Lingard Surprised by CSAT English... "Solve This?" Shocked by the Difficulty Level

Confused by Last Year's Difficult CSAT Passages
"This Year's CSAT Likely Felt Easier Than Last Year's"

Jesse Lingard (UK·FC Seoul), a former England Premier League (EPL) player, was seen looking flustered after reading a College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) English passage.

Jesse Lingard (UK), a former England Premier League (EPL) player, was astonished after seeing the English passage from the CSAT. FC Seoul YouTube

K League club FC Seoul recently released a video of their foreign players attempting past CSAT English questions. FC Seoul midfielder Jesse Lingard read passage number 24 from last year’s CSAT English exam and exclaimed, "Oh my..." while clicking his tongue.

He then said, "What? No way. People actually solve this?" in surprise. Other players, Stanislav Ilyucheko (Germany) and Yazan Alarab (Jordan), also reacted that the questions were difficult. At the end of the video, the three players cheered on the test takers by saying, "Fighting!"

In fact, this passage was considered a high-level question because it was so complex that even reading it in Korean translation was difficult to understand quickly. Netizens who watched the video commented, "Test takers have to solve passages that even a British person finds difficult," "They must have felt the level of our education system," "It feels similar to the difficulty of Korean non-literary passages," and "I heard even American college students would struggle to score 70 on the CSAT."

Meanwhile, the English section of the 2025 CSAT, held on the 14th, was analyzed to be easier than last year’s CSAT but somewhat more difficult than the September mock exam this year.

Kim Yeryeong, a leading EBS instructor and teacher at Daewai Foreign Language High School, explained, "The difficulty of the passages themselves was not significantly higher, so it is expected that students felt it easier than last year’s CSAT," adding, "The percentage of top-tier scorers (above 90 points) is predicted to fall between last year’s CSAT and this September’s mock exam."

Last year, the top-tier (1st grade) pass rate for the CSAT English section was 4.71%, which was considered challenging, while the September mock exam this year had a 10.94% pass rate, classified as moderate. She also said, "The questions were designed so that answers could only be found by carefully reading the passages thoroughly and accurately understanding the meaning of the answer choices based on reading comprehension and integrative thinking skills," and added, "Killer questions (ultra-high difficulty questions) were excluded to ensure fairness."