The achievement standards of the national curriculum play an important role in science
education because they contain the content and the goals for the teaching and learning of
science. They are also used as benchmarks for the many facets of evaluation. This study
explored the characteristics of predicates in the physics achievement standards in the 2009
Revised Korean National Curriculum. Third and fourth grade of physics parts in elementary
school science was analyzed, as was that of the fifth and sixth grades, seventh to ninth grades
of physics parts in middle school science, and finally physics part in high school in High School
Science, High School Physics 1, and High School Physics 2. The most frequently used verb was
'to understand', occurring 116 times (51%) among 227 verbs. The second most common verb
was 'to know', which was used 69 times (30%) in the target sentences of this study. These two
verbs, therefore, accounted for 81 percent on average. Their frequency of appearance, however,
was quite different according to school level. At the elementary school level, 46 percent of the
verbs in the curriculum sentences were ‘to understand’ or ‘to know’, and 54 percent were
others. The frequency of the same verbs was 41 out of 45 (91%) in the physics sections in
middle school science, 27 out of 29 (93%) in the physics sections in high school science, 59 out
of 64 (92%) in High School Physics 1, and 39 out of 48 (81%) in High School Physics 2. In
addition, thirteen kinds of verbs were used in the achievement standards writing of the physics
section in elementary science, although they showed some diversity. In secondary school
science, however, we found some bias in the use of verbs; for example, ‘to know’ (58%) was
the dominant verb in the middle school curriculum documents but ‘to understand’ (65%) was
the dominant one in high school curriculum documents. Finally, some academic or educational
suggestions are discussed.