CSAT Second Language/Hanja study guide
CSAT Second Language/Hanja · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The CSAT Second Language/Hanja section is the elective portion of South Korea's College Scholastic Ability Test (대학수학능력시험, often called the Suneung), administered once a year by the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE). A candidate picks exactly one of nine subjects: German I, French I, Spanish I, Chinese I, Japanese I, Russian I, Arabic I, Vietnamese I, or Classical Chinese (Hanja) I. The CSAT Second Language/Hanja study guide has 9 sections and about 2,567 words.
01German I
German I on this exam checks elementary German vocabulary, article and case choice, verb conjugation, main-clause word order, and short reading or dialogue comprehension. The questions usually reward recognizing the function of a noun phrase, not translating every word.
272 words, about 1 min02French I
French I tests basic article choice, present-tense conjugation, compound past, adjective agreement, pronoun order, and short text comprehension. The exam favors form–function matching: which article before a noun, which auxiliary in the passé composé, and which pronoun replaces what.
276 words, about 1 min03Spanish I
Spanish I assesses elementary vocabulary, ser/estar, gender and number agreement, present and preterite forms, gustar-type verbs, and short reading comprehension. The exam often tests one grammar contrast in a familiar sentence rather than advanced vocabulary.
280 words, about 1 min04Chinese I
Chinese I tests pinyin and tones, basic character recognition, measure words, word order, aspect particles, and short dialogue comprehension. The key is to read Chinese as topic–comment and verb–object sequences, not as English word-for-word.
275 words, about 1 min05Japanese I
Japanese I tests kana reading, basic kanji, particles, polite verb forms, adjective forms, and short passage comprehension. The exam expects you to identify the grammatical role of each phrase from its particle and the sentence-final form.
261 words, about 1 min06Russian I
Russian I tests Cyrillic reading, gender and case endings, basic verb conjugation, preposition choice, and short text comprehension. Because Russian has no articles, the exam concentrates on endings and on which case a verb or preposition requires.
283 words, about 1 min07Arabic I
Arabic I tests recognition of the Arabic script, basic MSA vocabulary, gender and number agreement, nominal and verbal sentences, the definite article, and short reading comprehension. The exam uses Modern Standard Arabic, not a regional dialect.
318 words, about 2 min08Vietnamese I
Vietnamese I tests tone marks, basic vocabulary, classifiers, word order, tense/aspect markers, and short dialogue comprehension. Vietnamese does not inflect verbs or nouns, so meaning is carried by word order, particles, and tone.
274 words, about 1 min09Classical Chinese (Hanja) I
Classical Chinese (Hanja) I tests the reading and meaning of basic hanja, common classical particles, short classical Chinese sentences, and familiar four-character idioms. Korean candidates need both the Korean reading (음) and the semantic gloss (훈), plus enough grammar to parse a sentence without modern punctuation.
328 words, about 2 min