To facilitate candidates, the Ministry of Education and Training has announced the structure and format of all high school graduation exams. However, there are still many concerns about the structure and format of the Literature exam.

The Ministry of Education and Training said that in the first year of the exam reform, the exam will have many new points, in which the exam content will closely follow the 2018 general education program that the 12th grade students next year will have access to for 3 years from grade 10 to grade 12. With the Literature subject tested according to the new program, the language materials can be completely outside the textbooks. At that time, students will have to fulfill the requirements on the completely new language materials, thus ending the situation of speculation about the exam questions and students will no longer have to memorize or study lopsidedly.

And to facilitate students, the Ministry of Education and Training has announced the format structure of all subjects of the 2025 high school graduation exam, in which Literature is the only subject tested in essay form. Instead of having three parts in the exam as in 2024 and earlier, the Literature exam of the exam from 2025 will have two parts in 120 minutes, with the following format and structure: "Reading comprehension" part (4 points) with a text outside the textbook, belonging to one of three types including literary text, argumentative text and informational text; writing part (6 points), in which 1 paragraph is 2 points and 1 essay is 4 points.

Dr. Trinh Thu Tuyet, former teacher of Chu Van An High School (Hanoi), commented that the high school graduation exam from 2025 has created a lot of pressure on the suitability of the exam and the feasibility for students to complete the exam requirements. According to Ms. Tuyet, in general, the exam is too much for most students because students have to approach, read, understand, analyze, evaluate... at least two texts that may be completely new. Along with that, with questions that tend to separate the argumentative content of the Writing section from the text of the Reading Comprehension section, students' thinking is broken and confused up to three times in 120 attempts, losing connection and inheritance. In addition, the amount of Vietnamese and literary knowledge and the system of skills that students have to mobilize to fulfill the requirements of the exam is too large...

From the above reality, Ms. Tuyet believes that changing the assessment and evaluation work with the innovation of the structure, format and new matrix of the exam is inevitable to form the capacity and qualities of students, eliminate the problem of teaching and learning according to model texts, rote learning, etc., but every turning point should have a suitable roadmap. And right in the structure and format of the exam, we should also think about the integration, inheritance, and continuity of thinking, both reducing pressure on students and increasing scientificity, creating organic connections between the elements in a whole exam. Therefore, to reduce pressure on students, to create continuity in thinking, and connectivity of the elements in a whole, Ms. Tuyet suggests that whether it is a social or literary argument, it should require a discussion on a social/literary issue raised in the reading text. Along with that, before realizing the 2025 high school graduation exam according to the structure and format of the sample exam, the Ministry of Education and Training needs to conduct experiments and exchange widely with teachers from provinces and cities across the country to maximize the collective intellectual contributions of teachers.

Although affirming that the structure of the high school graduation exam in Literature expected for 2025 is consistent with the innovation orientation of the 2018 general education program, especially the regulation on using materials other than all textbooks currently in circulation, Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Manh Hung, the main coordinator of the 2018 General Education Program Development Board, also said that the structure of the exam is also likely to put pressure on students because they have to perform more difficult tasks than before in a limited time. And this level of pressure will be very significant in the context that 2025 is the first year that students take the high school graduation exam according to the new program, the study time according to the new program and textbooks is only three years; students' reading and writing skills have not really met the requirements immediately, especially the self-reading and writing sections on new materials. In addition, Mr. Hung also recommended that localities should not mechanically copy the structure of the high school graduation exam to design the transfer exam from grade 9 to grade 10, but should depend on the actual teaching conditions of each locality.

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Manh Hung, the use of new materials in the high school graduation exam from 2025 is mandatory, only then can we ensure the correct assessment of candidates' reading and writing skills; increasing the test time to more than 120 minutes is also difficult to implement. Therefore, Mr. Hung believes that the amount of work that students need to do to complete the test is something that needs to be carefully considered in the illustrative test in a reduced direction. In case the test structure does not change, only the option of reading and understanding a literary text (excerpt), writing a short paragraph about the text (excerpt) in the reading comprehension section and writing a social argumentative essay can help reduce reading and writing based on new materials. In addition, the names of the reading comprehension question groups (recognition, understanding, application) as well as the way of asking questions given as examples in the illustrative test also need to be adjusted to suit the characteristics of the Literature subject.