PSLE Chinese – An Overview

For the past decades in Singapore, students have been immersed in a culture whereby English is used more often than Chinese, thus mastering the language for many students require much more effort. As published in an article by The Straits Times, MOE and Local Schools are now taking an approach to encourage students to develop a love for the language and use it regularly in their daily life. As a home tuition agency that receives requests for Chinese Tuition on a daily basis, we understand that many students are struggling with a weak background in Chinese, and it is almost a “mission impossible” to do well in PSLE Chinese. Many parents also find difficulty in “self-coaching” PSLE Chinese as it is a second language to most of them. Hence they are not well-versed themselves with the usage of the language, nor with the Current MOE Syllabus requirements. Fret not! We have compiled some top tips shared by our best Chinese Home Tutors who specialize in PSLE Chinese Tuition and we believe these tips will go a long way in helping students achieve a distinction for PSLE Chinese!

PSLE Chinese Paper 1 – Composition Tips

Paper 1 in PSLE Chinese has a total of 40 marks which takes up to 20% weightage in the overall result. The well-know Chinese idioms such as “Feng He Ri Li” is one of the trademarks in any compositions as it is used by almost half of the students. Many teachers have highlighted points that students have to improve on if they want to score higher marks in composition. One of the main concerns is to raise the bar of vocabulary words from common words to using more adjective expressive words and Chinese idioms.

Vocabulary Word Banks – Updated On A Weekly Basis

The first tip is to help or encourage your child to create a regularly updated vocabulary word bank with different categories such as weather, locations, and activities for composition writing. The student can refer to their word bank whenever they are writing a composition and it will save them more time as compared to searching through a textbook for vocabulary to fill into their composition. This also encourages familiarization and memory-recall, making it easier for students to remember these useful phrases at their fingertips during Chinese Examinations.

Help from a Professional PSLE Chinese Tutor is also recommended as most already have a specially compiled list of vocabulary words that have been specially curated for PSLE Chinese Students. These tutors will also be able to teach your child with techniques to memorize Chinese words by breaking them down into simple components. Take “合情合理” as an example, it means to be fair and equitable in accord with both feelings/emotions and with reason. This can be broken down to – “合” means to be in accord with something, whereas “情” means a feeling or emotion and “理” means to be rationale. The usage of these vocabulary word banks can also be complemented by weekly spelling tests (Ting Xie) which will help to strengthen your child’s memory recall of the phrases.

Electronic Dictionary – Regular Usage Helps!

During PSLE Chinese Paper 1, students are allowed to bring in an electronic dictionary to aids them in writing. As gathered from our PSLE Chinese Tutors, many students are not familiar with the usage of their electronic dictionary and spend too much time figuring out how to search for the correct word during exams. Not known to most students, many electronic dictionaries also have a hidden function! Just like Google, the words which are more frequently searched will appear more at the front of the search results. This function is extremely useful as a student who uses the electronic dictionary regular will be able to save more time during exams, which can be used to write a better Chinese Composition.

PSLE Chinese Paper 2 – Comprehension Tips

Chinese comprehension is one of the most important components of PSLE Chinese as it carries a total of 90 marks with a weightage of 25% of MCQ and 20% for open-ended questions. This takes up to almost half of the total weightage and from our Chinese Tutors’ feedback, most students’ Chinese overall marks are pulled down by Paper 2. Here are some tips from our PSLE Chinese Tutors to help your child in conquering Chinese comprehension!

Reading The Passage

First and foremost, to know how to answer any question in Chinese comprehension, students will first need to understand what is portrayed in the passage. Here are 4 useful steps that our PSLE Chinese Tutors have taught to their students for analyzing a PSLE Chinese comprehension passage.

1. Read the passage once to understand it and identify the themes or purposes that the passage carries.
2. Mark, Underline or Highlight the 4Ws, (Why, Where, When and What) in each paragraph to aid them with answering later.
3. Read the questions and identify the keywords in each question. These keywords are usually words that have appeared in the passage as well.
4. Revert and refer to the paragraph in the passage where the keywords are mentioned. The answers are usually found in sentences close to the keywords, look carefully at the few sentences at the front or back of the keywords.

