From 100 questions to 300: where did the old ones go?

A question stops appearing

A question disappearing from new tests does not mean its history has been deleted. KYOTOEIC keeps the set used for new exams separate from saved versions of earlier sets. Today, an exam draws 30 questions from a bank of 300. Before that, the bank contained 100 questions.

On October 13, 2026, we compared the saved versions again. The old 100 and the new 300 have no question IDs in common. The change was a replacement of the set, rather than a gradual expansion of the same hundred questions. Calling the earlier questions “retired” means they stopped being selected for new tests. It does not establish that all of them were wrong, or describe every candidate discarded before publication.

Two later revisions did something different

The first, second and third versions of the 300-question bank share the same 300 IDs. Each transition raised the revision number of all 300 questions. In both transitions, there were zero changes to category, difficulty or correct-answer key.

Even a typo correction raises the revision number so the new wording can be distinguished from the old. The number of updated questions therefore says little about the size of the edits. A question with one changed line of dialogue and a question with a rewritten explanation each count as one.

Adding the two rounds gives 600 updates to the same 300 questions. Calling that total a review count would turn version changes into claimed editorial work. To judge whether the edits helped, we still have to read the changed sentences.

One small change in a public question

The theater invitation on an exam day is a public variant of a retired question. Its earlier English option said “unable to attend.” The public variant says “finding it difficult to attend,” matching the degree of certainty in Japanese “参加しにくい” and Korean “참가가 어렵다.”

The earlier English wording remains in its saved version. The public variant received a separate ID and its first revision. This did not regrade people who had answered the old question, and it did not publish the answers to the current exam bank.

The archive also includes straightforward questions such as asking for a name to check a reservation. Being in the archive is not a verdict that a question was defective. Whether it is still selected, whether it may be published, and whether its wording has changed are separate facts.

Keeping the question you actually answered

When an exam begins, it saves a copy of the questions assigned to that attempt. Later edits to the bank do not swap the wording during that exam or regrade submitted results against a new answer. A public article's revision history and a person's exam record serve different purposes.

The files show what changed. They do not reveal every reason a candidate was discarded during planning or how long anyone spent deliberating. This article stays with the replacement and revisions that can be checked. The about page records the overall figures, while the editorial policy explains corrections and preservation.