First Case studies of success 2017

Boy A was from a neighborhood primary school in Singapore and he has not passed composition and paper 2 in primary 4. When We get together to assess the situation at the end of primary 5, he was not too optimist about even passing paper 1 and paper 2. But from his eyes, I see a desire to achieve success in his PSLE.

So I make it very clear from the start that only hardworking pupils will make it, he was not comfortable but he said firmly, "I will get an A!"

So we went through the process of goal setting, target setting and every week we will review what need to be done and celebrate what had been done. He was not too hopeful back then but he carried out all his work diligently week after week.

He studied the word lists in primary 5 and 6 textbooks word by word, writing notes on their meaning, character and hanyu pinyin. He would repeat this process every month and continue to revise those words now and then. And every week we would go through those words and nouns and practice on reading those textbook passages repeatedly.

After 3 months, His composition almost passed and his paper 2 showed improvement especially section A MCQ where he got a pass 26/50.
(If you can write a composition with less grammar mistake, less sentence construction mistake and less misspelling then you have half won the battle.)





Then our focus turned to composition where he would write a composition every week, memorize a list of phrases and nouns and to try to memorize a good composition week after week.

The first composition is super hard, he was no used to memorizing so much content so we cut the composition into pieces of sentences. we started from the first sentence, then the second then the third and the last in the first paragraph. this process continued for several weeks until he got used to the process and the process got faster and faster. then we started to write the composition from memory.

Every week we learnt a new composition, read them out aloud and then memorized them. Then he was to write the composition using his own word words. Why not copy? well I have tried that and children tend to blindly copied everything and learnt nothing from it.


SA1 results shown that he not only passed paper 1 (24/40) and he passed paper 2 too. (I think its due to his expended vocabulary, his MCQ got 32/50.)

Then as July draws nearby, We again changed our focus to oral which is due mid September. There are 2 parts in oral, so we start to read out 5 oral passages weekly and hand in as audio clips via whatsapp or sms. He was delighted to hear his voice and I get to check on his process daily.

But He started to be nervous and felt pessimistic, falling for the weaker himself. I coach him on how to handle stress and fear. And he moved on.

Nearer oral, I practice with him the oral process and what the 3 questions would be. And I go through several topics which I think is very important for PSLE.

(Remember pre-oral I listed down the important contents(topics)

1) Keep our environments clean

2) Go Green, earth hour, recycling, reuse etc

3) Traffic safety

4) Healthy eating and living

5) Helping the needy, giving seats etc

6) Be independence like learn to cook, organizing school bags etc.

7) Values such as Responsibility, hardworking, Caring could be a topic too.

Well one of them is the oral topic!)

Prelims results was just released and he passed his composition and scored 42/50 for MCQ (topping his class). For section B, he got 28/40. So Prelim overall he got over 60% for Chinese Language. He was so happy with the result and he had never felt so much confidence with the subject. He will be ready when he is taking it on 2nd Oct.

Lastly, Use this book to check your child's understanding of Chinese Language in the coming PSLE.

(I'm the author of this book if you are not aware. Thank you. )

In conclusion, children need to take action on advise and not to do nothing except dreaming.
please contact me via my email
mrtan.sg@gmail. com

PSLE ORAL last minute notes July 2017

PSLE Chinese new oral format is summaried as such "Students will be given 10 minutes to prepare – they will have to plan their time to review both the reading passage (on computer screen), and the video for oral within that time frame. Upon entering the exam room, they will then proceed to read the passage on screen, and watch the video once. Subsequently, the examiner will ask 3 guiding questions related to the theme in the video –

A question about the content of the video – what happened, what did you observe?

e.g. Tell me about an event relating to “helpfulness” that you have seen in the video.

The student’s thoughts/views/comments related to the theme, what did you learn?

e.g. What helpful deed have you done for your friend and what did you learn?

To share a similar/relevant experience, or to further extend the theme to society.

e.g. How do you think the school should encourage pupils to care for each other?"

Other then the guiding questions, students need to answer related questions as the examiners guide the students in answering those questions. Those extra questions are there to help examiners correctly assess the students ability.

The old format focuses more on locations and their related activities and students need to know names of common things, common activities and a lot of action words. (note: What Primary 1-3 has been teaching is very good for the old format.) Now the new format changed its focus: The content(topic) of the exam is very important now as your child need to know the topics by heart.

