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4 Books Every Primary School Student Needs to Ace their Chinese Exams
If you’re not new to the Singapore education system, you would know that we’re in the midst of the exam period for Primary school students. Singapore’s public education is known to be one of the most academically rigorous in the world. Thus, libraries and cafes are often crowded with students studying hard during this period.
Primary school students are taught and tested on 4 subjects: English, Mathematics, Sciences and Mother Tongue. The staple Mother Tongue languages offered in schools are Chinese, Malay and Tamil. However, Mother Tongue is slowly “dying” among the younger generation as younger families use English, instead of their Mother Tongue, at home. Hence, Mother Tongue is a subject that many students struggle with. Having said that, with the right studying techniques, students will be able to score well in their exams!
There are 2 writing components to Chinese exams: Composition and Reading Comprehension. Each requires a different set of studying techniques to score well in.
Composition
In the Composition component, students will be shown 6 pictures. Together the pictures illustrate a narrative that students are supposed to write about in their composition. Pictures 1 to 5 show the beginning and climax of the incident while the last picture is a question mark. It is up to students to write a logical and coherent conclusion to the narrative. Below the pictures, there will be reference words students may include in their composition.
Assessors will be marking students’ compositions based on their language and content. For language, assessors will look out for the students’ grammar and vocabulary. Using appropriate idioms will be a bonus for students. As for content, the assessors will judge the students’ overflow of their essay and check for coherence and richness of their essay’s content.
To do well in this component, students should work on their language skills as well as their ability to ideate coherent story lines. A holistic way of developing these skills is to read other sample essays. This not only exposes students to new vocabulary and appropriate sentence structures but also gives students ideas on how they can develop their storylines appropriately.
We recommend:
- Excellent Essays by Primary School Students - Teachers Liu’s Writing Class (Shop now)
- Primary School Chinese Language Examination Picture Composition Sample and Comments (Shop now)
Reading Comprehension
In the Reading Comprehension component, students will be required to read several short excerpts. These excerpts may be taken from various places such as new articles or short story books. The students will then be required to answer questions about the excerpt. These questions consist of comprehension and inference questions to test the extent of the student’s understanding of the excerpt.
To do well in this component, students would need to improve their overall vocabulary so they will be able to understand excerpts from a wide range of topics.
We recommend:
- Primary School Chinese Language Vocabulary Handbook Grade 6, Volume 1 (Shop now)
- Primary School Chinese Language Vocabulary Handbook Grade 6, Volume 2 (Shop now)
These supplementary Chinese books are authored by experienced teachers who have been teaching Chinese for years. Thus, the books’ material are aligned with the latest MOE syllabus. In fact, many primary school teachers recommend Lingzi Media’s collection of supplementary books to students to aid them in their exam preparation. For primary 6 students preparing for PSLE, the Chinese Language Examination Picture Composition book and the Vocabulary Handbooks are highly recommended by educators and parents.