Hanh was head of the foreign language division of Nguyen Trai High School for the Gifted, and trained many students to prepare them for competitions for excellent students in English. She has an 8.5 score in Reading for IELTS.

“This year’s exam is unusually tough, as the exam questions are beyond the knowledge students receive under the general education program. If you examine the textbooks for grades 11 and 12, many vocabulary words in the exam don’t appear at all,” she said.

“The reading passages are challenging due to new vocabulary and unclear phrasing, while the questions are overly long and ambiguous, requiring significant time to process,” Hanh said. 

She assessed that the test demands a B2-C2 proficiency level, far exceeding the B1 output standard required for grade 12 students.

Huynh Chi Vien, a graduate of English Pedagogy in the US, noted that this year’s English exam is excessively difficult, particularly in vocabulary, for students who have just finished the general education program. The topics of the texts - “greenwashing” or “project farming” - involve highly specialized concepts unfamiliar to most high school students.

“I think even in Vietnamese, asking students to fully understand the content of the lesson to do it correctly is very difficult,” Vien said.

Overall, completing a test spanning four densely packed A4 pages within 50 minutes is a struggle not only for students but also for English teachers, according to Vien.

Hanh noted that while a certain number of new words are acceptable at exams, this year’s test included an excessive amount of new words beyond students’ capabilities. This could challenge even gifted students of English, let alone mainstream students in rural or mountainous areas.

Hanh does not support overly difficult exams, as they are “unscientific in terms of assessment and fail to differentiate students.”

“The test structure lacks comprehensiveness, completely omitting writing skills; grammar, vocabulary, and real-life communication scenarios are undervalued. Combined with its excessive difficulty and deviation from standard competency frameworks (recognition, comprehension, and application at two levels), it fails to effectively differentiate students. This is problematic,” Hanh said.

Vien also thinks the test does not align with practical English training in high schools, thus failing to reflect Vietnamese students’ actual English proficiency.

Regarding the exam’s difficulty, the Ministry of Education and Training recently affirmed that it does not exceed the curriculum’s requirements. The proportion of cognitive levels (related to difficulty) aligns with the published reference test, ensures differentiation of students, and it truly reflects the English proficiency of Vietnamese students.

Thuy Nga