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