Questions 51–54: templates, marks and the common mistakes
TOPIK II only: 4 questions, 50 minutes, 100 points. Question 51 — fill two blanks in a notice, letter or message with full sentences (10 points). Question 52 — two blanks in an expository paragraph (10 points). Question 53 — describe a chart, table or survey result in 200–300 characters (30 points). Question 54 — a 600–700 character opinion essay on a given social topic (50 points). Writing is the only section marked by people: two independent raters score content, structure, vocabulary and grammar.
The key is reading the sentence before and after each blank carefully: the answer is almost always built from words in those two sentences. In 51 the register must match the text (-습니다/-ㅂ니다 in a notice, -아/어요 in a letter to a friend). In 52 the expected patterns are usually "-기 때문이다", "-아/어야 한다", "-(으)ㄹ 수 있다" and similar. Each blank is worth 5 points; a sentence with the right meaning but a grammar error earns partial credit, a blank earns zero.
The most formulaic question — learned properly, 22–26 of the 30 points are all but guaranteed. Structure: (1) what the survey or statistic is about, who ran it and when; (2) the key numbers and the change (증가하다/감소하다, 2배 증가, ~에 비해); (3) the cause or outlook (이러한 원인으로는 … 을/를 들 수 있다, ~(으)ㄹ 것으로 전망된다). Written register only (-ㄴ/는다); never "나" or "저". Under 200 characters loses marks, and so does going over 300.
The prompt gives two or three guiding questions — give each its own paragraph and the structure builds itself: introduction (why the topic matters) → question 1 → question 2 → conclusion. Under 600 characters is a serious penalty. Timing: 8 minutes for 51–52, 12 for 53, 30 for 54. The most common errors: spoken register (-아/어요), drifting off topic, repeating one idea, and not knowing the 원고지 (grid paper) rules — punctuation gets its own square, and a paragraph starts with one empty square.
Writing is worth 100 of the 300 points in TOPIK II, and it frightens candidates more than the rest of the paper combined. It should not. Two of its four questions have a fixed shape, and a third has a formula. Only question 54 asks you to actually think.
It also arrives at the worst possible moment — straight after sixty minutes of Listening, with fifty minutes left and no break. Practise it there. Writing an essay when you are fresh trains you for a situation the exam will never give you.
A short text with two blanks. These test whether you can match grammar to context: an announcement pinned to a wall, a message to a colleague, an email to a professor. What goes in the blank is determined by what the text around it is doing.
Read the whole text before writing anything, and match the ending style to it. The most common loss here is not a wrong word but a right word in the wrong register — casual speech in a formal notice. Write the full clause, not a fragment.
Between 200 and 300 characters describing a chart or survey result. The structure barely varies: say what the data is about, give the headline figures, describe the change or comparison, then state the reason or the consequence the data implies.
Learn a small set of phrases for each of those four moves and question 53 becomes almost mechanical. This is the highest return on study time anywhere in TOPIK II — thirty points that reward memorisation rather than talent.
Between 600 and 700 characters on an abstract prompt: whether competition helps or harms, what failure is worth, how much responsibility an individual carries. It is marked on content, organisation and language together, and organisation is the part candidates neglect.
Spend five of your minutes planning. Introduction that restates the question and takes a position, two body paragraphs with one idea and one example each, a conclusion that does not introduce anything new. Then write in Korean you are certain of. A clear essay in simple correct grammar scores above an ambitious one that collapses.
Watch the length. Under 600 characters is penalised, and so is running so far over that the ending is rushed. Count characters in practice until you know by eye what 650 looks like in your handwriting.
Write one 53 and one 54 every week, by hand, timed. Then do the part nobody does: read them again two days later and mark them yourself against the criteria. Almost everyone finds the same faults twice, and finding them yourself is what stops the third time.