*SJI* Secondary 2 Student Testimonial

My name is Randy. I had transferred from Maris Stella to SJI when I managed to pass the entrance examination. As I was in HCL in MSHS, I would also subsequently join a HCL Class in SJI. In SJI, the HCL standard of that was different from MSHS. We had to practise Chinese Essays and Email every single week! When the SA2 exams came, I neglected Chinese as only a pass was needed to continue Higher Chinese next year. However, Mr Kok made me memorise all the techniques and good phrases for my Chinese News Article review. He even set up 4 extra lessons for me to attend. Unfortunately, I could only attend 2 out of 4 lessons, he decided to SKYPE at night, solving the problem of not attending the 2 lessons missed.  When I sat for the paper, I was shocked! The comprehension passage and summary was extremely difficult, there were many foreign words that I didn't know. When I received my SA2 Higher Chinese results, I had already expected my score to be borderline pass or even a fail. Indeed, I had failed my Paper 2 obtaining a score of only 33/80. However, for Paper 1, my Chinese News Article review managed to obtain a whopping score of 46/70. If not for my Paper 1, I would have failed HCL! Although I didn't get the marks I expected for Paper 2, but hey, at least I improved my Chinese Essay writing skills. Many have the idea that there's not much of a difference between EXPRESS and HIGHER Chinese, well, let me tell you : There's a major difference. For example, someone gets A1 for express Chinese, however in Higher Chinese standard, that grade would only be a B3.I have found Mr Kok's lessons to be extremely interesting as most tuition centers have a standard routine of doing things. However at Mr Kok's lessons, I got to use various multimedia platforms such as the net book/i Pad to learn Chinese via News Articles online such as the recent "Singapore Haze, Boston Bombing and H7N9 disease".  He also improved my Oral Skills by recording myself saying a passage, then listening to it again, picking out the flaws and mistakes and correcting them. Although there wasn't much practice to do, I could still learn the techniques and memorized the methods as his lessons are fun and interesting. In future, I will work even harder for the O Levels to improve my Chinese written paper as Chinese is a very important subject.