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!

2012 O level Hot Topics for composition/email-from Top Schools

2012年‘O’level 热门作文/私人/公务电邮

1. 新移民令国人不满
2. 越来越多学生参加海外CIP
3.  地铁屡次发生故障，使搭客极度愤满
4. 全国状元榜都是外国优秀生
5. 街头党砍人
6. 青少年当大耳窿跑腿
7. 青少年太依赖女佣
8. 精英犯罪
9.  政府展开全民运动
10. 地铁让位
11. 地铁车厢里饮食
12. 使用平板电脑(Ipad)/电子书的利弊
13. 咖啡店肮脏到恶心的地步                 
14. 抛弃，虐待宠物  
15. 学生讲脏话
16. 家人在赌场沉迷于赌博，该怎么办？
17. 青少年缺少睡眠
18. 学生在假期打工引起争议
19. 青少年在面对挫折时，不知如何应付。
20. 未成年吸烟者不断增加 

                

Sec 4 St. Patrick's and P6 ACS(J) testimonial

                                     

        

Why P6 Yuan Zhen can speak so confidently

2011 PSLE Picture Discussion

Done by: Fairfield Methodist P6 top student

2011:Video of Gifted P6 girl from Nanyang,Cheryl

My Students' O level/PSLE 2010 results

Shi En


Methodist Girls' School


B4 for "O" lvl Chinese

Jeannes


Orchid Park Sec Sch


B4 for O lvl Chinese


Alicia Chong Li Yan


Methodist Girls School(Pri)


Aggregate:239


Chinese Grade:A

Tan Yong En

Kong Hwa Sch

Aggregate: 232


Chinese Grade: A

Vanessa Tan Wen Jing


Tao Nan Sch


Agg:231


Chinese:A
Trisha


Northland Pri Sch


Aggregate:218


Chinese Grade: A


Tan Yi Cheng


Raffles Girls School(Pri)


Chinese Grade: A

Testimonial from P6 RGS Yi Chen

RGS Yi Chen came to my tuition when she was still P5 and has improve greatly over the few months with me. She lives in Yio Chu Kang and has great difficulty coming over my house in the east for 1-to-1 tuition.Nevertheless she still managed to come at 8am in the morning consecutively for 5 days during the holidays.This intensive program was to make up for not being able to attend my lessons during school term as she's busy with her supplementary classes and other tuition. She is very intelligent and could pick up the main points and techniques of my teaching very well. This is partly due to her basic foundation in Chinese. When she entered, little push and she was able to improved greatly.Her prelim Oral scored a shocking 46/50 marks, pulling her overall marks up to a high A.

Here are the videos one in English and next one in Mandarin:

 

  

  



Is PSLE Chinese difficult?

The Primary School Leaving Examination is one that every student must take to move on to Secondary school. How well one does in this examination will determine which school he/she will enter. Is PSLE Chinese difficult? It depends on your child's foundation, and his/her exposure to the language. They will be tested on areas like writing, listening, and comprehending. Steps have been taken by MOE to adjust the marks allocated for each segment to decrease difficulty and increase relevance.
Some would question the importance of the subject in the overall aggregate score. A question frequently heard from parents is,"Why don't I allow my child to concentrate on English, Mathematics and Science first rather than Chinese?" The answer is the weightage of all the subjects are equal, and therefore a drop in Chinese will bring down the total aggregate score. I have students who missed out by one or two points to enter their desired schools of choice like ACS, Victoria they end up regretting not putting enough effort into Chinese.
Getting a huge improvement in grades is something that cannot be done overnight. To achieve the desired result, one must prepare for at least a year.  Students should have a sturdy foundation and familiarise themselves with most of the common words by Primary Five. This is because during Primary Six the teachers will be too busy doing intense revision of the past two years to go through the basics. A deadly and unfortunately common mistake are students who prepare for the Chinese Examination at the very last minute. Students will not be able to study properly under the pressure and will likely panic on the day of the examination, which is not recommended. I strongly urge parents who have Primary Five children to send them for tuition classes during the upcoming November to December holidays if they are weak in the subject. Prepare early and you will have no regrets.

SJI student with improvement of 20 marks!

Samuel Lim ,Sec 2
47 to 67 percent,
41.5/50(Oral)(2nd in class)
53/70 Compre

  He is actually a typical student who has not much interest towards the language. With a relatively weak foundation,I still recall his struggle in completing "Journey to the West" novel review. I started teaching him from January this year.During the SA1, he scored 47% overall for Chinese. Although disappointed, Samuel's parents did not quit the tuition halfway. They continued to have faith in me. Samuel's poor performance could be due to the limited number of lessons which 1 per week. However he is one who is "academically-conscious". Nearing the exams, I increased the number of lessons so as to prepare him.(Started work 6 weeks prior to exams). This led to his remarkable improvement from 47 to 67. This shows that sometimes the result do not come as fast which may instead take 6 months to one year to surface. If their parents had stopped the lessons 6 months ago, they may not be able to see Samuel progress.  Normally he is not fluent in speaking Chinese, speaking in bits and pieces and afraid of making wrong  tonation of pinyin. Surprisingly, he did exceedingly well for the Oral component this year even standing out as second best in class. From this year onwards, the syllabus for Chinese Oral took a turn to picture discussion rather than the usual topic discussion. Due to intense practice with me, he probably sat for the exam with new found confidence, with knowledge of what to expect. Thus, this gave him favour with the examiner amongst his peers who could be uunfamiliar with the new syllabus.

