Challenges in teaching literature grade 12

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From 2025, the high school graduation exam in literature will have many changes, that is, it will not use the materials in the textbooks being studied, the structure will also change. Grade 12 students in the 2024-2025 school year will be the first class to take this exam.

The exam aims at the goal of the 2018 general education program, which is to test and evaluate the qualities, abilities, and creative thinking of each student. This means that there will no longer be the situation of memorizing model texts and learning by rote like before.

Many high school literature teachers in Hai Duong said that nowadays, classes are no longer just teachers imparting knowledge while students listen and take notes. Teachers no longer monologue, analyze, or comment on works in one direction.

Teacher Vu Thi Thu Trang, Head of the Literature Department at Nguyen Van Cu High School (Hai Duong City) said that the first difficulty is that each teacher must learn and explore teaching methods according to the new curriculum. Teachers must change students' learning habits and thinking from rote learning and memorizing sample texts to learning in the direction of self-discovery and creativity in creating new works.

“Each teacher must find common points in all three sets of books to teach students. The new exam requires students to master the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing instead of just writing skills as before. For example, reading comprehension requires a firm grasp of the characteristics and genres, and the writing section requires writing both literary and social essays. The most difficult part for students is the literary essay section, because even teachers with expertise and experience spend a lot of time researching and exploring. While there are only 120 minutes to do the exam, we are very concerned about whether students can apply both knowledge and ability to solve problems,” Ms. Trang shared.

Sharing the same opinion, teacher Nguyen Thi Hieu, a literature teacher at Nam Sach High School, said that using materials outside of textbooks makes students very confused and makes it difficult for them to approach a completely new text.

“Students have to review more test-taking skills than in the old program. If they cannot read and understand texts according to genre characteristics, and do not have the language and social knowledge to apply, it will be very difficult,” said Ms. Hieu.

Teacher Nguyen Thi Ngoan, a literature teacher at Phuc Thanh High School (Kinh Mon) said that for students with poor or average academic performance and poor literary appreciation, it is even more difficult. In fact, through tests, due to limited language and social knowledge, students' writings have very little content, many errors in expression and arrangement of ideas, and clumsy writing.

“However, if students can keep up, they will create their own literary products instead of copying from others,” said Ms. Ngoan.

Hands on

“Students and teachers are worried that the exam does not use the materials in the textbooks, but I think it is not a big deal. The important thing is that teachers and students must find their own way, build a roadmap from low to high, especially teachers must teach in a hands-on way. That means students must directly create their own products. Regularly practice each skill according to the new exam structure,” Ms. Trang shared.

In Ms. Trang's class, from an excerpt from the poem "Doc Tieu Thanh Ki" by author Nguyen Du, the teacher divided the students into groups and assigned tasks for them to prepare. Then, each group presented the assigned content, the other groups commented and discussed together according to the teacher's suggestions and directions. Finally, the teacher finalized the problem to be achieved so that the students could unify and remember. With this teaching method, each student had to learn the knowledge by themselves, the teacher would check the old lesson as well as evaluate and correct mistakes, and draw lessons for each student right in each class.

According to teacher Hieu, during the teaching process in class, teachers need to actively let students get acquainted with the illustrative questions of the Ministry of Education and Training, do many questions to practice skills. From there, students can access the types of questions and exercises, and the areas of knowledge that need to be reviewed.

For the writing part of an essay or a literary argumentative paragraph, because of the new program, the lessons are arranged by genre, so when teaching, teachers practice reading comprehension skills, analyze, and evaluate works in textbooks, thereby forming reading comprehension skills of works according to genre characteristics. When the exam questions include a new work, students still know how to analyze and evaluate.

“For example, when teaching the lesson Salt of the Forest (author Nguyen Huy Thiep), in addition to helping students recognize and understand the content and art of the work, teachers also help them practice reading comprehension skills of the story genre. When the test is on a different work, students will know how to apply their skills to do the test,” said Ms. Hieu.

Many literature teachers believe that the literature scores in the 2025 high school graduation exam will certainly not be as high as before. Difficulties and challenges are inevitable, requiring each teacher and student to make efforts to adapt.