1) Keep our environments clean

2) Go Green, earth hour, recycling, reuse etc

3) Traffic safety

4) Healthy eating and living

5) Helping the needly, giving seats etc

6) Be independence like learn to cook, organizing school bags etc. https://zbschools.sg/

7) Values such as Responsibility, hardworking, Caring could be a topic too. Resources; A) There are several books with videos so that you can practice with your child, they are quite X tho. B) Get the apps for PSLE Chinese Oral Exam Guide (口试精编) it has some free video for practice. C) School often gives out Oral booklets from primary 4 to 6, if you collected them then they can be helpful. D) I personally find the guide book  '看录像说话' by '大拇指' is useful but you have to ask your child to use all the points and write down the scripts according for every page. Ready made answer scripts in the market are either not in depth or lack key points."Thumbs Up 拇指家族
《小学看录像说话》终于出炉啦！
《大拇指》配合2017年小学华文口试新增的看录像说话环节，推出《看录像说话》手册，
帮助小学生应对新的会考口试形式。看录像口试指导手册订价S$15元（非订户学校）。
手册不在市面上销售。公众如果要少量购买（50本以下），
可直接拨电《大拇指》编辑室63191548 询问。 学校一年若订阅40期《大拇指》，
学生只须付6元就能买到一本手册（加录像CD）。." Above is the extract from their promotional material, hope it helps.

As for Oral Recitation, Please make sure your child read out loud one paragraph daily in Chinese as a practice.

Before their examinations, Ask them to read out the passages from PSLE booklet, PSLE oral books within 30 seconds to 45 seconds without any hesitation/stops at all. This is to train 通顺朗读能力 fluency.

(Yes its 250 words in 30-45 seconds.)

Just before exams, memorized the topical scripts for question 2 and 3.

Bring all oral notes and booklet to exam waiting room.

And lastly good luck and be polite.

PSLE guide 2 : Oral Examinations - Video Oral preparation

This is the second post to help your kid with their PSLE Chinese - Video oral section.
As we all know, The video segment not only introduces video, it's quite different from the previous PSLE Oral whereby picture description and some knowledge of a topic is enough to score. The New PSLE Chinese Oral introduces a new element called topical discussion (or 会话). For one who can answer to daily question and answer, it will be a very big challenge as you cannot be a good talker, you have to be a knowledgeable and sensible speaker.

Topic knowledge

I have seen some Schools with school based oral booklets and if you have that, good luck to your child as now you have to put in lots of topical knowledge into their brain.

3 methods to instill those knowledge into your child's brain:-

1) Reading aloud a page from the booklet daily, and you can do some explaination later. Read for at least 30 minutes.

2) Then ask your child to use what they had been reading to tell you about the topic. go into details if you must as its the details that scores. Even better ask them to tell you a story that relates to the topic.

3) Repeat step 1 and 2 daily for at least 30 minutes.

The speedy method is to get the apps I talked about in my previous posts and let your child listen to them everyday for at least 30 minutes. Then you listen to what your child has to talk about the topic everyday.

Research shows that when we communicate, we spend around 40-50% of our time listening, 25-30% speaking, 11-16% reading and only 9% writing (although that last one might have changed in recent years due to the rise in social media).

That means we spend about half the time listening!

http://www.fluentu.com/blog/the-importance-of-listening-in-language-learning/

PSLE Chinese guide 1: How to score in Chinese Compositions

How to write a simple Chinese composition for your PSLE and ace your composition tests. Yes, good essays do not really need a lot of fanciful phrases and plenty of bombastic wordings.  What your child needs is really a working vocabulary of useful words and phrases acquired via reading and listening, and a good sense of Chinese grammatical structure.

1) Read and remember
Reading and memorization of texts are the basic tenet of good compositions, you do not teach your child something they have not read before. Let them read a best graded composition. Do not think like a failure and question the ability of your child, saying, "they cannot comprehend such a difficult essay. why not choose a simple one?" The reason to choose a best graded composition is to provide your child with good vocabulary, good grammar and a good sense of the Chinese language. The best graded composition provides a role model whereby your child can learn from the best. If you choose a simple and easy composition, your child will not learn much at all.

then test them if they can recite the sentences one by one. Yes, do one sentence by one sentence. Until your child completed the last sentence. Read and recite repeatedly help your child build up mental power to handle Chinese language quickly.

