Ryan who got an A for PSLE Chinese has worked hard to achieve his remarkable T-score. Indeed, this is another testimony that sheer hard work is able to overcome shortcomings for Chinese language. As introduced in my earlier posts, Ryan is a rather soft-spoken boy who comes from a English-speaking family. When he came in to sign up for tuition in June, I originally thought that there is too short a time to teach to raise his score and if i would succeed, it will only be to 65. But Ryan prove to be a different student. He is obedient, diligient and motivated. Although he also has his playful side sometimes, when you tell him to get back to work he will do as so. He improved from 50 to 65 during prelims before securing the A. Oral component is especially challenging for him who speaks Chinese with a weird intonation. But he overcame the odds by doggedly doing what I say. Everyday he will read some passages and record his voice so as to detect his mispronunciations. By practicing numerous times upon his mistakes, he was definitely confident during the day of the oral exam which gave his grade a push towards A.

Qian Xi, a studious girl, was searching for a right tuition to help her fill her missing gap in Chinese. She enrolled in one of the commercial composition classes but found out that the dry lessons did not aid in her improvement. She joined also in the period of june and in the last three months leading to her PSLE exam she opted for 1-to-1 individual tuition to enhance the effectiveness.She saw her fruits of labour early during the prelims where she scored 74 marks before proceeding to grab an A. She also has a very positive learning attitude motivated by the fact that she has already decided which school to go. She expects a lot from herself and thus it is this attitude that produces this good result.

Giacomo (Zhi Ming) is a half-Italian studentComposition, her weakest component became better due to continuous effort to commit important,appealing phrases to memory. During the crucial few weeks before exam, i added extra lessons up to 4  per week. He did not lament of tiredness. He persisted on. For Zhi Ming, comprehension and listening comprehension are huge challenges. He is a diligent boy but he is not as hardworking as Ryan and Qian Xi. What i meant by that is that he does he is hardworking to do the intensive bare minimum but has not reached such hunger for success to go the extra mile and practice on his own. he has the potential to score A but has not really breakthrough because of his weak foundation in the language.

For this year's batch of PSLE students, those who achieved A despite joining the tuition at a later time, have high self-expectations which drive them to work extremely hard. They are the one who are willing to carry out daunting yet important preparation work such as going for extra lessons, memorising good vocabulary words and practicing oral exam. The majority which got B are relatively as weak yet playful and not motivated. Although i can choose to give up on them whenever they crossed the line and takes learning lightly, I have the obligation to continue teaching them even if it means knowing they are not going to score well. If i did not continue teaching, they will give up on themselves and Chinese have gotten worse. Don't I feel disappointed that so many are getting B? Well, definitely but fortunately i take comfort in that almost all the parents are actually quite satisfied with their child's chinese grade. for the weak students, they were expecting that they might even fail Chinese. For these students, it is time to re-build their foundation to prevent history from repeating itself in secondary school.

2012 PSLE Oral

PSLE Oral exam:

 PSLE Oral exam:

PSLE 2012 Composition

Helping words:
水沟                                       指着                                    大布袋
漂浮                                       水流得急                           大声喊救

General Description: One rainy day,there were two students sharing an umberalla and they came across a canal.The canal was flooded with the ferocious rain and from a distance, a crowd has gathered and they were pointing at a particular big black bag floating along. In no time, the two boys jumped in and tried to reach for it but they struggled and appeared to be drowning.

Ryan
Balestier Hill Pri Sch

He joined my tuition class from July. Equipped with only two months of preparation, he has to face the PSLE Oral exam in August. Personally i find him a child who is obedient and studious but with low confidence and thus he has problems even speaking fluently. Furthermore, he does not come from a mandarin speaking background and has problem speaking out simple sentences.I know i had to drill him real hard to enable him to take the oral in august with optimum confidence.
  Ryan: Mr Kok uses voice recording which other tutors never use before. This method helps me to recognise my weakness. For example, some chinese words or phrases i might pronounce them wrongly but when i listen to them through recording, I will know where have i read wrongly. Through teachers' help and many more practices, I can slowly correct my mistakes and speak better.

Is P6 Easy?

This year i am faced with a daunting task of teaching a bunch of "challenging" kids. First of all they were scoring 35-55 marks for their normal examinations. However, they made a tremendous improvement in their SA1 and prelim Chinese exam with them scoring 50-74 marks. They are very weak in their mother tongue, proficient in English but almost illiterate in Chinese. They do not know how to speak and write simple words often needing to check on the e-dicitonary for every two to three words when writing compos. On top of that, their attitude will make you think teaching them is impossible. Unless the tutor is their family member or relative, nobody will have the patience to teach them.  All the bad habits you name it-Not doing any homework, not paying attention to you, distracting other students, playing computer games during lessons. To sum it up they are hyperactive, unable to keep still and listen. They will move about to distract other students making learning inconducive. It came to a point that even the last lesson before their PSLE exam, they still bother if they are able to play computer games if they do their work. 

Originally, i do not have much confidence in teaching them well. But being in a desperate situation, i accepted their behaviour and approached teaching with a different set of methods. Firstly i take an effort to talk to them and build relationships with each student. Through rewarding them snacks and adequate breaks i try to win their favour in order for them to listen to what i say. 

1)Knowing that their concentration span is relatively shorter than the average student, i emphasise the usage of laptops during class as a means to capture their attention. 

2)When teaching a new chapter of the "ke ben", i will maximise the use of iflashbook (MOE recommended software) to teach them  the new words or chi yu and how to read the text. When preparing for oral exams, i will use webcam and voice-recording softwares to effectively correct their mistakes in pronunciation and articulation in a yet interesting way. This will aid in their reading-the-passage, picture description and conversation components. Conventionally, teachers uses newspapers to teach students of news events.

3)But i rely on omy.com.sg news portal to allow them to learn the phrases commonly used in news events so as to expose them to the news report-style of cloze passages. Omy is a mandarin new portal where it has unique functions such as voice reading of the news article and with interactive videos and picture montouchs, the interest is kept alive. Composition wise, using news articles to impart vocabulary will give them confidence to write 150-280 word essays in the long-run, not forgetting comprehending skills when doing comprehension. 

4) Allowing students to type out their essays rather than writing it out will reduce their difficulty in writing essays.

Normally during holidays, only with 12 to 20 lessons in total can the student fully grasp the basic skills required to undertake a national examination. Upon 3 weeks of returning to school, this can change the attitude of the students and speed up the progress of your child's Chinese language if they were to apply my techniques. With improvement shown in the school examinations such as SA1 and Prelims, your child will then have greater confidence to take the PSLE. This is similar to what happened to the four boys i taught this year. They made a tremendous improvement in their SA1 and prelim Chinese exam with them scoring 50- 74 marks. Hopefully they had brought this confidence to the examination hall to earn the A or A* they were aiming for.

Sec 1/ Chinese preparation course start next week, (19 Nov)

Sec 2-3/

Sec 4 O lvl preparation is already underway