Korean students exploit the Arabic advantage

When the results of November’s college entrance examination were announced this month, we learned that again the number of students attempting Arabic on the elective final foreign-language section was unusually high.

According to the data, 51,141 students took the Arabic portion - 42.3 percent of students - quite surprising considering no schools in the country teach the language.

It’s popular among test-takers because a perfect score on the Arabic portion is worth more points than a perfect score on tests of the other languages offered, including Japanese and Hanja, two subjects taught in many high schools.

Regarding calls to abolish the unfair advantage, the Korea Herald quoted a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation as saying that “as the language is included in the official curriculum, we cannot abolish it.”

“I don’t get this at all,” mattius writes. “How can a system that doesn’t offer Arabic produce students willing to test in it for entrance into college?”

Adeel writes “That’s stunning. Doesn’t this mean about forty percent of this year’s test-takers can speak at least basic Arabic? Or, failing that, read it? That’s a bizarre trend if it results from the loopholes of the university entrance exam.”

“Am I being thick? I don’t understand this at all,” Stevie Bee writes. “How can such a large percentage of students take a test in a foreign language that’s not even offered by any high schools here? Where the hell are they learning Arabic then?”

Darth Babaganoosh responds to the education official’s comment that Arabic is part of the national curriculum and cannot be abolished.

“Why the hell not? It might be curriculum, but no one TEACHES it. I don’t understand how they can test something that is not even taught.”

Indeed, and I wonder how something can be considered curriculum if it isn’t taught.

“Because it’s curriculum! And curriculum is sacred!” writes Chris in South Korea. “The only reason to take a test is to get a high score. You don’t learn anything by taking a test, and these days you aren’t necessarily expected to show what you know on a test. You’re expected to show up, bubble in the right circles, and get the highest possible score. There’s a loophole/unusual weighting in the test? Sweet - let’s take it. Heck, if I don’t, someone else will - and they’ll get into the SKY school.”

“Who writes the test... that’s what I want to know,” writes Diana E. “Korean students know the game that is Korean testing very, very well. And they play.”

“I’ve argued many times with my students over the ridiculousness of these so-called standardized tests in Korea,” writes This Is Me Posting. “It doesn’t make any sense in testing them on a subject they don’t even teach. It also doesn’t help that their tests are loaded with errors. As I mentioned the last time this topic came up, the French test was littered with mistakes. How can you test someone ‘on a level field’ when the test itself is flawed? Testing in Korea is not about learning or gaining an education.”

As Diana E.states, “it is a game and if there’s one things Korean youths do excel at, its beating, hacking and exploiting games. Korean high school students found an exploit in the system. I’m not at all surprised that they’re taking advantage of it”

By creating an unfair advantage it almost guarantees that students will not be interested in the language or the cultures of its speakers but will think of it only as points on a test. Of course, that is exactly what has happened with English in Korea: it’s not appreciated as a language or a culture, but is reduced to a subject to be studied and memorized solely for standardized tests.

*These comments were collected by Brian Deutsch from recent blog posts. To read more, visit his blog Brian in Jeollanam-do at: http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/.

*Readers are welcome to send suggestions for topics that they wish to be covered or blogs that they would like to see featured in this column.
Please e-mail us at: estyle@joongang.co.kr.

By Brian Deutsch Contributing writer