Students are happy, teachers are worried about the English subject illustration

50 English multiple choice questions with familiar formats and the same knowledge as every year will reduce pressure on students. However, many teachers are concerned that the test cannot accurately assess good students.

Ms. Vu Mai Phuong, who has experience teaching English on television and preparing for university entrance exams, said that the sample test did not shock teachers and students. She was disappointed when the draft proposed a structure for the English test with 40 multiple-choice questions and eliminated the essay section. When the number of questions increased to 50, the test would evaluate students better, but it would still be short.

Ms. Mai Phuong commented that the sample test makes it difficult to evaluate truly excellent students.

​According to Ms. Phuong, the knowledge in the sample test is no different from 2016, the type of questions is familiar.The number of difficult questions accounts for about 20%, falling into the vocabulary and reading comprehension sections. The test is capable of classifying students but it is still difficult to find truly excellent students. "With this type of test, the score range will be higher than two years ago and the absolute score will appear more often," Ms. Phuong commented and advised students to continue reviewing the knowledge they have learned. In addition, students need to practice better test-taking skills and focus more because the test time is short.

Ms. Nguyen Hai, a 12th grade English teacher, said that with this sample test, students who do not study English in depth do not have to worry about failing. The test has many questions in the form of recognition, suitable for students who only use their English results for graduation. On the contrary, such a test is difficult to accurately assess excellent students. For students majoring in English who register for universities in the language major group, having their English score doubled is a huge advantage. Therefore, some schools may plan to have their own foreign language proficiency test.

Ms. Hai said that students are often afraid of the essay writing and the filling in missing words in the reading comprehension section, but in the sample test, the essay writing part was removed and the filling in words part was reduced from 10 to 5 questions. This made many students happy, but the teachers themselves could not be satisfied with such a test.

Many students commented that the English sample test recently announced by the Ministry of Education and Training was somewhat easier than last year. Gia Khanh, a 12th grader at Nguyen Hue High School for the Gifted in Hanoi, commented that the sample test was quite suitable, without many difficult idioms and the vocabulary was more familiar. The difficult questions were in the last two reading passages. With this test, many students can get high scores, even full marks. "At my school, students majoring in Natural Sciences are quite confident that they can get above 8 points," Khanh said.

Thu Hien, a 12th grade student in Viet Tri (Phu Tho) commented that the sample test was easier than the official test every year. The test still included familiar knowledge such as: phonetics, grammar, vocabulary, communication functions, writing and reading skills, so she kept the same study plan.However, the official exam may be more difficult than the sample exam, so you need to speed up your review in the coming time.

According to VNE