Fulbright U.S. Education Center

As reported in The Korea Times today, the state-run college scholastic ability test, which was administered nationwide yesterday, is generally less crucial than it was in the past.  Colleges these days use their own methods to select students for admission in advance of the CSAT.   A large number of students are accepted during an “early admissions” process and many universities require that those students submit the results of the CSAT test as a sort of “pass-fail” final requirement for admission.  For details, read the full article.

The Korea Times today reports that a consortium has been named to organize Korea’s new government-run English proficiency tests.  The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced Wednesday that a group consisting of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and four universities will administer the first grade-level exam of the state tests.  Grade one tests will be developed for adults seeking to attend graduate school or gain employment, while grades 2 and 3 will be used for students attending elementary to high school.

The KCCI will cooperate with Seoul National University, the organizer of the TEPS test, Hanguk University of Foreign Studies, developer of the FLEX test, Sookmyung Women’s University, organizer of the MATE test, and Korea University.

A short article in The Korea Times this morning provides another reminder of the high priority this nation places on the college entrance exam.  The headline pretty much tells the story.   A total of 94 domestic flights and two international flights will be re-scheduled this Thursday, when the annual college scholastic ability tests are administered nationwide.  More than half a million high school seniors and repeaters will take the test.

South Korea’s foreign language high schools have become a hot political issue.  A lawmaker from the ruling party has again suggested that they should be eliminated.   The first two foreign language high schools, Daewon and Daeil, were approved in 1992.  Starting in the mid-1990s they gained a reputation of sending most of their students to prestigious universities.  However, they are now being criticized for fueling the private institute or “cram school” market in Korea.

For further background on this issue, read the article in today’s Joongang Ilbo.

An article appeared in the Korea Times yesterday that illustrates the high profile and potentially controversial nature of English testing in South Korea.  The article deals with an ETS Korea scholarship program that selected eight high school students as “ETS Ambassadors.”

The article notes that the ETS promotion comes at a time when foreign language high schools in Korea have dropped TOEFL requirements.  I might add that the general context for this article involves the important question of whether or not TOEFL is an appropriate test for middle school and high school students, many of whom have been taking it in recent years, for lack of an alternative.

As noted in a recent article in the Chosun Ilbo, almost 2,000 students dropped out of Korea’s highly competitive foreign language high schools between 2004 and 2008.  This represented a dropout rate of approximately two percent.  The report suggested that those who dropped out had found themselves on the lower rungs of academic accomplishment, so chose to drop out and take the high school equivalence test instead.

According to an article in the Chosun Ilbo today, eight out of ten salaried workers think they are underpaid because of their poor English skills.  In the survey of almost 1,500 employed workers conducted by a jobs site, 89.9 percent of respondents said that if they had a better command of English they would be better paid.

When asked what they would do if they had a better command of English, most said transfer to a larger firm (54.4 percent), followed by working in another field (20.4 percent), negotiating their salary (13.3 percent) and leaving the company to found their own business (7.8 percent).

Today’s Joongang Daily carries an interesting account of the leakage of copies of a simulated version of the college admission test, just days before the test.  According to the police, a leak earlier this year involved school teachers, several other hagwon and printers who made copies of test sheets, police said yesterday.

After wrapping up its investigation, the Seoul Metropolitan Police applied for arrest warrants for the head of a cram school (hagwon) and a high school teacher.  According to the Joongang Daily,  “The leak shows how poorly test sheets are managed by education offices across the country,” a police official said. “The hagwon world doesn’t regard such leaks as anything newsworthy. They think of it as a practice that’s been around a long time.”
According to police, Choi handed over test sheets for a simulated college entrance to an official surnamed Yu from an online hagwon, Megastudy, on more than 20 occasions between March 2005 to June 2007.

Both The Korea Times and The Joongang Ilbo have articles on a new TOEIC cheating scandal uncovered by police.  The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency detained two suspects, named Kim and Park, on charges of raking in some 50 million won ($38,750) from 28 university students and job seekers in exchange for using electronic devices to send test takers answers during the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC).  The scheme worked as follows:

• Kim would place a posting on the internet 20 days before a TOEIC exam, guaranteeing customers a high score on the exam.
• Upon receiving replies, he would explain the scheme to potential customers, after checking to be sure they had no police officers in their family.
• Customers were given the choice of two methods to receive answers during the test, either by text message on a cellphone, or via a small earphone, the size of a grain of rice.
• On the test date, Park, who is fluent in English, would enter the test site wearing an antenna resembling a necklace.  He would use a small wireless device with buttons to send answers to Kim, using a code of one buzz for A, two for B and so forth.  Then Kim would announce the answer to the examinee through the earphone.

According to the Korea Times, test takers who previously scored an average of 500 points, raised their scores to over 900 points.  Most of them were in their 20s and 30s, 13 jobseekers, nine office workers and six university students.

This is not the first cheating scandal for TOEIC in Korea.  Also, it should raise a red flag for everyone connected with the administration of TOEFL and other high stakes academic tests.    Because the benefits of a high score (the “stakes”) are so high in English testing, there is no substitute for thorough, consistent and intelligent application of test security measures.

As reported in the Korea Times today, Korea ranked second from the bottom worldwide in the General Training Module (GTM) for the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), according to the British Council.  The number of Koreans taking IELTS increased to 27,000 last year, up from 23,000 in 2007 and 14,000 in 2006.   Last year Korean test takers gained an average score of 5.33 out of 9 on the GTM, up 0.12 from the previous year.   This placed it ahead of only the United Arab Emirates, which had an average score of 4.55.   Testing experts claim that Korea’s low scores are partly due to the large number of elementary and middle school students who take the test.

IELTS tests are held in over 500 centers around the world and some 12 million people take the test every year.