Then test your child's comprehension by asking them to repeat the main story line to you and ask them tell you what they like/dislike about the story. Make sure they tell you at least 4-5 sentences long. anything shorter, you have to ask them add contents relevant to the discussion.

When one completes about 10 stories, he has build up a big stash of vocabulary words and phrases ready for the next examination, not only in paper 1, those are useful in paper 2 and oral too.


2)   Write and practice

After reading, the next step is actually to find a composition and rewrite using your child's word and phrases as much as possible. There may be people who insist on not writing as they argue that there is no need to write at all when one can just think up a story. Let me ask you, if you had not practice riding a bike, would you be riding a bike now? Most properly no. We learn by practice, that's why you need to practice driving on a car and not rely simply on the theory tests.

However, parents you need to know that, writing is often the most difficult step to take for any child, so please do point out the good parts for the first 10 to 20 passages. you do not have to limit topic or words, Just let your child write something or anything for a week daily.

Prepare a writing pad and just make sure everyday your child writes something.

As your child are getting used to writing daily, then you start to point out little errors. Do not start the blame game, just tell your child your observation and let your child decide what to do. It may seems like you have lost of control, but as parents you must understand that building confidence in writing is a slow process, and control may just kill the interest.

The second thing about this practice, other to build confidence in writing, is to create a habit. Habits are just a daily repentance of some things that had to be done.

When you looked at graded composition, you will see 3 columns:

Content:       /20

This would be graded according to the details provided, how well the bridge between pictures connect and the relevant of the words to depict the pictures.

Structure:        /20

Structure would be the graded according to the fluency of the language, the presence of grammar mistakes and the completeness of the paragraph written. Overall the essay must be cohesive and purposeful.

The total mark is a sum of content and structure.       /40


 Good luck


I am a ex school teacher who have taught more than 10 years in schools. I have coached children from just failed in primary 3 to A in PSLE, O levels and A levels. He is in NS now and going to NUS.

If you are interested, please email Mr Tan at mrtansg AT mrtansg.com.

Ending of SA1 Examinations, What is your after thought?

SA1 has mostly ended for a lot of your child and now it is time to take inventory.

First you need to fill up a quick checklist

Chinese SA1 2017
Name:_____________________
Primay 5 / 6 - (                                                )
School : __________________________________School
Date : _________/_____________/2017


Paper 1 (question 1 or 2) : __________/40
Question 1 is the themed composition while question 2 is picture composition.

Result:__________/40
(1-20: your child needs to really copy and understand 10 compositions.
21-30: your child needs to memorised those common composition words and phrases
31-40: you child has done well and they can improve on their grammar and help them read widely so that they can expand their vocabulary and learn different ways to express themselves.)

Paper 2: _________/90
detailed analysis
Section A:  ________/50
Section B:  ________/40

If section A scored less than 45, your child needs to revise all the primary 5 and 6 new words and phrases in every chapter and reinforces their knowledge by doing sentence construction every day. Hanyu Pinyin, word application, grammer and vocabulary are essential in this section.

If section B scored less than 20, than your child either need to overcome comprehension phobia by doing more comprehension questions, or they need to be very careful in their answers and be encouraged to write more. Its better to make some errors(1.5-3.5 marks) than to get 0-5 marks in this section.
Comprehension is actually quite easy to score if they mastered the vocabulary and the grammar. students don't read precisely because they don't recognise words and cannot understand deeper meaning.

Students need to read their textbook texts aloud everyday, do record them their reading in smart phones so that they can hear their own voices.do read all the chapters in primary 5 to 6 textbooks to expose them to a variety of texts.
use xuele.edumall.sg for all the reading texts online.

After reading all the textbook texts, let them read story books on audio. This will expand their knowledge of words.

Yes you may train your child to memorise the words and meaning together with hanyu pinyin from primary 4-6 textbooks too.

Paper 3: Video Oral and conversations. _______/50
Reading passage:      ________/20
Video Conversation: ________/30

Reading passages

Make sure there is NO Hanyu Pinyin, as Hanyu Pinyin would be more a hindrance than an aid. There will NOT be Hanyu Pinyin in the examination passage so your child had to take the hard path else they will lose they edge in examination.

Reading the textbook texts everyday is one of the best ways to improve on reading passage.

