Indexing/Abstracting

In recent years, the English section of the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (KCSAT English) has undergone significant changes, including the introduction of the “jeoldaepyeongga” (or absolute grading, AG) system. Given the considerable span of time that has passed since the implementation of the AG system, there is an urgent need to investigate the intended and unintended consequences of this system for English education, particularly at college/university levels. With this as background, the purposes of the current study are to collect data that can show the changing trends in college English education in pre- and post-implementation years of jeoldaepyeongga and to examine whether there are any noteworthy patterns of changes that can be linked to the “jeoldaepyeongga” implementation. Analyses of quantitative and qualitative data provided some meaningful results. First, test score data revealed that the percentages of test takers who achieved higher score bands increased in post-implementation years while those who achieved lower ones decreased. Second, the percentage of first-year students attaining the highest score band (Band 1) at a selected national university declined whereas those achieving Score Bands 2, 3, and 4 rose. Third, a college instructor survey showed that instructors of general English courses in colleges are pessimistic about the future of English education in Korea and identify the implementation of the jeoldaepyeongga system to be a prime reason for the diminished status, and gloomy future, of English education. Finally, a focus group interview provided some new insights. Implications of these findings are discussed along with future directions for further investigation.

keyword : English education, college admissions, KCSAT, jeoldaepyeongga, absolute grading system

Hoon-sung Hwang’s The Evolution of Modern English Drama (2020) charts the genealogy of dramatists from Ibsen to Beckett and intervenes in the long-standing debate on modernism and postmodernism. Positing the Holocaust as a defining historical juncture after which the project of the Enlightenment gave way to the affective experience of the postmodern sublime, this book delineates a genealogy of dramatic works from Henrik Ibsen to Samuel Beckett under the rubric of modern and postmodern aesthetics through in-depth textual analyses. With the premise that the umbrella term “modern” is insufficient to capture the radical aesthetics of post-Second World War theater, the work proposes a more rigorous engagement with postmodernity as a critical discourse to suggest a “new postmodern episteme in theater” (41) via such postmodern thinkers as Žižek, Lyotard, and Baudrillard. If discourses on postmodernity in theater have predominantly focused on playfulness and performativity, this work undertakes an “epistemological approach” to the postmodern condition that hypervisible performances in theater often conceal. With extensive discussions on modern and postmodern theories and attentive textual readings, The Evolution of Modern English Drama speaks to its readers across disciplines and introduces key debates in post/modern drama to those who are not conversant with theater history or theories. The book further generates thought-provoking questions on the evolving forms of theater as we witness the precarious status of live theater in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent closure of theatre on a global scale.

keyword : drama, sublime, Enlightenment, postmodern, Holocaust