages had a “certain degree of professionalism,” which allowed the test to assess that understanding.

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

Students will attempt to answer approximately 200 questions in various subjects, including Korean, mathematics, English, social and natural sciences, and more.

Many teenagers spend their entire lives preparing for these exams – some of whom are sent to private tutoring centers known as “cram schools” from the age of four.

The Sunneung incident was also a landmark event for the rest of South Korea, as it brought much of the country to a standstill for a day.

Construction work is suspended, aircraft are grounded and military training is suspended to create the best testing environment.

Since the exam was first introduced in 1993, only four of the 12 Suneng chiefs have completed their three-year terms. Although most people resigned due to wrong test questions, Mr. Wu was the first to resign due to the difficulty of the exam.

Additional reporting by Hyojung Kim and Jake Kwon in Seoul

Kant was a staunch defender of the rule of law, the ultimate guarantee not only of security and peace, but also of freedom. He believes that human society is developing towards a more rational form regulated by an effective and binding legal framework, because only such a framework can enable people to live in harmony, prosper and cooperate. However, his belief in inevitable progress was not based on an optimistic or noble view of human nature. Rather, it is close to Hobbes’s view that human beings’ propensity for violence and conflict makes it necessary to establish and maintain an effective legal framework to ensure peace. We cannot count on people’s kindness or goodwill, but even the “Devil’s Country” can live in harmony with a legal system that binds every citizen equally. Ideally, law is the embodiment of political principles freely chosen by all reasonable persons. If those laws prohibit them from doing something that they would not rationally choose to do anyway, then the laws cannot:

(1) Seen as a reasonable restriction on human freedom (2) Seen as a strong defender of the justice system (3) Understood as a restriction on human freedom (4) Effectively enforced to suppress his evil nature (5) Accepted under the assumption of an ideal legal framework

If you have already completed this step, the correct number is 3