In Korea, the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) was introduced in 1993 as the official national college entrance examination. Over the 22 years since its inception, the CSAT has gone through numerous changes in its policies regarding the test structure, test administration, test writers, item bank, item difficulty, test materials, score reporting, and the use of test scores. The present study reviewed these policies and policy changes regarding the CSAT, with a focus on the English section ofthe test. The study found that while some of the policies were laudable for beneficial effects on students and the society, some other policies had detrimental effects on the quality of the test and for stakeholders including students, teachers, and parents. More active involvement of testing professionals is suggested for the improvement of policymaking processes and the policies themselves.

The present study investigated the characteristics and trends of academic research by Korean scholars of English education. The main focus was on the extent to which active scholars focus on their primary major areas. The study surveyed 11 journals of major academic societies in Korea, and analyzed a total of 5,072 research papers written by 1,639 scholars. The results showed that the most popular topic was acquisition/learning (19.30%), followed by English (applied) linguistics (17.90%), English materials (14.59%), teaching methodology (12.03%), and learning psychology (10.11%), the top five collectively comprising 73.93% of the total papers. The 99 most productive scholars published 1.01 papers per year on average. Younger scholars published more papers per year on average than older scholars. As for the concentrated efforts in their primary areas of research, the top 99 scholars wrote 46.84% of their papers on their primary areas, and 20.03% on their secondary areas of study. Younger scholars concentrated more efforts on their primary areas than older scholars. The results were interpreted, and suggestions were made for the future research.

Although it is generally agreed that English education in Korea has improved grεatly since its beginning in 1983, there are still many important areas that have pε:rsistent problεms ， and the proflεssion of English teaching is faced with some emerging issues. English education has progressεd both quantitatively and qualitatively, sincε English bεcarnε a required school subjεct in elementary school in 1997. The teachers’ and students‘ general English proficiεncy havε al50 improved. However, there arε still many teachers whosε English ability Iεavεs much to be dεSlfεd. Also, students’ losing confidence and interest in English is anothεr persistent problem. The society’s change also poses challenges to the English teaching profession This paper discusses these improvemεnts and pεrsistent problems and emεrging issues in English education in Korea

Foreign language education in Korea has a long history. Since the introduction of Chinese characters in the 2nd century, many foreign languages have been taught in Korea. European languages were introduced in the late part of the 19th century, but the teaching of them experienced a setback during the Japanese colonial period. After liberation in 1945, English became the most important foreign language, while other foreign languages were called “second foreign languages”. German and French were the two most popular “second foreign languages” in the early years after liberation, but Japanese increased its weight as German and French gradually lost their appeal to high school students. Chinese is also steadily gaining in popularity. A corollary of this change was the government’s retraining program to convert German and French language teachers to Japanese or Chinese language teachers. The present paper discusses these and other changes in the status of “second foreign languages”, and recommends that the government take some drastic measures to revive the balanced development of “second foreign-language education”.