Badasseugi (받아쓰기) is the dictation test in Korean elementary school. The teacher reads out words or sentences, and the children write them down. In my children’s school, each test had about ten items, and it came every week, starting in the second semester of first grade.
How it works differs from school to school and from teacher to teacher, so this guide is one Korean parent’s view from two classrooms. It covers the practice list that comes home, what happens after a wrong answer, how to practice the night before, and what to do if you cannot read the list aloud yourself.
What a dictation test looks like
Curriculum checked October 2026 · National Education Commission Notice No. 2024-3, elementary Korean
My children started dictation in the second semester of first grade. As far as I remember, it did not start earlier. After that, there was a test every week.
| Item | What it looked like |
|---|---|
| When it started | Second semester of first grade |
| How often | Every week |
| Items per test | About 10 |
| Score | Out of 100, ten points per item |
| How the teacher reads | Each item two or three times |
| What is tested | Words at first, then words and sentences from the first semester of second grade |
There were reading tests too, where the children read the list aloud. The written tests came a little later.
The national curriculum does not say how often dictation should happen, or from when. What it does say is in its guidance for teaching Korean writing in grades 1 and 2. Dictation can help children write letters correctly, but teachers should use it carefully, because a child who feels pressured can lose confidence in Korean. The guidance also says to avoid words that are too hard for the child’s level and sentences with complicated spacing. That leaves the details to each school and teacher.
Treat this as one example, not a rule. Ask your child’s teacher at the start of the year how dictation works in their class.
What the practice list is
Before a test, the teacher may send home a practice list called a geupsu-pyo (급수표). 급수 means level, and each level is one test, so the list shows the words or sentences for each week.
In my older son’s class, it came home on paper some weeks and not others. When the words looked difficult, the teacher sent it home for practice. The list he brought home fit several weeks of tests on a single A4 page.
My younger son’s class works differently. No list has ever come home. Instead, the children are given time to study in the morning, before the test.
I am not a fan of that. Cramming in the morning will get a child through the test, but learning means still remembering the words the next day, the next week and the next month. So however your child’s class works, practice at home still matters.
Children also forget. I am sure there were days the list stayed in the bag. So check your child’s bag, and if tests are happening and nothing has come home, ask the teacher whether there is a list.
What happens after a wrong answer
In my children’s classes, a wrong word was rewritten two or three times, and a wrong sentence only once.
Honestly, that frustrated me. If a child can remember a sentence after writing it once, either the child is a genius or the method is very good, and I knew neither was the case in our house. So at home, my rule is at least five times, for words and sentences alike.
The reason is the same one behind most Korean spelling mistakes. The sound does not always tell you the spelling, so the hand has to learn the shape.
How to practice the night before
Our routine is simple. The night before the test, I read each item aloud and my child writes it down. Then my child and I mark it together, and anything wrong is written at least five times.
On test day, the score comes home with a lot of feeling. With one wrong answer, my son is disappointed and then promises to get 100 next time. A perfect score makes him very happy. Either way he turns into a chatterbox, telling me that only three children in his class got 100 this time.
That last part is worth knowing. A perfect score is less common than you might think.
What to do if you cannot read the list aloud
This is the hard part for many foreign parents. The routine above needs someone who can read Korean aloud. Here is what I would do, in order.
If one parent is Korean, that parent reads. Without exception. This is the most useful thing a Korean-speaking parent can do for dictation.
If neither parent reads Korean, ask the teacher for help. Ask whether the teacher can read the sentences to you or help with the pronunciation. If I were a foreign parent, I would ask. When you need help, it is worth taking whatever help there is. A little effort from you, like asking the teacher, gives your child a much better start.
If asking feels too awkward, or the teacher cannot help, have your child practice alone. Each item should be written at least ten times.
Or practice through your own language. Ask your child what each item means in your language. Say item 1 is 혼자 학교에 갑니다 (I go to school by myself). Your child tells you the meaning in your language. You then say that meaning back in your language, and your child writes the Korean sentence from memory. It takes commitment from both of you, but it needs no Korean on your side.
None of these is as easy as reading the list aloud. But dictation comes every week, so a routine your family can keep matters more than a perfect one.
Why a notebook is not ideal for practice at home
Your child may get a dictation notebook from school. My second grader’s sentence dictation is done in one. For practice at home you need another, which you can buy online or at stationery shops and discount variety stores.
In my experience, a whole notebook rarely gets used up. Unless you practice every day, and many parents do not have that kind of time or energy, practice stops after a few pages and the rest of the notebook goes to waste.
Notebooks have two other problems. Writing presses through to the next page and some paper shows through, so a sharp-eyed child can copy the answers from the marks. And when you test the same list again, you have to skip ahead to a clean page.
That is why I made single dictation pages to print one at a time, whenever they are needed. Read items 1 to 10, mark them, and rewrite the wrong ones in the rewrite rows at the bottom. If many are wrong, write them out several times on a blank grid page instead. If only one or two are wrong, the rewrite rows are enough.
The pages follow the Korean school layout: 15 boxes per row in landscape, or 10 boxes with rewrite rows in portrait. Each box takes one syllable, and each space between words is one empty box, as the Korean spelling rules separate words with spaces. They come in A4 and US Letter and also work in note-taking apps on a tablet. They are blank pages, with no audio or word lists, so you use your child’s own practice list.
Frequently asked questions
Official sources
Dictation practice is set by each school and teacher, so most of this guide is one family’s experience. The curriculum guidance and the spacing rule behind the box layout come from the pages below.
