Zhang Yiwu: This Year's Gaokao Essay Topic Is Relatively Standard, Benefiting Candidates' Performance

Beijing, June 7 — As the 2026 Gaokao Chinese language exam came to an end, this year's essay topic has drawn attention. Zhang Yiwu, a professor in the Department of Chinese at Peking University, told China News Service in an interview that the overall question setup was relatively conventional and the themes were fairly clear, which helps candidates at different levels perform to their strengths. Zhang Yiwu believes that this year's Gaokao essay still primarily focused on argumentative writing, with the main emphasis on testing students' logical thinking, analytical ability, and expression skills. Both the National Paper I and National Paper II centered on relatively abstract philosophical topics, continuing the recent trend of emphasizing critical thinking in exam design. By comparison, the narrative essay topic "Han Ying Ju Hua" in the Beijing paper was relatively more difficult, because although it ostensibly required a narrative style, it was in fact closer to argumentative expression. He also mentioned that the main difficulty of the National Paper I lay in how candidates accurately understood the key words in the prompt and found an appropriate starting point, while the subsequent argumentation was not complicated. The Tianjin paper, although its first half of the prompt could easily be confusing, gave a clear direction at the end, and was not difficult overall. Zhang Yiwu concluded that this year's essay topics were stable and conventional; as long as candidates have basic training and preparation, and stay careful and mentally steady during the exam, they can usually perform normally.