Following opinions that there is no correct answer to question 17 in the Korean section of the 2026 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), a new claim has been raised that another item has two correct answers due to a passage error.
According to the education community on the 23rd, Lee Byung-min, a professor in the Department of English Education at Seoul National University, posted on social media (SNS) that the passage in question 3 of the CSAT Korean section contains an error and that there are also two correct answers.
The disputed passage explains the "simple view" proposed by Philip Gough, former emeritus professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In this passage appears the sentence, "(From the simple view) as decoding develops, language comprehension can also develop through reading experience, so after decoding develops, reading experience is considered to make a major contribution to the development of reading comprehension ability."
Lee pointed out that the language comprehension referred to in the simple view is "listening ability," not reading ability, so the sentence is incorrect. The assertion that language comprehension ability can be improved through reading experience itself cannot hold in the simple view theory.
Question 3, which is solved based on this passage, presents student A, whose language comprehension (listening ability) is weak, and student B, who lacks decoding ability, and asks test-takers to find what is inappropriate among statements that interpret them based on the simple view.
The correct answer released by the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) is option 4: "A would think that student B cannot pronounce words correctly but has come to grasp the main content through reading experience."
However, Lee said option 3, "A would think that student A's language comprehension can develop not only through spoken communication experience but also through reading experience," should also be considered correct. According to the passage, only option 4 is correct, but by the standard of the simple view theory itself, option 3 is also a false statement.
Lee is a scholar whose primary field is reading and language-related theory and has studied and taught Gough's simple view presented in the passage for more than 10 years. In the post on SNS, Lee said, "The test makers will argue that, based on the passage, option 3 is also a correct statement, but because the explanation of the simple view theory in the passage is wrong, option 3 naturally becomes incorrect."
This year's CSAT Korean section has drawn a series of criticisms over item errors. On the 19th, Lee Chung-hyung, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Pohang University of Science and Technology, argued that question 17, which dealt with German philosopher Immanuel Kant's concept of personal identity, has no correct answer. Lee has the distinction of being selected for "The 10 best philosophy papers of 2022" by The Philosopher's Annual for a paper on the status of fertilized eggs and early embryos using the concept of "numerical identity," which is related to question 17 in the Korean section.
The institute, which accepted objections to CSAT items through its official website until on the 17th, plans to finalize and announce the correct answers on the 25th after a review.