The other method to improve reading passages is to take psle passages from the psle booklet and learn every words via edictionary or google translate! until your child can fluently recite the passage in whole.

Video Oral is new and the content tested are actually quite different, new text format actually are more conversational then mere describing a picture.

This means your child need to be able to converse along common theme such as recycling, coutesy, manners, success etc.
To train your child to talk with some content, please let talk to them about these topics and guide them about the main points.

Question 1: what do you see in the video, describing in details the events in the video.

Question 2: Did you or your friend done something and what do you think or feel?

Question 3: What do you think the school can do for the students regarding this problem?

Do ensure they can have more than 1 point per question and they can go in depth with their own insight.



Paper 4: Listening comprehension : ________/20

Generally students can score in this paper as it just involved with basic listening skills and some analytic skills.

listening skills can be trained via xuele.edumall.sg by letting your child listen to the audios, or by listening to radios, or by listening/viewing channel 8 news via
Cheng guang di yi xian
news 8 at one
hello singapore
Singapore today
News tonight
Channel 8 news youtube channel


Now we are coming to the end of term, if your child is getting negative like saying things like cannot do, hard to do, don't know, I am weak etc, please talk to them positively, change their negative state quickly before it become a vicious cycle.

Now let Tony Ribbons give you some ideas to help your child turn their dreams to reality by changing their states quickly.

Now if your child is in stress or anxiety, learn to cope.

Now with SA1 finished or near finished, I hope your child has build a habit of studying. Studying is not hard, its building a habit of studying that is hard.

Your child's good study habits will be their future good work habits and ethos so it pays to build their habits early.

Email mrtan.sg@gmail.com
if you need your child to attend special intensive PSLE/primary 5 training camps in my home for the coming June holidays.

* The intensive camp will be 5 days (3 hours each) to help your child quickly increase their Chinese Vocabulary in 5 days via games and activities.

*Each class is limited to 5 children so that we can maximize learning.

If you are interested please email mrtan.sg@gmail.com
If you think your friend or relative's child may benefit from this intensive camp, please share with them this message.

Lastly let me share a quote with your child

SEAB Approved Dictionary list for PSLE, the new dictionary ZZ new-01 and faq on your old dictionaries

These are the approved dictionary for use in PSLE 2017 and everyone must be curious about the mysterious ZZ.new-01 right?

(A) Well, I dig up the web to find this dictionary and it looks promising as this device is a Tablet!

http://www.zzperfectionsg.com/ 

"It is MOE approved and certified for Singapore examination hall use. 

With the touch screen input, it can be used similar to a mobile phone to do quick searches and lookup for definition, handwriting and pronunciations. With the introduction to touch screen input, it can recognise handwriting inputs. This will enhance the speed of searches and learning. This will also ensure student to retain the interest in learning Chinese language in a more productivity manner.                                             This electronic dictionary effectively become a good assistant, so students can continue to learn on their own with great comfort and ease. This will bring confidence in learning Chinese to the students."

and it looks llike this!!

(B) Now if your dictionary is now working, what should you do, I think you should contact the relevant office and asked for help:-

Besta Digitech Pte Ltd (HeadOffice)
	101 Lorong 23 Geylang #04-04 , Prosper House Singapore 388399 Open: Monday to Friday (9am - 6pm) Tel . +(65) 6841 1066 Fax . + (65) 6841 7866 Speech Dictionary Call us at our Customer Service Hotline 6339 9533 for more enquiries.

And for craetive dintionaries, ask Creative Knowledge Ltd. Contact us Operating hours 9:00 am – 06:30 pm (Monday – Thursday) 9:00 am – 06:00 pm (Friday) Business Tel:(65) 6465 5286 General Enquiries Tel:(65) 6465 5108 Tel:(65) 6465 5109 Email: sales@hansvision.com Technical Support Tel:(65) 6465 5285 Email: helpdesk@hansvision.com A Genuine Technology 1 Rochor Canal Road #05-67 Sim Lim Square Singapore 188504 Operating hours Monday to Saturday, 11:30am – 07:30pm

