Currently in our country the evaluation system has caused severe competition between students, leading to their extreme dependence on private education. Also the English section of the KSAT focuses mainly on reading rather than writing and speaking. So if we criterion-reference the KSAT then we could encourage students to learn English in a more creative and cooperative way. Which will in turn reduce the amount of money that they will have to pay for private education.
The Main purpose of the criterion-referenced test is not to discriminate students based on their grades, but to check if the students have mastered the predetermined criteria. This gives hope to students who are unwilling or have given up on the English section of the KSAT. Also, this can decrease the burden of having to excel amongst their peers. In this reason, our team thinks that criterion-referenced test can give hope to students.
The criterion-referenced English test may lessen the burden on the English. However, this ultimately increases the importance of the other subjects such as Korean, Math, and Science. This may actually increase the burden on the student because he or she has to stand out amongst the competition. And if this student was great at English it would be a devastating disadvantage when it comes to entering a university.
If you look at it from a university admission officer’s point of view, it would be difficult to determine whether a student is good at English. Since the criterion-referenced KSAT English evaluation system doesn’t have much discrimination amongst students, so the admission officers may want to demand a student’s TEPS, TOEFL, TOEIC score to evaluate their English skills. This will give the students a burden to have to study the KSAT and extra English tests.