Introduction
Where is the test site and how do I get there?
The ROKAF offers a bus to ferry you from a landmark nearby the bus station to the test site. If you take this bus, you'll save yourself a few thousand won in taxi fees and get a chance to talk to other applicants. Make sure you find out where the bus is before the test date as it is a 5~10 minute walk away from the terminal, and also don't forget to TAKE THE NECESSARY PAPERWORK.
Your application number is important because it determines your place in the queue (it's a FIFO queue) for the interpretation/interview portion of the test. You may not think much of it right now, but you just might wish you'd turned in your application a bit later if you're the first up to bat. If you're the final applicant, you will be the last to leave. For this particular test, the last interview ended past six, a good five hours since the first person completed his interview. Whether or not getting tested early or late is a matter of preference, but I will tell you that if the proctors feel they're running over time, they'll rush the interpretation/interview portions. I have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
The composition section (60?50? mins)
The first part was a translation/composition question that contained the instructions for the composition portion of the test. They gave us a paragraph of text to translate from Korean to English, then asked that we do our compositions according to the given instructions. I don't remember the exact question, but I'll type up the english translation to the best of my memory.
There are social problems that can be better solved through government intervention than by the effort of individuals. Please discuss what you think this question means. Next, give an example in which the efforts of individuals is preferred over government intervention. Finally, discuss the characteristics of government intervention or individual effort that make them suitable for solving a social problem.
If I were to compare the listening portion of the test to the IBT toefl, I'd say that the officer test listening section is several magnitudes of order more difficult. For starters, the pronunciation of the tapes were in a mix of dialects: there was a central U.S dialect (easy), and what I believe was a either an australian or new zeland dialect (harder). I'll write down as many topics as I can remember.
(conversation) A conversation betwixt a female student and a male instructor on what the student could do to improve her groups work. The conclusions was, become the leader you idiot. I'll give you a good grade.
(lecture) Carbon dating.... taught by crocodile dundee (a popular film character from the 80's with a thick australian accent).
(lecture) language acquisition (skinner vs chomsky) carte blanche, universal grammar...
(lecture) Pros and cons of various desalination techniques.
(lecture) Something about a "living fossil"
(conversation) A guy wants to file a housing complaint because of poor service. Turns out there was a misunderstanding.
(conversation) Tech support, some guy needed his wireless fixed.
You might look over this list and think "hey what's this idiot complaining about, those questions look frickin easy. Several order of magnitude difficult my ass."
Well, imagine looking over a few questions. You figure out the next dialog is going to be on desalination. Sweet. Now, after reading over the questions, you think "the first question is asking what the lecture's about, check. the next one...does the lecturer think electrolysis is good, check. question three, what the fuck, a diagram? I can't even see this shit cause it's frickin fuzzy (pulling the test sheet closer to your face). I've seen better pictures in fricken photocopies of the illustrated canterbury tales. Ok, now a problem on the benefits of a particular desalination technique, I'll just listen for it..."
By this time, the mock lecture, the dialog, has begun, and you're off to a good start. Then you realize that you were supposed to figure our which type of desalination is depicted in the diagram and take a few seconds to stare at the picture. Immediately afterwards, the lecturer starts rattling off numerous pro's of desalination method x, y and z that all start sounding pretty much the same.
Now I don't know if you majored in MINDNUMBINGLY BORING as an undergrad or grad, maybe desalination?, but if you're anything like me, you're going to think about something else for a second. I don't know, maybe about how small the writing area of the table is (the writing space on the table at the test site is pretty friggen small). Or if you drank a lot of milk that morning, how you're going to break wind without disrupting the entire room. You might think of a date that you have with a girl, or guy if that's your thing. The point is, if you think about something, anything, for a split second, you're going to realize that you just MISSED THE FRICKEN PASSAGE THAT YOU NEEDED. You can't really guess because the pro's and con's of the five or six other desalination methods look pretty much the same to you. As you try to figure out what you're going to guess, the next dialoge/lecture begins...
So if I stop the rant short and summarize, the questions are tricky in that they are detail oriented and come in quick succession. They're tricky for no reason other than TO MAKE YOU FAIL. Well...good luck. If you make sure you pay attention to the dialog, ignore the various grammatical errors in the choices, and read ahead you should be alright. Most of the other people seem to have problems with this part so don't worry.
