Grueling South Korean English exam
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South Korea exam chief quits over 'insane' English test | BBC New (12/12/25)
AntC remarks:
That example question read out in the first few minutes made no sense to me, at first hearing. (I suppose in a written exam you’re allowed to pore over it.)
BBC News observes:
The English section of South Korea's gruelling college entrance exam, or Suneung, is notoriously difficult, with some students comparing it to deciphering an ancient script, and others calling it "insane". But, the criticism around this year's test was so intense that the top official in charge of administering it resigned to take responsibility for the "chaos" it caused. "We sincerely accept the criticism that the difficulty of questions… was inappropriate," said Suneung chief Oh Seung-geol, adding that the test "fell short" despite having gone through several rounds of editing. Among the most daunting questions are one on Immanuel Kant's philosophy of law and another involving gaming jargon.
I wonder what Language Log readers and South Korean academics make of it.
Selected readings
- "I.SEOUL.U" (11/15/)
- "K-pop English" (11/17/15)
jhh said,
December 14, 2025 @ 10:20 am
As I watched the video, I wondered why the exam is still so anxiety provoking… I get the impression that in Japan, it is no longer the do-or-die moment that it once was. Both countries have a very low birth rate, leading to less pressure to compete for entrance… Then the professor in the video acknowledged the declining birth rate in Korea… so why are people less worried about it in Japan these days? Is it because the rewards afforded by a booming economy are now diminished? Am I wrong about people's anxiety about the tests in Japan these days? I would really appreciate people's ideas about this!
Chris Button said,
December 14, 2025 @ 12:05 pm
"A video game has its own model of reality, internal to itself and separate from the player's external reality, the player's bodily space and the avatar's bodily space."
I think a better question would be to ask students to improve this sentence by rewriting/repunctuating it.
Jonathan Smith said,
December 14, 2025 @ 12:19 pm
BBC had this on their website — the item in question involved choosing an insertion point (1-5) for the first (bolded) sentence:
The difference is that the action in the game world can only be explored through the virtual bodily space of the avatar.
A video game has its own model of reality, internal to itself and separate from the player's external reality, the player's bodily space and the avatar's bodily space. (1) The avatar's bodily space, the potential 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, encompassing the available actions of the avatar. (4) The feedback loop of perception and action that enables you to navigate the world around you is now one step removed: instead of perceiving primarily through interaction of your own body with the external world, you're perceiving the game world through interaction of the avatar. (5) The entire perceptual system has been extended into the game world.
The bolded sentence isn't wrong and the question isn't maybe all that hard to figure out… it's just… WTH are you testing and how and why…?
The text is from Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation by Steve Swink. I was thinking the text "…the reality of the external reality…" above was maybe miscopied, but it wasn't…
wgj said,
December 14, 2025 @ 3:03 pm
My problem with this task is that it has little to do with English, and mostly to do with general language comprehension not specific to any particular language.
AntC said,
December 14, 2025 @ 3:11 pm
More background from The Guardian.
I don't think I've heard "culturtainment" before. I can guess what it means. Is that the sort of language competency/potmanteaus in general the exam is testing?
I [@jhh] wondered why the exam is still so anxiety provoking
We've shut down the whole country for you: don't you dare fail. No stress!
I don't think I could have told you much about Immanuel Kant as at my School leaving/University entrance exams — he featured in Monty Python's Philosophers' Drinking Song. For the info of the South Korean exam board: he didn't write in English anyway. Better to use David Hume or J S Mill, surely?
jin defang said,
December 14, 2025 @ 4:11 pm
The questions are confusingly written and one can think of several plausible 'answers.' Have to wonder why wrote these.
jin defang said,
December 14, 2025 @ 4:13 pm
that was supposed to be "who" wrote these, though "why" crossed my mind as I read the unclear development of the paragraph. Maybe the questions sounded better in Korean.
Michael Vnuk said,
December 14, 2025 @ 5:43 pm
I have never written exam questions, but I have edited questions for a number of subjects, including languages, used in exams for Year 12 (final year of high school here in Australia). All edited questions were subsequently reviewed by the exam setters and subject experts.
Although the few questions from Korea being discussed may look odd or difficult in isolation, they need to be considered in the context of the curriculum or other subject materials that describe expectations for student learning, the past exams in the same subject, and other questions in the current exam. Only then can the few questions be judged. It might be that the curriculum is misdirected or unrealistic or deficient. It might be that the few questions are not equivalent to previous years' exams. It might be that the few questions are harder than the rest of the exam, but perhaps they are deliberately harder to provide some way of distinguishing good and excellent students. Without appropriate context, I am hesitant to judge these few questions.
AntC said,
December 14, 2025 @ 6:45 pm
@Michael V, there's more detail on the range of questions in The Guardian piece I linked to. Most telling that it was unusually difficult:
That means, presumably, lower than grades received during the COVID lock-down year.
Sure, the reports might be 'cherry picking' the hardest questions, those deliberately designed to winnow the star performers. The commentary I've seen in the English-speaking media agrees with Jonathan above WTH are you testing and how and why? The abilities the questions are probing are not within what we'd expect for students in an English-speaking education system.
