Candidates discuss the optional exam questions after the exam ends.
PHOTO: NGOC LONG
''Many questions in the exam were written quite strangely and unnaturally''
With more than 10 years of experience teaching English in Vietnam, Ms. Denise Thomson, living in Ho Chi Minh City and holding a degree and advanced certificate ineducation from Auckland University (New Zealand), said that to assess whether a person truly understands and uses a foreign language, we need to let them demonstrate critical thinking in that language, create conditions for them to reason logically or learn how to respond appropriately to effectively convey ideas in the exam.
"However, the English test simply assesses students' knowledge, or even their guesses, about English vocabulary and grammar. Educators really need to understand that language is not just based on vocabulary and grammar alone," the female teacher shared. "To be honest, many of the questions in the test were written quite strangely and unnaturally. Even I had to read them several times to understand them."
Having worked in the IELTS test preparation field, Ms. Thomson believes that the test is too long and includes too much difficult vocabulary, which is not really necessary for the communication process. "In the IELTS test, there is still difficult vocabulary in the Reading test, but candidates are not assessed based on memorizing those words but on their ability to grasp the main idea and key words that determine the message of the passage," Ms. Thomson said.
"This test is definitely at level C1 or C2 according to the CEFR framework," Ms. Thomson said.
Overall, the female teacher believes that the test was poorly designed and did not reflect the average ability of the candidates. Compared to the current level of 12th graders that she has met, she predicts that most of them will not be able to get high scores on the test and will not help them know where to start improving.
"This test further reinforces the misconception that to do well on IELTS (or English in general) you need to know a lot of 'big words'. That is completely untrue. We always try to explain to students that the important thing is to use the right words to express your ideas, not to use many long, complicated words. Sadly, after this test, some students will think, 'English is too difficult for me' and lose motivation to study," she added.
The exam will be easier if...
Meanwhile, Mr. Rick Sharples, an English teacher currently teaching in Bangkok (Thailand), said that the Vietnamese English exam aims to assess students' grasp of grammar and logic when using English, not placing too much emphasis on students understanding the topic of each section. "I finished each section in about 5-10 minutes and took a short break between sections. The total test time was about an hour," he informed.
Candidates taking the 2025 high school graduation exam
PHOTO: NGOC LONG
One thing Sharples doesn't like about the exam is that there are questions that give seemingly reasonable answers and require candidates to use deduction. The problem with this type of question is that the answers are paraphrased and all of them could be correct depending on the context and purpose of the paraphrasing. "However, this is an exam, a separate exercise, so candidates don't have a specific context or purpose to rely on," he shared.
Another "most obvious and annoying" limitation is that the test pages are densely packed with text, which quickly tires the eyes. "Even I had to stop after five minutes because it was too difficult to concentrate," said Sharples. "There needs to be more white space between the text, questions and answers to reduce the strain on the eyes when reading the test. The test could be spread out over six pages instead of being crammed into four pages as it is now."
So, overall, the test makers only need to make a few small changes to the layout and presentation to make it easier for candidates, without necessarily changing too much in the content of the questions. "However, if the goal of the test is to comprehensively assess candidates' reading comprehension ability, I think the test should be designed in a way that encourages them to really understand the material," said Mr. Sharples.
The male teacher added that skimming is extremely important to do well on this test. "If I were to take the test myself, I would not read the entire text at the beginning, but would look at the questions first to see what keywords and phrases to pay attention to. Then, I would quickly skim the entire text to find important information to answer the questions," said Mr. Sharples.
Positive points of English exam
Having studied and worked in Canada for the past 5 years and taught English, Dao Son Tung, a candidate who scored 8.5 in Reading on the IELTS test, said that after 50 minutes of taking the test, he got 35/40 questions correct. "I think the test is quite difficult but more practical and interesting than previous years' tests. This year's test focuses on reading comprehension, including questions about grammar and vocabulary, and does not just require tips to do well like before," he shared.
According to Mr. Tung, compared to before, this year's English exam no longer focuses on grammar and vocabulary. This is a positive sign, because in terms of actual speaking, the parties do not care too much about correct or incorrect grammar but always try to understand what the other person wants to convey. Meanwhile, in terms of writing, there are now many AI (artificial intelligence) tools that help users correct mistakes immediately.
"Therefore, if the test only focuses on grammar or vocabulary, it will not be effective," said Mr. Tung from Canada. "The new structured test really focuses on comprehension because learning a foreign language is about understanding and presenting in that language. But it cannot be denied that the test evaluates reading comprehension so well that it is counterproductive. Personally, I prefer the vocabulary-oriented questions of the old test."
However, Mr. Tung also affirmed that the current English test does not help much in real-life communication because "even in writing, no one writes like the material provided, let alone speaking". There are two possible ways to solve this, one is to separate it into a reading and a writing test; or two is to add a listening test to assess the candidate's comprehension skills, according to Mr. Tung.
Ministry of Education and Training: High school graduation exam questions do not exceed program requirements
In today's report (July 1), the Ministry of Education and Training affirmed that the content of the high school graduation exam does not exceed the requirements of the 2018 General Education Program (new program). The ratio of thinking levels (related to difficulty) is required to closely follow the published reference questions, be differentiated and based on the test results in 3 regions.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, there may be many reasons for some difficult test scores, especially in math and English. However, we need to wait until the exam results are available to determine this clearly.
The Ministry of Education and Training added that it also developed a number of test questions for large-scale testing with about 12,000 candidates nationwide, including in the most disadvantaged provinces. The test results have been carefully analyzed using modern testing theory and are one of the important bases for the test council to create reference questions to determine the level of the test, ensuring differentiation and meeting the requirements of Resolution 29.
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/giao-vien-nuoc-ngoai-nhan-xet-gi-ve-do-kho-de-thi-tieng-anh-cua-viet-nam-18525070116322314.htm
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