🇰🇷 Lesson 22: Opinion & Argument

Sooner or later a Korean friend, colleague or teacher turns to you and asks 넌 어떻게 생각해? — about working from home, about plastic cups in cafés, about whether children should have smartphones. At A2 you could answer 좋아요 or 싫어요. At B2 you are expected to say what you think, why, give an example, concede a point to the other side and land on a conclusion. And at the end of the TOPIK II writing paper, question 54 asks you to do exactly that on paper, in 600–700 characters of 한다체.

This lesson gives you the building blocks for both: the spoken phrases for discussions and debates, the written connectors that hold an essay together, and a step-by-step plan for TOPIK writing questions 53 and 54.

🧠 The Mental Model: Four Bricks of an Argument

Whatever the language, a persuasive argument is built from the same four bricks. Korean simply gives each brick its own set of stock phrases, and examiners and listeners expect to hear them.

One more brick makes an argument sound mature rather than stubborn: the concession (양보) — admitting the other side has a point before explaining why you still disagree. In Korean that is 물론 … -지만, or -(으)ㄴ/는 것은 사실이다. 그러나 …

🗣️ Stating an Opinion: From Soft to Firm

You already know -다고 from reported speech (Lessons 2–3). Opinions are simply reported speech about your own mind: 중요하다고 생각해요, 문제라고 생각해요, 줄여야 한다고 생각해요. What changes is how strongly you commit.

Agreeing, disagreeing and conceding

Notice 제 말씀은 in the last line: 말씀 is humble when it refers to your own words (Lesson 20), so it's the polite way to restate your point in a formal debate.

💬 Dialogue: A Classroom Debate

Every brick is there — claim, reason, concession, gentle challenge — plus 다만 ("only, however"), a softer "but" that adds a limitation rather than flatly contradicting.

🔗 Connectors That Hold an Argument Together

Connecting adverbs are the skeleton of an essay. Examiners look for them because they show the reader how each sentence relates to the last. Most have a conversational twin; the essay version is more formal.

Which one? The connectors learners mix up

🧱 Essay Grammar: Patterns That Carry Argument

📝 TOPIK II Writing: What Questions 51–54 Ask

The TOPIK II writing paper has four questions and 50 minutes. The first two test sentence-level accuracy; the last two test whether you can organise real written Korean. Questions 53 and 54 carry most of the writing score, and both must be written in 한다체.

Answers to 53 and 54 are written on a 원고지 grid (manuscript paper): one character per square, spaces take a square, and each paragraph starts with one empty square. The character counts above include spaces. The official scoring looks at three broad areas — content and task completion (did you answer everything asked?), organisation (is it logically structured, with good connectors?) and language use (range and accuracy of grammar and vocabulary, appropriate written style). The exact marks inside each area are the examiners' business; your job is to hit all three.

Question 53: describe the data, don't judge it

Question 53 gives you a survey or trend chart. Your job is to report it objectively: who was surveyed, what the results were, and any causes or outlook the chart shows. Leave your own opinion out.

Question 54: plan before you write

Question 54 gives a short background statement and usually two or three guiding questions. The instructions tell you to write 600–700 characters and not to copy the prompt word for word — so rephrase the background in your own words. The single most reliable structure is one paragraph per guiding question, framed by an introduction and a conclusion. Spend five minutes on an outline; it saves you from running out of squares halfway through your argument.

That plan adds up to roughly 600–670 characters — inside the target with room to spare. Here is how 본론 2 might look written out in full:

그러나 turns from the positives of 본론 1, 우선 … 또한 … 게다가 orders three problems, and every sentence ends in 한다체. A matching conclusion might open: 따라서 스마트폰 사용을 무조건 막기보다는 올바르게 사용하는 방법을 가르쳐야 할 것이다.

🇰🇷 Culture note: Korean students practise structured argument in 논술 (essay writing), which some universities use in admissions, and in school 토론 (debate) classes. The expected shape — background, clear claim, reasons with examples, concession, conclusion — is exactly what TOPIK 54 rewards. In everyday conversation, though, Koreans usually signal disagreement indirectly, especially with seniors: 그것도 좋은데요… or 한번 더 생각해 보면 어떨까요? often means "I disagree."

📰 Reading: A Newspaper Column

✏️ Practice

🧠 Check Your Understanding

❓ Common Questions

Writing an argument in a second language is hard because you're juggling ideas, grammar and structure all at once — it's normal for your first practice essays to feel clumsy and take far too long. That's not a sign you've plateaued; it's what building a new skill feels like. Write one paragraph a day, and within a few weeks the connectors and sentence endings will start arriving on their own, leaving your attention free for the ideas.

🔮 Looking Ahead

You may have noticed that almost all the essay vocabulary in this lesson — 주장, 근거, 생산성, 효율, 단계적 — is Sino-Korean. In Lesson 23: Sino-Korean Roots you'll learn to break these words into their building blocks (학, 생, 대, 국, 인…) and the prefixes and suffixes that attach to them (-자, -성, -화, 불-, 무-), so you can guess the meaning of words you've never seen before.