Usually a jump of 4 grades need a time of two years. However Samuel has surpass normal expectations and make vast improvement within half the time. Hence, students with weak foundations need at least two lessons per week to be able to improve. Another alternative will be to go for intensive lessons during the holidays.


James,Sec2
Overall: improved from 48 to 54(in 3 months)
  Although James has a stronger foundation, he is the type who has lower expectations . Nevertheless, he  improved,due to the pull up in paper 2 component.

Fairfield Methodist Sec: outstanding result of 82percent/ diligient,improving student

     Jun De from Fairfield Methodist Sec Sch has outdone himself and achieved outstanding result. He scored 82 percent overall for his Chinese making him the best and most improved student i have among the rest. Even Jun De was apalled by his results this time round as it was his first time getting so high during his years of schooling. His paper 1 component was his forte this time round with 17/20 for situational(公函）and 32/40 for composition. I feel that the main factor for his success is due to of his diligience. During the holidays, he did alot of Chinese related assignments which consist of books"非常阅读" that the teachers personally written for the syllabus. Every page consists of interesting passages and innovative questions specially catered for their age to catch their interest and attention. These painstakingly written worksheets are aimed to polish their comprehension skills. Those who may want to purchase the book for your children, it is not for sale anywhere at all unfortunately. The school is very strict about their publications. I would like to applaud Fairfield Methodist dedicated team of teachers for this first-of-its-kind education material which no other school elsewhere has done it.

  On the other hand, i got another student, Zhen Wei who has not reached Jun De's pinnacle in Chinese. He does not have interest towards Chinese. Due to little exposure to the language, he has tremendous difficulty in writing especially. But much to my delight he made improvement and for the first time passed his paper 1. Although with the increased demand put upon by the school to restrict the situational writing to formal"gong han" but he still managed to pull it off with the news article review as his preferred composition question. It is heartening that he put what i thought him about the organisation techniques of writing article review into the exam. I hope that this little result will serve as a stepping stone for him to do better.

Giving up Chinese?...Read on

 Common trend of students:
    25%--struggle to ---->50%

                                  ----->Lost confidence in the midst and gave up in the end 

   Already----strive for------>A1
    passing

-Sec 3 Daniel from ACS(I) IP programme

-Sec 2 Matthew from ACS(I) IP programme

             


  From my past years of teaching Sec 2 to 3 students from various traditional-English schools i.e. 5 from ACS(I/Barker Rd),few from MGS,SJI or Fairfield methodist,they have something unfortunate in common.That is most of them do not have an interest in Chinese.(no offence given)  The extremely weak ones desire to pass.The relatively strong ones from top classes would yearn for an A1 to create the perfect report card. Those are the two categories of students.

  More often than not,they will give up halfway when they do not see their fruits of labour. They confidence towards Chinese will sink to an all time low especially at Sec 3 when they are at the brink of  O levels either next yr or at the end of the year. Why did they,despite all their hard work, failed to reach their desired grade?Below are some of the possible reasons:

1.They may have "made a dash" too late
Some students only start to put in effort in the language upon reaching a crucial time such as in sec 3.Language often is unlike a Humanities or Mathematics subject where if you memorised or practiced hard enough,you can improve by heaps and bounds. Unknown to many,from my past experience,the average time needed for somebody of a B4-C5 standard to reach an A1 is 1 and a half years.Yes!it's that long.

 2.Their foundation is weak and language exposure is limited
Many of the students I have mentioned earlier come from english-speaking homes and schools,where Chinese is only applied at work. Without a firm grasp on basic linguistic techniques, they may find that Chinese just gets harder and harder everytime they study. There comes a point that he finds that no mater how hard he or she try,they're not going to make it...might as well Give UP!

 Firstly, when teaching them, i will overcome their disinterest towards Chinese. With methods like surfing the net to search for essay ideas, watching videos and using webcam, Chinese becomes a more "lively" subject that are not just constrained towards doing 课本and 作业. Only after changing their attitude towards Chinese,will they have the interest and morale to continue to srive for their targetted grades in Chinese.

Is Sec 2 Chinese Difficult?

