5 Tips to Help Your Child Prepare for PSLE English

For many primary school students, the PSLE is the first major hurdle in their education pathway. The first paper, English, is seen by many as one of the harder papers that students are required to sit for, bringing about copious amounts of worry to students and parents. Nevertheless, ample preparation will help your child ace their PSLE English exam. Below are some tips you can follow to help your child prepare for PSLE English.

Tip #1: Conduct Targeted Practice to Improve Your Kid’s Knowledge Base

One of the best ways to help your child prepare for PSLE English is to ensure that they have a strong knowledge in the subject. This means covering all the key concepts and vocabulary that will be tested. A great way to do this is to use targeted practice questions.

To prepare for PSLE, it is important to set aside time to practise different skills that your child has already mastered. You can do this by finding specific practice questions for your child to practise with textbooks, assessment books and even past PSLE papers or other school papers. This helps to prepare your child for any genre of questions that will appear during the PSLE English examination and will give your child a firm grasp of vocabulary, grammar and other important concepts.

Tip #2: Integrate Time Limits and Breaks to Improve Your Kid’s Exam Skills

Another way to help your child prepare for PSLE English is to set a time limit while doing practice. This helps students get used to the time pressure that they will face and ensure that during the actual PSLE, they will not crumble under pressure, and instead excel and do well.

While practice is important for PSLE, parents must not neglect giving their child breaks in between practices to ensure that the child has enough time to relax. Giving the child too much stress and practices inadvertently harms the child and will produce the reverse effect of them – doing worse.

Understandably, your child may underperform as opposed to your expectations. However, it’s important to maintain a positive and encouraging attitude towards your child.

After their daily practices, you may want to provide an incentive to encourage your child to continue pushing and studying apart from their usual break times to keep your child’s morale up. Even though they’re taking a national examination, it’s important to remember that they’re still young.

Tip #3: Encourage Your Child to Spend Time Reading and Learning How to write

Of course, writing is another key component of the PSLE English exam. On that note, help your child to improve their writing skills by getting them to practise writing regularly. Encourage them to write about topics that they are interested in, and give them feedback on their writing. This will not only improve their writing skills but also help them to reflect on their progress and identify areas where they need to continue to work.

Writing, arguably one of the most important components of the PSLE English examination cannot be forgotten when it comes to preparation for the PSLE English exam. To prepare for Paper 1, the writing component, your child should pick up the habit of reading. Reading is often extremely underrated when it comes to improving your child’s English, being beneficial to their work by improving their grammar and vocabulary. That said, it is encouraged to provide your child with a variety of reading materials, ranging from real-world newspapers and magazines to more enjoyable fiction and non-fiction books.

While reading is very important, the best way to prepare for writing is to write regularly. To motivate your child to write, allow your child to write about topics that they have an interest in, helping to check and mark their writing to spot and rectify any errors. This leads us to our next tip.

Tip #4: Help Your Child Review and Reflect on Old Writing

After you’ve finished marking any writing that your child has done or any past writing that your child has done in school, it’s necessary to look at the errors that your child has been making. If you’re able to spot any mistakes, such as grammar and punctuation or the clarity of the sentence or the organisation of the writing, try your best to explain to your child why these were wrong and ways they can prevent themselves from making such errors again.

Tip #5: Celebrate their Strengths to Boost Your Child’s Confidence

Finally, it’s important to celebrate your child’s strengths and achievements, no matter how big or small. This will help to boost their confidence and remind them that they are capable of doing great things.

Finally, one mustn’t forget to congratulate your child when they achieve feats, regardless of size. This will lift their spirits and motivate them to study harder as children respond better to positive reinforcement.

At Writers Studio, we understand the importance of preparing students for their exams. We offer PSLE English classes that are designed to help students succeed. Our experienced and qualified instructors will work with your child to help them master the material and build the skills they need to do well on the exam.

This article is contributed by Aloysius Chng from Writers Studio Singapore, an English tuition centre in Singapore that helps students learn the English language and enhance their knowledge gained from school.

Photos provided by Writers Studio Singapore. Ms Goh is the managing director of Writers Studio, with more than 20 years of experience as an educator. She is also a trained teacher and a professional writer. Building success through literacy is her forte, and she believes that successful English language students achieve milestones that transcend mediocrity. Aloysius is one of her students. He has been studying with Writers Studio for years. Aloysius has finally graduated with an A1 at the 2022 O Levels.