Leveling Up

Although I tend to focus on life in Korea when writing, I guess I have an occasional obligation to mention the reason I am here: my job. At my school, the year is divided into 4 13-week terms. During week 10 of each term, the students take an Achievement Test to determine if they will "level up." The English program is divided into 10 levels, and the Achievement Test decides if the students are ready to move on to the next level. Interestingly, the student's score on the test is pretty much the sole factor in making this decision, with the weekly review test scores, homework completion rates, and general in-class behavior having little to no impact. While these things do technically matter since no student will level up without putting in some effort, I feel that this is a somewhat abstract concept to explain and therefore general teacher policy is to pretend that these factors account for a significant portion of the leveling decision.

The achievement test consists of 4 components: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. As the teacher, I grade my own class's writing and speaking sections, which is a somewhat stressful process since the grading must be completed before the 3-hour class period is up. For the writing section, you only get about 15 minutes in some classes to grade up to 14 writing samples. Talk about a time constraint.

The stress on the teachers is nothing compared to the stress on the students, many of whom are under a great deal of pressure from their parents to level up. The test results come out at the end of week 12, which is where we are in the term right now. Students who don't level up have to repeat the level again, and those who have leveled up feel as though they've put enough effort into their current level, and therefore the general degree of motivation during the last week and a half of term is low to nonexistent. Furthermore, some students who don't level up choose to leave the academy and study elsewhere, presumably at a place where it is easier to move between levels.