National High School Exam 2015: Questions changed, which direction to review?

During the 2-hour online television consultation on the afternoon of May 6 at www.thanhnien.com.vn , experts shared tips for reviewing these important subjects well.

Math : 6 easy topics

At the beginning of the program, Mr. Tran Van Toan, Head of the Math Group at Marie Curie High School (HCMC), noted that this year's high school exam has two purposes: graduation and university and college admission, so the exam questions are much different from previous years. The exam will be divided into two groups: a group of easy questions similar to the 2014 high school graduation exam and a group of difficult questions to classify candidates for university and college. The exam will have questions that are not in the 12th grade curriculum but in the 10th and 11th grade, such as: probability, inequalities, solving algebraic equations, etc. "An important note is that the group of easy questions for high school graduation are not separate components but are scattered throughout the exam. Therefore, when receiving the exam, candidates need to read it through before doing it so as not to miss the easy questions," Mr. Toan emphasized.

According to Mr. Toan, for the purpose of high school graduation , in math, candidates need to master 6 easy topics including: functions, equations, complex numbers, integration, analytic geometry in space and spatial geometry. In addition, easy topics in grades 10 and 11 are trigonometry, combinatorics and probability.

In response to a student's concern about whether it is allowed to use knowledge outside of the textbook when doing the test, Mr. Toan said that when using knowledge outside of the textbook, it must be proven.

Literature: Note on comparison and integration

Sharing the noteworthy points in the literature exam, teacher Dao Nguyen Binh, Tran Dai Nghia High School for the Gifted, said that this year's exam increased points in reading comprehension, the ability to receive and process flexibly. To do well, students need to master basic rhetorical devices and author knowledge in the 12th grade literature program. As for the social argumentation section, the exam still focuses on moral ideology combined with social events, encouraging candidates to express their feelings about the good tendencies and "ugly trends" of young people. In this section, candidates need to increase their reading of newspapers, have social knowledge and outside reality. The literary argumentation section focuses mainly on 12th grade knowledge, but must review core works from 11th grade.

In response to a direct question in the hall about what to study in literature when there are so many literary works, Mr. Dao Nguyen Binh shared that the only way is to format and grasp the core issues in each work. According to Mr. Binh, in order to avoid going off topic, reading the topic carefully and determining the focus of the topic is very important. "Literature topics in recent years often follow the direction of comparison, integration or a combination of both. To do this type, you must first grasp each separate work before comparing and integrating knowledge," Mr. Binh emphasized.

English subject: Writing simple essays

Teacher Le Thanh Tung, Luong The Vinh High School, shared that the English subject had significant differences between last year's high school graduation exam and this year's national high school exam sample test. Last year's graduation exam had 30 multiple-choice questions and an 80-word passage. The sample test had 64 multiple-choice questions, 5 essay questions, and a 140-word essay.

“If last year, writing an essay only required 4-5 lines and stating the main idea to get a score, this year, you need to have an introduction, arguments and evidence for the essay before coming to a conclusion,” Mr. Tung analyzed. According to Mr. Tung, the multiple choice part should pay attention to stress, accent marks, filling in paragraphs, finding synonyms and antonyms, etc. You must have a basic grasp of grammar, tenses, sentence structure, stress rules, etc. “For candidates applying to universities and colleges, you need to read more English books and newspapers to enrich your vocabulary. In the sample test just now, the vocabulary was relatively difficult. In this case, you need to guess the meaning to understand the main idea of the paragraph, it is not necessary to understand the meaning of each word and sentence,” Mr. Tung added.

Asking a question directly during the online session, Vu Trieu (student of Tri Duc High School) was worried about writing an essay when he had a limited vocabulary. Teacher Tung advised that you should only write simple sentences, do not think too complicatedly as it can lead to word problems and grammatical errors. In an essay, to get a high score, you must have all 3 parts, in which you need to pay attention to your personal opinion on the issue being written.

As for candidates with average academic ability who want to get 5 points, Mr. Tung said they should focus on reviewing phonetics, stress, tenses, conditional sentences, relative clauses, etc.

For more information about this online session, please visit: www.thanhnien.com.vn