TOPIK Essay Writing Guide (쓰기 가이드)- Beginner Level

The readers of TOPIK GUIDE have frequently been writing to me for some guidance on the Essay writing part of TOPIK 쓰기 section. So Here I am putting this detailed article about this.

Most of the questions in TOPIK are multiple choice and objective type where there is, clearly, only one correct answer. You don't even need a human being to check if the answers are right or wrong. Mostly OMR recognition softwares do the job.  The problem is with the subjective type questions. In these questions there is no 'one correct answer'. Different persons can give different answers and they all may be correct. Sometimes it is difficult to even say whether the answer is right or wrong because it may be partially right and partially wrong.

This type of questions generally appear in the Writing section of TOPIK. And believe me, these are not difficult only for you. Evaluating this type of questions is the most difficult task for Examiners. As these questions are evaluated by real human beings and not the machines, there are high chances of variation in evaluation process depending upon the personality and mental status of the evaluator. And that"s why it confuses the test takers on what and how to write the answer of such questions so that it look correct to the evaluator. Particularly, the Essay writing part is the most difficult of these subjective questions.

Most of you must have been confused at some point of time about what and how exactly they expect you to write in the essay. Do they want to check your grammar vocabulary, spelling etc? or Do they want to test your writing skills, like how beautifully and logically you put your thought, how great your thoughts are? or Do they want to see how beautiful your handwriting is? Will using difficult words and complex sentences get you more marks? There are many such questions that confuse the mind of test takes, specially when they appear for the first time. Many people find themselves in a very difficult situation when the topic of the essay is related to Korea. I know many people  who thought writing anything wrong about Korea or Koreans will fetch them poor marks. ;) In fact, at some point, I also used to think so.

OK.. So let's come to the point.. Some time ago NIIED issued a 'model guideline' for the evaluation and marking of the essay section of TOPIK. In this model they have taken the essay question of 25th TOPIK (Q. No. 46) as an example and explained the evaluation system by giving detailed marking pattern of three model answer essays. They have guidelines for all three levels- Begginer, Intermediate and Advanced. Here on TOPIK GUIDE I will try to elaborate all of them in great detail.

I will start with the Beginner Level. Here is the Essay Question of 25th TOPIK:-

Q46. 다음을 읽고 150～300자로 글을 쓰십시오. (30점)

여러분은 누구를 만나고 싶습니까? 그 사람을 왜 만나고 싶습니까? 그 사람을

만나서 무엇을 하고 싶습니까? 여러분이 만나고 싶은 사람에 대해 쓰십시오.

And below is the model guideline that all the evaluators have to follow, according to NIIED:-

** Click to enlarge

I think all the points are pretty clear in themselves. Still I will try to explain a little more. In the first part they expect 3 things from you; 

first, you have to understand what exactly they are asking you to write. It seems quite obvious but many people do a mistake here. They just read the first line and think they have  got the question and start writing. Sometimes we don't know certain words in the question and just try to guess the topic. that's better than not writing at all but reading the question a few times always makes your answer better. And always write about something about which you know and think in advance which words and grammar patterns you will need to write about that TOPIK. For  example in this question, you have to write about 'Someone you want to meet'. You can definitely write that 'I want to meet some nuclear scientist from my country' or 'I want to meet Jesus' but these topics would most probably demand difficult vocabulary and grammar patterns that you might not know. So it's always better to chose something simple like 'I want to meet an old friend/ my girl friend/ my grandma'. you know a lot about these people and it would not be difficult to write 10 simple sentences about them.

Second, if you read the question properly you will find that they always ask the question in 2 or more parts and they want to include something about all those points in your essay; even a single sentence will do. For example, in this question they ask you- 1)Who is the person you want to meet? 2)Why do you want to meet him/her? 3)What do you want to do when you meet him/her? It's very easy to forget one or more points when writing. So, always cross check whether you have included all of them or not. You don't need to equally cover all of them. You may answer any two points in just one sentence and write the rest of the essay about the other one point.

Third, i think you must already be knowing the importance of coherence in a writing. Just try to keep all your sentences connected and relevant, don't jump to another topic suddenly, make the transition smooth.

In the second part (Essay Development and Structure) the see whether overall essay looks natural or not. Here the thing I want to emphasize is 'Focus on the beginning and closing of the essay'. many a times, we are short of time and we leave the essay in between; abruptly. When you know you don't have time to write more just write a finishing line and stop. That single sentence can get you 2 or more marks. For example a simple and good finishing sentence for this essay may be like: 그   친구(or whoever)를 빨리 만날 수 있으면 좋겠다. or 그 사람을 정말 보고 싶다. or 제가 좋아하는 그 사람 만날 수 있을까? The second important thing is- Don't try to make your sentences too complex by putting a number of grammar sentences. Most of language learners think a long sentence with many grammar patterns and difficult words will put a good impression on the examiner. But believe me, most of the times it's the opposite. small and simple sentences are natural and pleasant to read. For example: 제가 만나고 싶은 사람이 제 할머니입니다. 할머니를 만난 지 정말 오래 됐습니다. 그래서 보고 싶습니다. is much better than 제가 만나고 싶은 사람이 제 할머니이고 할머니를 만난 지 정말 오래 돼서 보고 싶습니다. 

In the third part, they check your real Korean language ability. I mean the use of grammar, vocabulary etc. Here again don't think difficult words and grammar are better. The evaluation of TOPIK papers is not comparative. So it does not influence your marks if someone has written a really great essay with native Korean level grammar and words. If you have written a good essay with proper use of beginner level vocabulary and grammar, you can get all 30 marks. But yes, the sentences should not be unnaturally simple and short. For example: 제 친구는 A입니다. A는 미국에 삽니다. 저는 A를 만나고 싶습니다. A가 좋은 사람입니다. 같이 영화 보고 싶습니다. This type of unnaturally simple writing will probably not get you 30 markes even if it has no mistake. 

OK.. I think this post is getting a bit too long.. So I will end it here. I am leaving you with three example answer essays for the 25th TOPIK test. read properly and think how you would mark them if you were the examiner. In the next post we will see how the TOPIK evaluators marked them.

** Click to enlarge the example essays.

Example Essay 1

 

Example Essay 2

Example Essay 3 

Go to TOPIK Essay Writing Guide (쓰기 가이드)- Beginner Level- Part 2