Improve Critical Thinking Skills

Another tip is to improve at Chinese Comprehension would be to develop better critical thinking skills. One of the most effective and efficient ways to help students improve critical thinking skills is by helping them to develop good reading habits. By reading more books and stories in the Chinese Language, students will develop an ability to predict how the story develops even though they may not know a certain sentence or phrase in the passage.

With PSLE Chinese Tuition, our tutors will not only help your child to recognize and understand all the vocabulary texts and spelling given by their school teachers, they will also provide newspaper articles and magazines to train their students in reading skills. Reading newspapers could also expose the student to more specific vocabulary which will aid them in understanding comprehension paragraphs, or could be used for composition writing in Paper 1! Through their reading, students will also be more updated about current affairs, encouraging a more holistic education as a whole.

PSLE Chinese Paper 3 – Oral and Listening Comprehension

Earlier in 2017, MOE has announced the replacement of Picture Description in Chinese Oral Examination with e-Oral and Video Conversations. The students are required to watch a 1-minute video and express their views and opinions regarding the videos. It serves as a purposeful medium to better portray real-life situations and contexts for oral conversations and discussion. Many students are afraid to communicate in Chinese as they are not able to converse fluently in Mandarin, resulting in them losing confidence in expressing themselves in Chinese Oral. Here are some tips and ways used in PSLE Chinese Tuition to train students for their Oral and Listening Comprehension!

Practice Chinese Speaking

By immersing your child into a Chinese speaking environment. They have the chance to practice communicating in Chinese and their fluency can be improved by correcting their pronunciations and tones. Encourage your child to talk and communicate in Chinese for at least an hour every day! This will boost their confidence greatly when they communicate in Chinese as it will feel more natural. Some of the techniques used by our PSLE Chinese Tutors would be to include regular short conversations within tuition lessons. The topics could range from current local or international happenings, or even about the student’s daily life. This also helps to add variation and breaks the monotony during tuition lessons, keeping the student interested and focused on the Chinese Language. During these conversations, tutors will encourage students to think and express their ideas in Chinese, while teaching them selected vocabulary to describe the events or their personal views towards the matter.

Practice Chinese Listening

It is also important to create opportunities for your child to listen to Chinese! You can always start by engaging them in watching Chinese movies or TV shows with you. When students are exposed to realistic Chinese conversations that can be found in these programs, it becomes natural that your child will learn to identify what is the messages behind the speech. You can also watch the Chinese News with your child to help them expand their vocabulary which can be applied in their Chinese Oral and Written examinations. Chinese Music is also a popular option amongst students when it comes to cultivating interest in the Chinese Language. When your child encounters a Chinese Song which they enjoy, encourage them to search for the Chinese Lyrics online, and also to understand the meaning of the lyrics. Listening to Chinese Songs is also a great medium as the repetition involved can help them unknowingly internalize the way certain Chinese Words should be pronounced.

Conclusion – If You Require Help With PSLE Chinese, Seek It ASAP.

As PSLE Chinese draws near, your child would need as much help in preparing them for their Chinese. Our advice to any student or parent would be to seek help as soon as possible as Chinese is a language subject, and it requires time to cultivate the necessary skills and background to do well. You can count on MindFlex Home Tuition to provide you a private PSLE Chinese Tutor which helps your child to be “exam-ready”. Our tutors will not only able to guide your child through their works and exercises but even to expose them to Chinese cultures and application of the language in more future skills. Once again, the answering techniques required for PSLE Chinese takes practice and time to build-up. Outside of hiring PSLE Chinese Tuition, we also strongly encourage parents to develop effective practices such as training your child to read newspapers and exposing them to Chinese speaking environment. These will not only increase the opportunities for exposure, but are also effective in building language skills, especially for those who come from an English-speaking environment. It lays the foundations of applying Chinese to both exams and real-life situations,

Here at Mindflex Home Tuition, we have a good mixture of Professional Chinese Home Tutors who are Native Chinese, and Singaporean. This diversity helps to cater to the different preferences of each household, and both our Native and Local Tutors have rich experience in guiding students to ace and achieve excellent results in PSLE Chinese! You may also contact us to find out more, our friendly team will be more than willing to assist you.

We wish you all the best for your PSLE Chinese journey!