(C) now the list of SEAB approved eDictionary

小学四年级华文第九课听鱼说话

第九课《听鱼说话》课文理解及字词教学Ppt from Tan Lm

第九课《听鱼说话》字词教学Ppt from Tan Lm

小学五年级第九课白鲸历险记

白鲸遇险记 课堂简报 from eeminz

小学四年级华文第八课骑楼下

学习ppt

Primary 4 lesson 8 qilouxia chinese textbook from Tan Lm

理解课文ppt

第八课 《骑楼下》 课文理解 教学 Ppt from Tan Lm

闪卡

小学五年级华文第八课爱斯基摩人

Flashcard

爱斯基摩人 from arashiimonoyama

《爱斯基摩人》简报 from eeminz

北极的白天黑夜！


北极的画面

PSLE Oral, How to prepare for them? 3 tips to PSLE Chinese Oral

SA1 Oral is coming and video oral communication is quite new.

So how do we prepare for it?

These are 3 tips to help you in Chinese Oral SA1:-

1) Do read your textbook to familiarise with all the words that are going to be tested. And read from Da Mu Zhi and Dou Hao so that you can read out the words from memory.

NOTE: Read everyday for 5 minutes will help a lot in Recitation.

2) Train yourself Oral conversation description skills.

Try to describe the place you are in, the people that you see, the smell that you smell, the colours that you see and everything in the scene.

use more than 5 sentences full of good words and phrases

3) The shortest cut is to memorise 5 pictures and hope it comes out

A) Shopping center/MRT/corridor

B) Honest Act

C) Be Helpful

D) Green Acts that are earth friendly

E) Racial Harmony

more tips by the expert Mr Toh

小学四年级华文一件好事

一件好事

题目是什么？

1）一件事情。
2）好事情

什么事是好事情呢？

请大家写写你觉得什么事情算是好事！（五分钟）

1）

2）

3）

同学们，你们写好上面的三件好事情了吗？

现在我们来看一看你写的是好事还是坏事！


1）有帮助别人吗？写帮助别人的事就加一分。

2）有让别人的心情变好吗？有的加一分。

3）别人感谢你（作者）了吗？有感谢加一分。

现在查一查你的好事得了几分？

小的好事像关灯、关风扇和关水龙头。大的好事还有帮助警察，帮助有需要的人等等。

请同学们也来写一些大家做过的好事吧！

《一件好事》

我曾做过一件小小的好事。
有一天下午，学校已经放学了。我因为有课外活动，就留在学校。我刚好经过一间教室时，看见里面没有人，但是电风扇却还在不停地转动。我心想：放学了，课室有没有人，电风扇还在转动，这不是浪费电吗？......我就三步并作两步，冲进课室，把电风扇给关掉。

这件事其实小得不值得一提。但是，很多同学都说“上哪儿找那么多好事来写啊？”其实，身边每天的好事多着呢！每做一次，都是生活中的一颗美丽的珍珠。

事情的来龙去脉：-
起因：教室的电扇没关；
情节：我怕浪费电，就赶快走进去把电扇关掉；
结果：我留下一个美丽的脚印。

小学华文五年级第七课给小主人的信

这是一封信

一）古人的信

现代人的信

信主要是用来告诉亲人朋友你的消息。让他们安心、开心或难过

文中有眼睛保健操如下：-

眼睛保健操

现在眼睛是不是舒服了呢？

听写七要天天读！

the road to PSLE 2017 : What are the most important yet not urgent things to improve your T score?

Important yet not urgent things are the most important things to do to improve your child's scores in the coming PSLE and yet a lot of parents and children totally missed the point.

First What is T score and How to roughly figure out your child's PSLE T score?

PSLE T-score from yapsmail

 From pamela, you find a simple formulae to compute your child's T score in minutes

"So how do you estimate the T-score of your child?  

You can do that easily if you can get more than 40 random marks from a school with the same exams (or all the marks in one school). 

 If you key that into an excel spreadsheet, you can pretty much generate the mean and standard deviation. Some schools provide the mean and standard deviation for each subject to parents.  

Do the calculation of the T-score using the formula given above using the mean and s.d.  Repeat that for 4 subjects and viola!  You can get the T-score of your child within that school. 

And since your sample size is greater than 40, is random and is a normal distribution, your chlid's T-score is pretty reflective of his/her T-score for PSLE." 
from https://www.facebook.com/notes/pamela-lim/psle-t-score/249665928428075/ 

Secondly YOU need to understand everyone has urgent or important things to do but you have limited time. So you need to classify those activities and prioritize them.

