Descriptive and Essay-Type Assessment

An assessment type in which students answer directly through descriptive and essay writing instead of multiple-choice evaluation, it has emerged as a key agenda in connection with the 2028 college adm

Descriptive and Essay-Type Assessment

Overview

Descriptive and essay-type assessment (書論述型) is an umbrella term for assessment methods that depart from multiple-choice evaluation, in which the correct answer is selected from given options, and instead have students write their answers in their own words. It encompasses the descriptive type, in which students explain concepts, principles, and procedures in short sentences, and the essay type, in which they logically develop an argument supported by evidence. Its purpose is to measure thinking skills, expressive ability, and problem-solving ability rather than mere rote memorization, and in the 2020s, as the establishment of process-based assessment and discussions on the overhaul of the college admissions system for the 2028 school year converged, it emerged as a key agenda across school records and college admissions as a whole.

Main Content

Concept and Distinction

Descriptive and essay-type assessment is broadly divided into two branches. The descriptive type consists of items that require students to explain a particular concept, principle, or experimental procedure in their own sentences; the range of acceptable answers is relatively clear and scoring criteria are easy to break down in detail. The essay type consists of items in which students construct their own position with supporting evidence on given materials or social issues, and is closer to open-ended assessment in which no single correct answer is fixed. In actual school settings, a combination of the two types is mainly used, and various variants exist, such as the completion type, condition-presented type, data-interpretation type, and error-correction type.

Background of Introduction

First is the spread of a future-competency-oriented curriculum. Underlying this is the recognition that the process-based assessment emphasized since the 2015 revised curriculum and the competency-building goals of the 2022 revised curriculum are difficult to achieve through rote-memorization evaluation. Second is reliance on private tutoring and the controversy over killer questions. As criticism grew that extremely high-difficulty multiple-choice items stimulate demand for private tutoring, a shift toward assessing thinking processes within the scope of the curriculum was demanded. Third is the maturing of digital-based assessment environments. With the spread of tablet-based assessment and automated scoring assistance tools, the burden of processing descriptive answers in large volumes has been partially eased.

Assessment Methods and Scoring

The success of descriptive and essay-type assessment depends on the reliability of scoring. To secure this, measures such as ▲prior disclosure of a scoring rubric for each item ▲preparation of sample answers and partial-credit criteria ▲double scoring and re-scoring procedures ▲verification of inter-rater reliability are used. For essay-type items, analytic scoring—allocating points by category such as accuracy of content, logical organization, appropriateness of evidence, and clarity of expression—is common. Recently, natural-language-processing-based tools that assist in scoring descriptive and essay answers have been researched and pilot-tested, but the principle is that the final judgment is made by the teacher.

Application in Schools

In middle and high schools, the proportion of descriptive and essay-type items is expanding in both performance assessment and written examinations. Typical examples include describing experimental designs in science subjects, evidence-based argumentation in Korean language and social studies subjects, and writing out solution processes in mathematics. At universities, descriptive and essay-type competencies are indirectly verified through the essay-based admissions track and through document and interview evaluations in the comprehensive school-record admissions track.

Issues and Criticism

Scoring fairness: There is room for subjective judgment to intervene, so securing the trust of students and parents is the key.
Teacher workload: The time required for item development, scoring, and feedback increases substantially compared with multiple-choice.
Potential to drive private tutoring: Some point out that demand for cram schools preparing for essay and descriptive tests may grow, actually increasing the burden.
Equity: There is a risk that gaps arising from linguistic and cultural backgrounds will be reflected in assessment results.

Recent Trends

As of 2024–2025, descriptive and essay-type assessment is at the center of discussions on the overhaul of the college admissions system for the 2028 school year. The Ministry of Education has announced a reform plan that gradually expands the share of descriptive and essay-type items in school-record assessment and reduces the number of items on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT); in response, teachers' organizations and admissions experts are demanding that scoring infrastructure and expanded teacher training be put in place first. Meanwhile, with the introduction of AI digital textbooks (AIDT), process-oriented feedback using learning-process data is being emphasized, and descriptive and essay-type assessment is being reorganized as part of accumulated learning history rather than a one-off test. In addition, at the level of regional offices of education, training programs for developing and scoring descriptive and essay-type items and the operation of pilot schools are expanding, and at university-affiliated research institutes, studies verifying the validity and bias of automated scoring are actively under way. The future task lies in resolving in a balanced way the three axes of securing assessment reliability, strengthening teachers' assessment expertise, and easing the burden of private tutoring.