If you are in Sec 2, you still have another 2 yrs before you complete your O levels.But what you are doing during that will have a great effect on your following years.It is a time where you need to:

1. know Interest (to choose your subjects you wanna take)
2. Consider transferring school (IP program)
3. Reconsider taking Higher Chinese or Chinese

So I could say Sec 2 is a important year indeed. Academic results play an important part in those above mentioned 3 actions. When you are asked to choose your subject combination, the first thing they will look out for is your results. Fair enough, the school might even opt you for 7 subj. combination, if they think you have difficulty managing 8.So to stand a chance for a position in your prefered stream,be it art or science,work hard in your studies.

Towards the end of the year it is a window of transition.If your child's results are exceptionally well and think that he or she will thrive better in another school, you could consider putting he or she in the IP program.This gives the child the option to bypass O levels and enter the A level Curriculum.My students like Jilian and Shu En have Chinese to owe to,helping them to get an transfer to their desired school.Jilian transferred to ACS international and Shu En transferred from MGS to SOTA. The language pulled their overall grades up hence increasing the chance of being admitted by the IP schools.Hence you can see,Chinese like other subjects deserve attention and bring you to competetive position whether for subject combi. or a place in a school.
Next most schools will set the exam papers for Sec 2 exceptionally difficult, with the aim of separating those who could not cope with the demands of higher chinese and those who can. Hence usually during Sec 2,students who perform poorly will  drop out to Express Chinese and those who did well in Express could move up to Higher chinese.At the of the Sec 4,2 bonus points off  L1R5 will be given.

Furthermore,it is advisable to build a strong language foundation in the lower secondary years. Your upper Sec years will have you trying to adapt to the heavy duty subjects like the Pure Sciences,a maths,POA,Pure Humanities etc.You would need to spend time studying the content,having a tendency to neglect the languages.So prepare early folks!

Then,is Sec 1 Chinese difficult?

    Upon reaching secondary school, everything takes a turn and academics increase in difficulty.Chinese language is no exception.

  Especially when your child is entering one of the "top academic schools" like RI and SAP schools with a strong emphasis on Chinese,he or she needs to be mentally prepared for a more intensive drilling. For example, in the latter schools i mentioned,especially for Higher Chinese, a typical topical test of Chinese may consists of like 20 to 30 challenging proverbs or idioms together with characters they have picked up from the textbook. For exams, schools combine the 100 proverbs they learnt into their exam scope.Imagine a hundred of mind-staggering proverbs(成语) all tested during exam,how stress can one be if he or she has a weak foundation or no interest in Chinese?


   Ryan is a very tenacious boy who has good work attitude. During lessons, he will not detest doing compos. Just like a normal student,he dislike the laboriousness and banalness of writing. He resort to typing instead which isn't any compromise since compo allow use of e-dicitonaries and pinyin.   Ryan takes every practice seriously and sees it as an opportunity to improve on his work. With accurate techniques taught,he is able to reap his fruits of labour in the recent year-end paper 1 exam.  This is the type of end-product i hope to produce when u send your child to my tuition.

Intensive 8 lessons for P5

Targetted at:
Students who detest Chinese,
with short concentration span
Countless of tuition do not seem to be helping
*will employ the methods for PSLE  if the student seems to be benefitting from it




17 Oct-30 Oct
17-20 Oct are marking days: 11am-12.30pm (at my place),
5pm-6.30pm,7-8.30 pm(at your place)
23,26(deepavali)-30 Oct: 930am -11am at my place
2-3.30, 4-5.30 at your place
25,27,28 Oct,
4.30-6,630 to 8pm at your place
(You can choose 6-10 lessons)
Go thru top sch exam papers,impart examination techniques and spot questions and trend

Faced with Disapproving results?Read on...

25% >50%>70% > 85%>95%

1 YEAR G'TEED IMPROVEMENT
Disheartened with Chinese?

Home/Group Chinese Tuition
2011 now open for Enrollement! 

*4/8/12 tailor-made intensive lessons

designed by local ex-sch teacher

(30yrs experience)

*Develop confidence towards

Chinese exams

*Targeted at students

who intend to give up

*Learn-
 Oral thru: skype,webcam,videos,

Writing Skills,Compre thru: internet,newspapers
article,book review

*Analyse top sch exam papers

*1-2 pax per grp

*2011“O” level Oral/Listening Compre exam

*2011 PSLE Oral/Listening Compre

*P4-6/S1-3 Higher Chinese

At MY place:

Weekdays:8am-12.30pm/6pm to 7.30pm

Weekends 8am-4pm
At YOUR place:

Weekdays:2-5.30pm/8-9.30pm
Since 1980

+ Results G'teed +

Mr Kok 9764-1616

Testimony,Exam tips,profile@

chinesetuitionsg.blogspot.com
Blk 15 Marine Terrace s'pore 440015

(5 min walking dist. from Tao Nan &CHIJ)Pri or Sec
Slots for Home tuition nearly fully booked
Group tuition (Weekday:2.30-4,Sat:8,11,2.30)
 are available only for limited no.