This is the urgent vs Important Matrix

 And this is the

Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle

In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was quoting Dr J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University, said: "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." This "Eisenhower Principle" is said to be how he organized his workload and priorities.

He recognized that great time management means being effective as well as efficient. In other words, we must spend our time on things that are important and not just the ones that are urgent. To do this, and to minimize the stress of having too many tight deadlines, we need to understand this distinction:

• Important activities have an outcome that leads to us achieving our goals, whether these are professional or personal.
• Urgent activities demand immediate attention, and are usually associated with achieving someone else's goals. They are often the ones we concentrate on and they demand attention because the consequences of not dealing with them are immediate.

When we know which activities are important and which are urgent, we can overcome the natural tendency to focus on unimportant urgent activities, so that we can clear enough time to do what's essential for our success. This is the way we move from "firefighting" into a position where we can grow our businesses and our careers.

1) Important and urgent is where most firefight takes place and it is best avoided by doing the important but not urgent things first.

In PSLE, that would be your studying load, one would need to schedule the load and distribute the study load to different time period so that you can finish them. Some just avoid the pain of studying till the last minute and you would have a very huge study load in a very short time span.........avoid this by spreading out the studying load over a period of time and you will not have important and urgent things.

2) Important but not urgent things are things that help you achieve your goals including learning and planning activities. 

In PSLE that would be planning the study time and study load so that you spread out the study load over time and into manageable chunks of data.

3) Not important and urgent things that stops you from achieving your aims. delegate or reschedule them or outsource them.

Not important and urgent things are your chores, house cleaning or school CCA etc,

4) Not important and not urgent things are your games your leisure activities, during preparation for PSLE, you need to forgo them till PSLE ends.


Three real important things to study for PSLE Chinese is:-

1) Read and reread all the chapters in the textbook everyday. This builds your vocabulary, language sense and recitation skills all at the same time is enjoyable.

If you had trouble reading the texts, go to xuele. choose the level and chapter and they will read the text for you. Go ahead and listen to the texts a few times and start reading along the voice a few times and then you will be able to read a few sentences at a time.

If you are weak in Hanyu PinYin, be sure to include them in the writing.

If you are weak in meaning of words, do check up the dictionary and write down the meaning.

2) Find a composition book and study all the compositions, memorized them and later use the pictures to attempt to write a similiar essay. Then you compare your composition with that of the book and figure out the things that you lack to score.

Common things to help you score in compositions
a) Good phrases and good expressive words 好词佳句
b) achieve 0 wrong words with repeated writing of the spelling list from primary 4 to 6.
c) get 0 grammer mistake by reading all the essays that you can get including the essays in the test papers of the different schools. And try to learn from them by writing similar essays.

As you properly notice....practice and study hard is quite necessary to score A*.


3) Listen to Chinese songs, TV programmes and Radio shows do help in listening skills.


4) Write, write and write a composition everyday, with practice comes results.

小学华文五年级第六课语言的力量

你会写什么给20年后的你呢？

从前的贴文
http://mrtansg.blogspot.sg/2015/02/blog-post.html

小学华文四年级第六课铜钱的响声

谁是阿凡提？

他是土耳其人，聪明机智，口才出众。他生活在大约1200-1300年之间。（大约600-700年前）

他经常帮助穷人，欺负害人的有钱人，而且还几次运用卓越的口才和敏捷的思维，解决国王的难题。因此他赢得人们的喝彩和喜爱。

今天我们来看的就是他一个典型的故事：《铜钱的响声》。

铜钱的响声Monday from Lim Shi Ting

铜钱的响声Tuesday from Lim Shi Ting

铜钱的响声Thursday from Lim Shi Ting

看看同学角色扮演的表演！

总结一下

角色对比                          阿凡提                          老板                           穷人

性格                                  聪明，善良                   霸道，暴力              老实，温顺

行为                                  巧妙利用声音和气味   贪钱                          没有反抗

从哪里知道？                 他想出方法解决问题。 他把穷人压倒。     穷人只是喊救命。

Steps To PSLE Chinese, So what after CA1? Exam Analysis in a simple page

Last Year, Most Primary schools have changed their test format to something nearer to 2017 new Chinese Format, so CA1 is a gauge to the students ability to adapt to the new format quickly. Yes, last year's Primary 5 papers are not totally the new format so essentially your child is just taken the 2017 PSLE paper 2 for the first time.

