Choosing register and structure in a formal email vs a message to a friend
You must write two short texts on the same content: you are declining an invitation to a 동아리 (club) end-of-semester dinner because of a family commitment. Text A is a formal email to the club president (a senior student you have never met personally). Text B is a KakaoTalk message to a close friend in the club who invited you informally. The task specifies 120-150 words for Text A and 40-60 words for Text B, and requires that both convey the same reason and offer the same alternative (meeting up separately the following week).
1. Describe the key register and structural differences you must build into Text A versus Text B, and justify them.
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Text A requires 합니다체/하십시오체, full honorific verb forms (e.g. 참석하지 못하게 되었습니다, 양해를 구합니다), an explicit greeting and sign-off, and a clear subject line. The refusal should be indirect: state the situation, apologise for the inconvenience, then offer the alternative. Because the president is a senior and a near-stranger, the writer must acknowledge the hierarchical distance and the social cost of declining.
Text B uses 반말 or 해요체, drops the formal apology frame, and can be brief and warm (미안, 그날 가족 일이 있어서 못 가겠다). The alternative can be casual and immediate. The judgement being tested is that the same propositional content must be re-encoded, not merely shortened - politeness markers, apology weight, and structural framing all change. An answer that only says 'one is formal, one is casual' without naming forms and structure earns little.
2. Why might the same alternative offer ('let's meet the following week') be phrased very differently in the two texts, and what could go wrong if you copy the formal phrasing into Text B?
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In Text A the offer functions partly as compensation for a face-threat to the president's event, so it should be tentative and deferential (괜찮으시다면 다음 주에 따로 인사드릴 수 있을까요?). In Text B it is a straightforward suggestion between equals (다음 주에 따로 보자).
Copying the formal phrasing into Text B would create social awkwardness: excessive deference between close friends reads as distance, sarcasm, or over-formality, and can imply the relationship has changed. The exam tests whether you can calibrate politeness to the relationship rather than applying one 'polite' template everywhere.