As the former Head of the Foreign Language Group at Nguyen Trai High School for the Gifted, with 25 years of experience teaching English classes and training national excellent students, after hearing many students "complain" that the English exam for this year's high school graduation exam was difficult, Ms. Vuong Bich Hanh sat down to try out test code 1105.
Even though she got 8.5 in IELTS Reading, Ms. Hanh said she had to "sweat profusely" to be able to solve all the questions.
“This year’s exam was unusually difficult, surpassing what students learn in the generaleducation program. If you look closely at the program of each lesson in the 11th and 12th grade textbooks, you will not see many vocabulary words appearing in the exam.
The text in the test is difficult because it has many new words and difficult expressions, the questions are too long, the content is unclear so it takes a lot of time to read and process the information," said Ms. Hanh, at the same time assessing the level of knowledge in this test requires candidates to reach B2 - C2 level to be able to do it, exceeding the output capacity standard required for 12th grade students which is B1.
Sharing the same view, Mr. Huynh Chi Vien, who graduated with a degree in English Pedagogy in the US, assessed that this year’s English test was difficult to pass the “general” level, especially in terms of vocabulary. The reading passages on the topics of “greenwashing” or “project farming ” are also highly specialized concepts, unfamiliar to high school students.
“I think even in Vietnamese, asking students to fully understand the content of the lesson in order to do it correctly is very difficult,” said Mr. Vien.
Overall, within 50 minutes, to read, understand, and answer all the questions on 4 pages of A4 paper "full of words", Mr. Vien said that not to mention students, English teachers also have to struggle.
Difficult questions cannot classify candidates
According to teacher Bich Hanh, although the exam allows for a certain amount of new words, this year's exam has too many new words compared to the students' ability. Therefore, this exam can be difficult for English majors, not to mention the general students in rural and mountainous areas.
Ms. Hanh does not support making the test too difficult because this is "unscientific in testing and evaluation and cannot classify students".
“The test structure lacks comprehensiveness because writing skills are completely ignored; grammar, vocabulary and real-life communication situations are neglected. In addition, the level of difficulty is too high, not following the standards of the competency assessment framework including recognition - understanding - application at 2 levels, so it cannot differentiate students. This is not good,” Ms. Hanh shared.
Teacher Huynh Chi Vien also said that this test is not compatible with practical English training in high schools, and therefore does not closely follow and accurately reflect the actual English proficiency of Vietnamese students.
“In my opinion, the general level exam for a foreign language should focus on practical skills with high applicability, such as oral questions (to test the fluency of listening, speaking, pronunciation, using sentence structures and vocabulary with personal problems or things that interest you) and an essay in English (to test writing skills such as coherence in writing, effectiveness and accuracy in using grammar and vocabulary, spelling) instead of a multiple choice test with a lot of academic knowledge,” said Mr. Vien.
Regarding the difficulty of this year's high school graduation exam, the Ministry of Education and Training recently confirmed that the exam did not exceed the requirements of the program. The ratio of thinking levels (related to difficulty) closely follows the published reference exam, has differentiation and is based on test results in 3 regions.
This year’s exam has increased the number of questions that differentiate. According to the Ministry of Education and Training, this is to limit the shortcomings of previous years, when the exam had few questions to classify students, leading to difficulties in enrollment, forcing many higher education institutions to organize their own exams, causing costs and wasting social resources.
Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/co-giao-25-nam-day-chuyen-toat-mo-hoi-khi-giai-de-thi-tot-nghiep-mon-tieng-anh-2417621.html
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