English scores may drop, scores above 9 will be rare

With this year's English high school graduation exam, teachers predict that the scores may decrease compared to last school year; scores ranging from 6 to 7 are high and the percentage of scores above 9 will be lower than last school year. Scores above 9 will be very rare.

Ms. Trinh Thi Kim Dung, a teacher at Ban Mai Secondary and High School ( Hanoi ) commented: The 2025 high school graduation exam in English ensures a structure of 40 questions, knowledge closely follows the high school curriculum and closely follows the subject illustration questions of the Ministry of Education and Training.

However, the exam is considered more difficult than previous years, focusing on assessing students' reading comprehension and ability to apply English in real-life situations. Separate grammar questions, pronunciation, stress, and error correction have been completely eliminated.

Candidates taking the high school graduation exam this year

PHOTO: TUAN MINH

In addition, there are many new question types related to real-life communication situations (arranging conversations, letters, leaflets, etc.), filling in sentences, and paraphrasing.

To give the correct answer, in addition to solid grammar knowledge and rich vocabulary, students also need to have the ability to analyze, grasp context and think logically.

The test is clearly differentiated, slightly differentiated from questions 1 - 24, ensuring that average students can achieve 4 - 5 points. From questions 25 - 40, the test has clear differentiation, especially in the differentiation section, helping to effectively filter good and excellent students.

The questions on sentence insertion, paraphrasing, pronouns, and contextual vocabulary are quite similar to IELTS Reading band 5.5 - 6.5. The questions at the recognition level are mainly about shortening relative clauses, arranging word order, quantifiers, conjunctions, word types, etc.

Questions at a high level of application are in the fill-in-the-blank section, inference questions, etc.

Reading topics and vocabulary are close to modern life such as personal financial management, high-tech agriculture , risky tourism, environment..., contributing to building language skills in practice, instead of learning tricks.

"Overall, this year's exam is considered good, consistent with the goals of the 2018 GeneralEducation Program, requiring students to develop their language skills and creativity," said Ms. Kim Dung.

Ms. Kim Dung also predicted that the English exam scores this year may decrease compared to last school year; the range of scores from 6 to 7 is high and the percentage of scores above 9 will be lower than last school year.

Scores of 9 or higher are very rare, falling on students with a solid foundation of knowledge and skills, good self-study ability and a special passion for English.

The English teachers of the Hoc Mai Education System believe that the 2025 high school graduation exam in English has shown a clear convergence with the goal of developing foreign language proficiency in the 2018 General Education Program.

Instead of testing discrete knowledge, the test focuses on exploiting reading comprehension, semantic thinking and language application in situations close to academic and professional life.

This approach not only encourages students to learn to understand - learn to use English but also creates a reasonable differentiation between average - good - excellent students, and therefore the number of maximum scores and high scores will not be much.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/diem-mon-tieng-anh-co-the-giam-diem-tren-9-se-rat-hiem-185250627113056485.htm