If you have access to Australian exam q's, perhaps you could compare. My experience observing English-language curriculums in Taiwan (for example) is that they are indeed mis-directed: to very formal and musty Grammar rules that are no longer observed in academic or business language in English-speaking countries.
Tom said,
December 14, 2025 @ 11:17 pm
Long time reader, very rare commenter. I would have appreciated the questions rendered in text in the blog post so that I did not have to watch a video. Video is not very accessible.
AntC said,
December 15, 2025 @ 12:44 am
@Jonathan I was thinking the text "…the reality of the external reality…" above was maybe miscopied, …
@Chris B [commenting on the same sentence] I think a better question would be to ask students to improve this sentence by rewriting/repunctuating it.
(I agree.) The Swink source document — there is, incredibly, over 300 pages of this drivel [**] — is subtitled something about 'Virtual Sensation'. So none of this 'reality' is what I'd recognise as reality. I'd want to surround most of those appearances of the word with scare-quotes and/or prefix with 'so-called'. Likewise for some of the appearances of 'world'. Does the Korean syllabus even teach what scare-quotes are about?
Perhaps I should recant my Kant comment above. The metaphysics of Ding-an-sich seems to be Swink's Grundlegung.
[**] that Summarises itself as a "small attempt", with exciting section titles such as 'The Future of Context', 'The Future of Polish' (apparently not about the language, but more like shoe-polish), 'The Future of Metaphor'. What on earth impression are Korean students getting of contemporary English?
AntC said,
December 15, 2025 @ 11:54 pm
A native speaker of English takes the exam, does not particularly well.
They're a long time after finishing in the education system, so are probably rusty in 'exam technique'. A Korean native took the exam alongside, also 12 years since they took the Suneung; and scored worse than back in their school days.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
December 16, 2025 @ 4:30 am
Well, one thing to bear in mind is that this kind of exam is not meant for a native speaker. And native speakers are not very good at this kind of thing because they lack the training and qualifications. It's sad that native-speakerism lives on in general, but I would think a linguistics blog should be a space where we argue vehemently against it.
Philip Taylor said,
December 16, 2025 @ 4:54 am
Coud you explain what you mean by "native-speakerism", Jarek ? The "-ism" suffix can be used in positive, neutral and negative ways (e.g., "feminism", "Judaism", "racism"), so it is not clear (to me, at least) what we should infer from your use of the phrase.
AntC said,
December 16, 2025 @ 6:19 am
lack the training and qualifications
An outline of the English Language section of Suneung. Perhaps @Jarek could identify what a native speaker would lack here? That is, someone of college-entry educational level, and with coaching on the specific syllabus, as they'd get for any exam subject. (That is, coaching that the native speaker guinea pig didn't receive. Although I said "does not particularly well", their score would have been in the top quartile.)
I guess that list might not be complete, but I see no mention of Kant. Neither do I see knowledge required of the sort of recondite rules of grammar that native speakers often are unaware of because they can 'just talk' — if that's what "native-speakerism" is trying to convey.
Does "this kind of thing" intend all those antique (and often imaginary) sayings straight out of Dickens or Shakespeare that seemed to be vogue in EFL syllabuses back in the '70's? "La plume de ma tante" being the canonical schoolboy French example.
AntC said,
December 16, 2025 @ 7:24 am
@PT 'native-speakerism' seems to be a term of art within ELT. The British Council website has a 2023 article, for example. I don't get why the term applies to ELT specifically rather than the teaching of any non-native language within the education system. (It looks like a pretext to beat up English and its speakers for the crime of being a global language.)
I find Jarek's aspersions misplaced. There isn't native Korean English in the same way there's native Indian English (the BC example).
Philip Taylor said,
December 16, 2025 @ 7:53 am
Thank you Ant — I will endeavour to locate the British Council 2023 article to which you refer.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
December 16, 2025 @ 10:32 am
@ AntC I don't think the term aspersions was quite what you were looking for, AntC.
That aside, even the article you link to (somewhat ironically written in very poor English) lists "fixing the correct words, orders of sentences, infer the intentions with sources originating from theses". I'm totally unconvinced that this is something that native-speaking students in e.g. the US are very good at.
someone of college-entry educational level — It's not clear to me what your second sentence refers to, but note one thing: The term "native speaker" does not at all stipulate that the person must be of "college-entry educational level".
And that is precisely, @ Philip, what "native speakerism" refers to. Variability within native-speaking populations is considerable, as anyone in contact with e.g. the US educational system will tell you, and there's a proportion of native speakers who are simply not very good at their native language, in particular in typical academic contexts. So, discriminating in favour of native speakers in various fields, notably employment for jobs associated with English instruction, is unwarranted.
The first hit on Google would take you to the surprisingly reasonable page on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native-speakerism.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
December 16, 2025 @ 10:43 am
Oh BTW the term does not apply to English only. In the EU, for example, in general you are not supposed to discriminate in favour of someone on the basis of being a native speaker. If language proficiency in any language is a requirement, it should be expressed in terms of European proficiency level.