Now Take your child's CA1 paper and break them into section A and B. Then fill up the remarks with your child.

Sect A OAS                       Marks Scored         Remarks (What Mistake made and how to correct?)

Item 1 yu wen yin yong       ______/30              __________________________________________

                                                                         __________________________________________

Item 2 duan wen tian kong  ______/10              __________________________________________

                                                                         __________________________________________

Item 3 yue du li jie 1           ______/10              __________________________________________

                                                                         __________________________________________

Total Section A                  ______/50             __________________________________________

                                                                        __________________________________________


Section B
Item 4 wan cheng dui hua   ______/8              __________________________________________

                                                                        __________________________________________

Item 5 yue du li jie 2          ______/32              __________________________________________

                                                                        __________________________________________

Total Section B                 ______/40             __________________________________________

                                                                        __________________________________________

Total marks                      ______/90             __________________________________________

                                                                        __________________________________________


Email me at mrtan.sg@gmail.com
Please identify yourself first and ask only one question.

And here are some common mistakes to take note in Section A!

1) Lack of knowledge of the words to be tested, either one is studying without understanding or one is not done much studying at all.

2) Cannot recognize the words either in the questions or the passages.

3) Lack of skills to extract answers from the passage via keywords in the questions and adapt the answers according to the question.

Common ways to score in Section A!

1) school spelling lists has been painstakingly compiled by teachers to help students score in section A but most students just ignore the spelling lists when they prepare their exams, this is a mistake. Most spelling lists has common word pairs like this one. And furthermore some spelling lists have a huge list of common useful phrases that are very helpful in compositions and oral.

Just by studying those spelling lists and memorizing them daily would benefit your child greatly.

2) Get your child to listen to the chapters in MOE's textbook reading website daily. its called
XUELE. Take a chapter every day and make sure your child listened N times till they can read out the text loud. You should start with the first chapter in primary 6 textbook and go all the way to the last and restart again. then go to the first chapter in primary 5 textbook till the last chapter. Then cycle back to primary 6 textbook chapter 1. Do it every day and your child will quickly know all the words required of him to read. This method is obviously not for the lazy and the inconsistent ones.

3) Alternatively read a sentence everyday from a composition book everyday. And no its not a joke, if your child can do that for 3 months at least, you will see results.

4) Take my Book and study the word list (on the first pages of every exercise) careful especially the part on meaning (意思), word pairs (搭配)  and sentences （句子）.

Its available in popular and other bookstores.

Common ways to score in Section B
1) Do read the questions carefully and highlight/underline the keywords, then using the keywords, go to the passage and find them out  (sometimes the questions do not paraphrase the passage sentence directly so your child have to understand the meaning well enough to find the sentences with similar meaning.) and highlight the answer. The final stage is the adaptation of the answers to answer the questions directly. most of the time your child has to correct use the pronouns “我”, 作者,你 correctly. Sometimes your child have to merge the sentences together with connecting nouns like 所以，因此，而且.

2) For the few Higher order thinking questions,  your child need to be learn three skills:-
(A) story telling skills. When questions asked about relevant personal experiences your child need to write a short account of the desired moral value. a short story with an introduction, a development and an ending would be enough. The point is the story must be relevant to the question.
(B) story extraction.Sometimes the questions does asked your child to refer to certain parts of the passage to illustrate certain values and your child should be able to quickly identify the relevant parts of the passage shifty..
(C) Application of values. Sometimes the questions is about how your child is going to apply the value in life. Your child should identify 2 to 3 ways (that are not in the passage) that your child can apply the value in life.

Lastly, I am going to talk about expectations which I am going to show in a table

Expected grade           Expected Section A Marks      Expected Section B Marks
A*                              50/50                                      31/40
A                                50/50                                      22/40
B                                50/50                                      15/40
C(pass)                       40/50                                      15/40

Without a good score in Section A, Its is very difficult to PASS (grade C) and score well in the paper 2. And with a perfect score in section A (50/50) your child had already passed! Section A is growing in importance this year onward.

Some useful resources

Past Year Test papers in 2016 

Testpapersfree.com

(disclaimer: I'm not advertising for the above website and I do not benefit in anyway if you click the above links.)

Email me at mrtan.sg@gmail.com
Please identify yourself first and ask only one question.
Thank you.