VietTESOL International Convention 2026

Vietnam's 2025 National High School Graduation Examination (NHSGE) reform represents a significant shift in English language assessment, reducing discrete grammar items in favour of reading comprehension and higher-order thinking tasks. The changes align, at least on paper, with Vietnam's broader national ambition to reposition English from a foreign language subject to a functional second language. However, whether such policy-driven assessment reform translates into meaningful changes in actual classroom practice remains an open empirical question. This mixed-methods study investigates the washback effects of the NHSGE 2025 on Grade 12 English teaching practices in public high schools in Can Tho city. The study examines eight dimensions of teaching practice across two phases. Phase 1 administers a structured questionnaire to all available Grade 12 English teachers across Can Tho's public high schools (n = 33), capturing the frequency and direction of practice changes. Phase 2 conducts semi-structured interviews with a purposively selected subsample (10 teachers) to explain the patterns identified quantitatively. Preliminary findings are revealed a dual picture: positive washback in the form of increased attention to reading strategies and text-level comprehension, alongside persistent negative washback characterised by continued neglect of productive skills and mechanical drilling of new question formats. The study contributes empirical evidence to the question of whether Vietnam's assessment reform is genuinely shifting teaching toward functional language use, or whether EFL-mode instruction remains entrenched beneath a reformed examination surface.