Korean Job Discussion Forums

[PRagic]

Maybe people may think that there is a room full of esteemed SNU professors working with professional writers in a TEPS creation center. The fact is, however, that the SNU TEPS team has been lowballing foreign writers and employing from the bottom of the barrel since it's very inception. Just another example of getting what you pay for. Oh, the shame of it all.

This story reflects just the tip of the iceberg. Let's put the truth out there. Every other ESL book published in the country is a cut-and-paste job grafted from US, UK, and even Japanese texts. The same can be said of testing and test prep materials produced locally. To boot, a great number of the 'true originals' out there are extremely poorly done. Come on, if I see one more 'useful expressions', 'vocabulary', or 'pronunciation' book, I'm going to lose it!

From the Korea Herald on-line edition, 12 December 2008:

SNU exposed for Playboy excerpt

An excerpt from American men's magazine "Playboy" was found to have been used in a practice quiz set for Seoul National University's English proficiency test.

Lee Sang-mook, who runs an English hagwon, or a private institute, in Daegu said SNU used an article titled "Bar of the Month" from Playboy magazine in its TEPS practice questions.

"It is up to SNU to choose whatever source it wants to use for the test questions, but using a men's magazine article indicates a lack of effort for developing good questions over the past 10 years," said Lee, who is writing a critical book about TEPS.

The Playboy story about a bar near Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, was just one example that undermines the credibility of TEPS, according to Lee.

He said he found about 10 misspelled words on the website of the Test of English Proficiency developed by Seoul National University at www.teps.or.kr, such as "grastp" (grasp), "respocses" (responses) and "uncerstanding" (understanding).

Lee also pointed to several cases of misused words in dozens of TEPS questions.

Up to 450,000 people are expected to take the TEPS this year.

By Kim So-hyun
([email protected])

[PRagic]

yeah, 'its' before anyone decides to take the piss out of me.