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This study aims to conduct a systematic analysis of the difficulty level of reading passages in the 9th grade local civil servant English exams conducted from 2019 to 2023, with a particular focus on the differences in difficulty between the national and local exams as analyzed in a prior study by Lee Jeeyeon (2023). Additionally, this research meticulously analyzed the vocabulary, sentence structure, diversity, and complexity of the reading passages used in the civil service exams using AI analytical tools, evaluating the differences in difficulty between the national and local exams from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The results of the research showed that, based on the proportion of passages at or above the CEFR C1 level, the local exams demonstrated a higher level of difficulty than the national exams over the five years, with the exception of the year 2020. The 2021 and 2023 exams showed that the difficulty levels of both were almost similar, while in 2019 and 2022, the local exams were significantly more challenging than the national ones. The findings of this study have discussed implications for future adjustments in difficulty level or improvements in assessment for the civil servant English exams.
Jee‐Yeon Lee (Tue,) studied this question.