Philip Taylor said,
December 16, 2025 @ 2:29 pm
"discriminating in favour of native speakers in various fields, notably employment for jobs associated with English instruction, is unwarranted" — I'm sorry, I respectfully disagree. Given two individuals of similar educational attainment and equal fluency in one's L1, why would one not prefer to be taught by the native speaker ? The only situation in which I can see any benefit in being taught by a non-native speaker would be if one were planning to live in a country where the language that one was seeking to learn was not the L1 of the majority in that country but was nonetheless spoken very widely as an L2. Picking up the local accent might therefore be advantageous, whereas if one were planning to live in a country where the language that one was seeking to learn was the L1 of the majority, then one would do well to avoid acquiring any accent other than the RP-equivalent of one's intended domicile.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
December 16, 2025 @ 4:21 pm
@ Philip Taylor Given two individuals of similar educational attainment and equal fluency in one's L1, why would one not prefer to be taught by the native speaker — Because fluency is your L1 is not related to your ability to teach a language to someone. You can perhaps serve as a model for imitation, on the condition (!) that your student wants to acquire your variety of your L1. But being a native speaker, in and of itself, absolutely does not qualify you to teach.
Teaching languages is a specific professional skill, just like, let us say, medicine. The fact that you have a disease and may have some experience in coping with it does not make you capable of treating it, let alone teaching someone else how to treat it. This is what the old adage about the elephant not being the best zoo manager is about.
So I think your requirement would have to be reworded as two individuals of similar educational attainment and equal fluency in the language in question, and similar language teaching qualifications. But even then, a non-native teacher knowing (about) the student's L1 is the best option. They will be the specialist for that specific condition. When you have a dental problem, it's better to talk to your dentist than to your GP.
The qualified non-native teacher will know what exactly is wrong, why, and what to do to get improvement, including providing examples from the student's L1; and they will have the added bonus of the experience of having gone through the process themselves.
Philip Taylor said,
December 16, 2025 @ 5:39 pm
Well, clearly we are not going to agree on this one Jarek, so let me make one further comment and then shut up. "So I think your requirement would have to be reworded as two individuals of similar educational attainment and equal fluency in the language in question, and similar language teaching qualifications". In return, I would suggest that your version of my requirement should be re-cast as "two individuals of similar educational attainment and equal fluency in the language in question, and similar language teaching ability". Qualifications do not (IMHO) come into it, but ability most certainly does.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
December 16, 2025 @ 5:48 pm
Oh yes, I can easily agree with this rewording. Because teaching ability does not come from being a native speaker, either. It's a separate thing.
Jonathan Smith said,
December 16, 2025 @ 9:38 pm
A thought on the way back around to the topic is that native speaker is a bad framing or probably just not a thing, wrongly suggesting as it does a dichotomy between "native" and "non-native" capacity. More useful would be "lifelong speaker" or "lifelong functionally monolingual speaker" if that is what's meant. The latter is what Anglo-America has a lot of — exceptionally, as the world at large historically wasn't mostly such people and even now isn't… if in a different way, since the brave new English-Spanish-French-Hindi-Mandarin-world consists of many post-early-childhood learners for whom the (Inter)nationaleses may sooner or later become dominant in some or all spheres with respect to a childhood/home language(s). IMO the Wikipedia "native-speakerism" article is far from clear re: this key terminological problem…
Speaking of which, the article has a thousand things going on that need to be regarded separately. It is really lowkey about "colonialism" broadly construed and the associated cultural/linguistic cachet of the Anglosphere. Setting this (thorny) issue aside, if in a vacuum we replace "native speaker" in choice sentences with paraphrases like "lifelong host-culture member" or "person with deep intuitive facility in target language phonology/syntax/etc.", it gets silly fast: of course there is every reason to prioritize such folks in our study of e.g. (Formosan) Rukai language/culture.
**All other things being equal of course (as noted by those above)! Or better: In combination with other resources judged efficacious, as all other things are never equal!**
ANYWAY re: topic and Jarek Weckwerth's comment "this kind of exam is not meant for native speakers" who are "not very good at this kind of thing"… setting aside the problematic term "native speaker," surely the point of such an exam is to identity things which regular users of "academic" English must often do and thus (hopefully!) get (relatively!) good at, and then seek to assess to what extent examinees are good at these things? Cf. e.g. TOEFL. I don't see the items above as doing this well / at all.
Adrian Bailey said,
December 18, 2025 @ 6:39 am
My initial reaction to the story was that the question was fair and not especially difficult. I haven't changed my mind.
Josh R. said,
December 18, 2025 @ 8:49 pm
Jonathan Smith suggested:
"surely the point of such an exam is to identity things which regular users of "academic" English must often do and thus (hopefully!) get (relatively!) good at, and then seek to assess to what extent examinees are good at these things?"
If the Korea exam is anything like the Japanese exams, that is not the point at all. The point of the entrance exams are to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of one's ability to dedicate time and resources to get good at the university exam. It is certainly not in anyway meant to test the test-taker's practical ability and knowledge of any subject.