Q: Which schools do the majority of your students come ?
A: Schools offering International Baccalaureate (IB) programme like ACS (I), SOTA, SST, SJI.
Schools offering Integrated Programme (IP) like Raffles Inst., SCGS, RGS, MGS, Victoria School, Hwa Chong Inst., Nat. JC and other schools: Cedar Girls Sec, Cresent Girls Sec, TKGS, St. Patrick Sec, Fairfield Methodist Sec.
Q: What is the main challenge that Secondary school students face in doing well for Chinese?
A: The two main papers 1 and 2 form the bulk of obstacles separating students from their desired A1, A2 grades.
Paper 2: Time management is also an issue for weak students under paper 2. They often spend too much time on the front sections such as cloze passages and Comprehension (MCQs), leaving insufficient time for comprehension open-ended which holds the bulk of marks. Weak students also tend to have problem constructing sentences to highlight the points to answer the questions. They could only rely on copying huge chunks of text from the passage which wastes time.
Paper 1: Students tend to spend too much time in Situational writing and are left with too little time to complete the composition component. One important point to note is that Situational Writing component forms 20 marks while composition forms 40 marks out of the total 60marks. Thus students should be aware that the time spent on the components must correspond to the mark weightage.
Another problem is the failure to highlight the main points in the newspaper article review. Students often side track and talk about reasons that are not relevant to the issue. It is hence inevitable that students get penalized for this error.
Students lack critical thinking skills to manage questions that involve free response. Comprehension texts from day one have been about the topics of moral values and even philosophical thoughts. For example, the value of giving and receiving, paternal and maternal love, optimism and pessimism. Students are required to mention their life examples when answering the free-response questions. Thus in my classes i would find passages belonging to this category for students to practice speaking it out and writing it out.
Q: Since PSLE is over for current P6 students, what is there to learn if they enrol in tuition?
A: They can sign up for headstart bridging lessons to give themselves an edge when they go on to secondary 1 next year. Secondary education is definitely different from primary school and Chinese is no exception. I see many Sec 1 students often struggle to maintain their previous results after being too used to primary school elementary Chinese.This is especially so for students planning to take Higher chinese.
In secondary school, composition is being tested at a higher level. No longer are the days where your child can look at the pictures and derive a story with the aid of helping words. They will now write more expository and even informative texts . Because to write a narrative in secondary school, you got to have a vivid vocabulary in order to pass. Local students often lack the ability to do so when being compared to their China counterparts The essay word length have to be increased also to 500 to 800 words for higher Chinese and a minimum word count of 300 words for Chinese. Such an increase in word length, gives rise to the challenge of lengthening their essays.
Next, for the main paper there are a total of 5 comprehension passages. No longer there is any graphic stimulus,replace-the-correct word and complete-the-sentence MCQs. Students have to possess good comprehending skills. The oral component is also no exception with conversation section that requires students to think on their feet to discuss issues of current affairs relevance. The shift to newspaper article reviews will need students to grasp general knowledge of current affairs in Chinese. Thus through newspapers and multimedia platforms such as omy.com, i will aim to nurture an interest in your child for current affairs. During this long break, allow your child to spend his time fruitfully to prepare early for his next stage of education. With lessons aimed to bring fun in learning Chinese thru video games and multimedia, it is definitely the best of both worlds!
