Be careful not to go empty-handed on multiple choice questions in Math for high school graduation exam

TPO - Many 12th grade students this year are concerned about the unreasonable deduction of points in the multiple choice true-false questions in the Math exam structure of the High School Graduation Exam from 2025.

TPO - Many 12th grade students this year are concerned about the unreasonable deduction of points in the multiple choice true-false questions in the Math exam structure of the High School Graduation Exam from 2025.

One wrong idea loses 0.5 points

Some 12th grade students this year are wondering, in the illustrative Math exam for the 2025 High School Graduation Exam in Part II, the multiple choice questions are true or false, and if the answer is wrong, 0.5 points will be unreasonably deducted.

“If you circle one correct answer, you will only get 0.1 points, while if you answer one wrong answer, you will lose 0.5 points, even though this is a difficult question. Is this way of giving questions considered to reduce pressure on students?”, a student wondered.

On the online forum, the opinion immediately attracted the attention of many people, including many students who said that it was necessary to change the scoring method for true-false questions.

The 2025 High School Graduation Exam is the first year under the 2018 GeneralEducation Program.

According to the sample structure of the Math exam for the high school graduation exam from 2025 announced by the Ministry of Education and Training , the exam consists of 3 parts.

Part I is multiple choice questions as before. Part II consists of 4 questions (4 points), each question will have 4 ideas (a), (b), (c), (d) and candidates are required to answer all 4 ideas correctly or incorrectly. If candidates only answer 1 idea correctly, they will get 0.1 point; answer 2 ideas correctly, they will get 0.25 points; answer 3 ideas correctly, they will get 0.5 points and answer 4 ideas correctly, they will get 1 point. This type of question is completely new compared to previous years' exams.

In addition, the test also has a new question section that requires students to calculate to answer short multiple choice questions.

It is not easy to get high scores

Regarding students' concerns, Ms. Pham Thi Ngoc Hue, a Math teacher at Dong Anh High School ( Hanoi ) said that in the instructions, the Ministry of Education and Training does not deduct points if students answer incorrectly, but only does not add points if they do not answer correctly.

With the true-false test consisting of 4 questions, the difficulty level of the questions is not the same. Students can easily complete questions 1, 2, and better, question 3, but to do question 4 requires certainty, perseverance, and carefulness. Thus, students who have not completed 1 idea have only achieved half of the score of the question, which is 0.5 points.

“Thus, with the 4 questions in Part II, even though students have answered 12/16 ideas, they only get 2/4 points. Students find this inappropriate and careless and can lose points. Even good students, if they are not careful, can lose 0.5 points immediately if they make a mistake in any idea,” said Ms. Hue.

According to Ms. Hue, this way of calculating scores is to accurately assess students' abilities while requiring them to study carefully, deepen their knowledge, and also avoid random guessing and luck.

During the teaching process in class, when giving out questions to students, she also tried asking students to randomly circle the answers and the result was that many students “left empty-handed”. With the current way of giving questions and evaluating, Ms. Hue predicts that the math test scores will not be as high as before.

Mr. Tran Manh Tung, a math teacher in Hanoi, also said that with multiple-choice questions in the true-false format, in reality, some students are equating the correct answer a with the incorrect answer d. That is not correct because the answers in there have increasing difficulty.

"The way to calculate the score for the test as illustrated by the Ministry of Education and Training is reasonable because if you get question a right, you will only get 0.1 points, but if you get question d wrong, you will lose 0.5 points. This calculation method overcomes the shortcomings of the old test method, students have to score 50 correct questions, each question is worth 0.2 points," Mr. Tung analyzed.

According to Mr. Tung, reducing the pressure on students in the High School Graduation Exam from 2025 is not about the exam questions but the exam subjects. If in the past, students had to take many subjects to graduate, this year's exam has reduced the number of subjects to 4, of which Math and Literature are compulsory and 2 subjects are optional based on ability.

“According to the sample exam, this year’s exam will be more challenging, requiring students to study seriously and do the test with careful calculation to get good scores. In general, the new exam structure with question types has assessed students’ abilities. If only multiple choice questions were given and students had to circle one correct answer like before, it would be a mistake,” said Mr. Tung.

Ha Linh

Source: https://tienphong.vn/can-than-trang-tay-o-cau-hoi-trac-nghiem-mon-toan-thi-tot-nghiep-thpt-post1689444.tpo