Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on [email protected] for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact [email protected]

Difficult Korean English exam question.

  • 06-11-2013 1:11am
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 1,080 ✭✭✭ireland.man


    As part of their final exam in English language Korean high school students were asked the following question:

    26. So far as you are wholly concentrated on bringing about a certain result, clearly the quicker and easier it is brought about the better. Your resolve to secure a sufficiency of food for yourself and your family will induce you to spend weary days in tilling the ground and tending livestock; but if Nature provided food and meat in abundance ready for the table, you would thank Nature for sparing you much labor and consider yourself so much the better off. An executed purpose, in short, is a transaction in which the time and energy spent on the execution are balanced against the resulting assets, and the ideal case is one in which (??). Purpose, then, justifies the efforts it exacts only conditionally, by their fruits.


    ① demand exceeds supply, resulting in greater returns

    ② life becomes fruitful with our endless pursuit of dreams

    ③ the time and energy are limitless and assets are abundant

    ④ Nature does not reward those who do not exert efforts

    ⑤ the former approximates to zero and the latter to infinity


    Never mind 18 year old Korean students, would most of our leaving cert English students be able to answer this???


«1

Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,299 ✭✭✭✭The Backwards Man


    6. Make life as handy as you can for yourself.

    That is the correct answer.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,822 ✭✭✭Mickey H


    What exactly is the question? :confused:


  • Registered Users Posts: 24,458 ✭✭✭✭Cookie_Monster


    5 obviously. no work and all play and free stuff


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,192 ✭✭✭pharmaton


    cleverly devised subliminal programming. I'm going with 3 op


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,299 ✭✭✭✭The Backwards Man


    Mickey H wrote: »
    What exactly is the question? :confused:
    They are trying to say that it you have a better sense of fulfillment when you when you exert yourself to the utmost to achieve your fundamental goals.

    I say it's balls.


  • Advertisement
  • Registered Users Posts: 11,906 ✭✭✭✭PhlegmyMoses


    "Make your point" is a mantra that so many people in academia could do with heeding.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,780 ✭✭✭KungPao




  • Registered Users Posts: 1,080 ✭✭✭ireland.man


    Oh thank god I'm not dumb, or I am dumb but not the only one...

    The question to me sounds like one of those postmodernist jargon generators- random buzzwords arranged into a seemingly meaningful sentence and paragraph but taken as a whole it's meaningless!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12,807 ✭✭✭✭Orion


    The question itself contains so many grammatical and punctuation errors that it renders itself meaningless. Good luck with that.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,640 ✭✭✭Pushtrak


    26. So far as you are wholly concentrated on bringing about a certain result, clearly the quicker and easier it is brought about the better.

    Your resolve to secure a sufficiency of food for yourself and your family will induce you to spend weary days in tilling the ground and tending livestock; but if Nature provided food and meat in abundance ready for the table, you would thank Nature for sparing you much labor and consider yourself so much the better off.

    An executed purpose, in short, is a transaction in which the time and energy spent on the execution are balanced against the resulting assets, and the ideal case is one in which (??). Purpose, then, justifies the efforts it exacts only conditionally, by their fruits.
    Paragraph 1 and 2 there are fine. The third I had to read a few times. It's talking about return on investment. The correct answer is 4.
    ④ Nature does not reward those who do not exert efforts
    Can't really get a proper read on that purpose line though, tbh.


  • Advertisement
  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,689 ✭✭✭Karl Stein


    6. Get all 'Carrie McFirestarter' and burn the exam hall to the ground with everyone in it.


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,688 ✭✭✭Nailz


    There is nothing really wrong with the English that is being used in the first and second paragraphs, but it is just a totally ineffective way of speaking English.

    The point of language as a form of communication is to convey information in a set way which can be understood relatively easy by another person with roughly the same level of linguistic understanding as you have.
    Of course there are artistic and poetic means for which language can also be put across, but I bet in Korea that isn't the main function for it being taught in schools.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 369 ✭✭Friend Computer


    As part of their final exam in English language Korean high school students were asked the following question

    The lack of a question mark denoting any kind of actual question confuses me. Also the fact that it reads like it's been put through a software translator.


  • Registered Users Posts: 16,506 ✭✭✭✭osarusan




  • Registered Users Posts: 24,458 ✭✭✭✭Cookie_Monster


    Pushtrak wrote: »
    Paragraph 1 and 2 there are fine. The third I had to read a few times. It's talking about return on investment. The correct answer is 4.

    how? 'Nature' doesn't reward reward anyone for doing anything.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,201 ✭✭✭jamesbondings


    Add a poll.

    Would be great to see what we all think


  • Site Banned Posts: 257 ✭✭Driveby Dogboy


    how? 'Nature' doesn't reward reward anyone for doing anything.

    You're going to reap, reap, reap,, just what you sow...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,390 ✭✭✭clairefontaine


    Philosophers can't write.

    Except for Nietzsche.

    Why do they torture ESL students with it?


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 31,117 ✭✭✭✭snubbleste


    Coorect answer: All hail Kim Il Sung


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,909 ✭✭✭SeantheMan


    The expectation on these High school students is ridiculous, some can barely even speak English.
    But this is what is expected of them to gain entrance to the best colleges in Korea.

    They have books, similar to dictionaries, of useless words that they are required to learn. I've pointed out to many of them that 50% of these are not used in real-life situations and that some of them I have never used in my life.
    However, they told me that for certain exams etc, they are required to know this vocabulary

    (obviously I teach English in a Korean high school)


  • Advertisement
  • Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 34,915 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney


    SeantheMan wrote: »
    The expectation on these High school students is ridiculous, some can barely even speak English.
    But this is what is expected of them to gain entrance to the best colleges in Korea.

    (obviously I teach English in a Korean high school)

    Not wholly unlike Irish in Ireland


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,909 ✭✭✭SeantheMan


    Not wholly unlike Irish in Ireland

    Ahhh our English exams were nothing like these.
    Answer and waffle you way through poetry questions and some drama if you bothered to remember it.
    I HATED English in secondary school....learning about Sylvia Plath and Shakespeare


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,002 ✭✭✭Seedy Arling


    Answer that question?

    Unpossible!


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Politics Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 81,310 CMod ✭✭✭✭coffee_cake


    eschew obfuscation


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,733 ✭✭✭Duckworth_Luas


    Why not do what every student does in English exam and answer the essay question you hoped they'd ask, not the one on the paper!


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,304 ✭✭✭Hande hoche!


    snubbleste wrote: »
    Coorect answer: All hail Kim Il Sung

    Most progressive of you comrade.


  • Registered Users Posts: 19,802 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    "Make your point" is a mantra that so many people in academia could do with heeding.
    cannot thank this comment enough. I was helping the gf with college work and read an academic paper she had to review. this thing was so chock full of unnessersary flowery language, industry speak and smug linguistic pirouetting it was laughable. this manner of academic wankology added nothing to the text and in fact only served to conceal anything of value or substance held within.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,073 ✭✭✭gobnaitolunacy


    I have brought great shame to myself and my family if I cannot answer this question correctly.


  • Registered Users Posts: 19,802 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus




  • Advertisement


  • Ugh, this reminds me of those verbal reasoning tests they make you do for job applications.

    "The ideal case of the executed purpose is that by which assets are infinitely distributed by nature, requiring minimum input and exertion from the individual"

    A: True
    B: False
    C: Cannot say

    >_<


Advertisement