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.