In April of this year, 17 students of 20 passed the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) that measures their knowledge of the language.
UTRGV is one of nine regional testing sites in the U.S., which facilitates students with the opportunity to take the exam.
“TOPIK is a language test for non-native speakers of Korean … for those wishing to study at a Korean institute and those who want to be employed at a Korean company or want to teach English in Korea,” said Mijin Oh-Villarreal, a Korean lecturer. “Students get a big chance to get a scholarship if they want to study in Korea and also not only in Korea, in the U.S. Sometimes, [the] Houston Education Center or Korean government gives foreign students a scholarship.”
The university helps students pass the TOPIK test by offering a Korean language class, TOPIK-focused tutoring with the Korean professor and Learning Center tutoring.
“Let’s say a student is having a hard time learning vocabulary, they sometimes can’t understand in Korean and English. I would try to show them in Korean and Spanish, Korean and Spanglish,” said Hilda Morado, an English major and Korean tutor. “I feel like that’s very helpful to the students because I’ve seen it where I tried it in Spanglish and they are like ‘Oh! That makes more sense.’”
Seeing the growing Korean population at her church, political science junior Enedina Alcantar, was motivated to expand her knowledge of Korean and take the TOPIK exam as well.
“It was a good experience to push myself a little further,” Alcantar said. “I studied with the professor, we had our workbooks and I also would talk with, you know, the Korean friends I made from church or online and we would speak in Korean. It was nerve-racking because there were some things that were different from other exams … but I think it was very interesting because everything was in Korean so we kinda have to really, you know, focus and pay attention and if they were things we didn’t understand we had to use our context clues … and think of what they were trying to tell us. I encourage other people, especially the Korean I class to just really take it serious and that is a very fun experience. … It’s gonna be very beneficial.”
For more information about TOPIK, email mijin.ohvillarreal@utrgv.edu.
