2005 College Scholastic Ability Test Not Likely to Be Difficult

It seems the 2005 College Scholastic Ability Test, with the seventh national curriculum being applied for the first time, will not have a great level of difficulty.

The foreign language section will use words that are frequently used, and the social studies section will have more “set-questions”, which means asking many questions from one source data.

The Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation (www.kice.re.kr) reported these changes on the Q&A bulletin board of the 2005 College Scholastic Ability Test on their homepage on May 23 in response to students’ questions regarding question difficulty and scope.

In a response to the question: “Aren’t the questions becoming more difficult if the advanced subjects, which are taught in the second and third year of high school, will be the main subjects of the test, and the national common educational curriculum, taught in the first year, is excluded?” the institute responded, saying, “The test is not getting more difficult only because the advanced studies subjects will be the main subjects. We keep a balance of easy and difficult questions.

“Students can study the subjects that they have chosen in depth, so they can easily solve the questions in those subjects,” added the institute.

Following are the main points of the messages from the institute regarding questions about the test:

--Verbal Ability

All parts of the test, listening, reading, and writing, will cover a variety of writings from the humanities, social studies, science studies, technology, art, literature, living, languages, and other materials beyond the textbook in order to evaluate the depth and the expanse of the reading.

--Math

The math “Ga” type categories that include differential and integral calculus, probability and statistics, and discrete math will have one simple answer question each. To level the degree of difficulty among the three chosen categories, they can cover questions from mixed contents of the national common educational curriculum, Math I, and Math II.

--Social Studies

Each unit of the textbook will have equal representation among the questions given. This section will experience an increase in questions sorted into sets with multiple numbers of questions under one example box.

--Science

The national common educational curriculum in science will be indirectly adapted in the questions. Material from outside the textbook, everyday matters, and current affairs will also be adapted.

--Vocational

Contents that can be adapted to related business practices or that can be easily seen and studied in everyday life will be used as material for the questions for this section.

--Foreign Language

Words of both rudimentary and advanced level will be used. On principle, common-use vocabulary will be emphasized.

Hyo-Lim Son aryssong@donga.com