Secondary School English Tuition

Secondary 4/5 students will take their O-level exams at the end of the year, and we understand this to be one of the most important exams for a child — paving the way for their entry into JC, and then on to university.

Our English tuition teachers take extra care with our Secondary 4/5 students because we understand what is at stake. We understand that students need to have a high proficiency in English to do well, not just in the English exams, but also in the other subjects that use English as an instruction medium.

Ultimately, the end goal of our English tuition programme is for our students to outperform their peers in written proficiency, to be able to speak better, and to attain more detailed general knowledge content. Thus paving the way for our students to go on to ace the GCE O-level English Examinations.

Paper 1: Editing, Situational Writing, and Continuous Writing (70 marks, 35% total weightage)

The English O-level exams place particular emphasis on writing as a skill set. The total marks allocated to writing an essay and its constituent skills (like editing, and formatting a letter) make up more than one-third of the entire English paper. In our English tuition syllabus, we seek to improve the students’ writing skills using a range of MOE text writing practices. For e.g., editing practices are done on a weekly basis. This is to help students strengthen their core grammatical awareness and accuracy.

During the Sec 4/5 English tuition classes, we start giving out GP (General Paper) level model essays on a weekly basis. The idea being to teach students the advanced argumentative writing techniques that are currently being taught in JCs. We feel this is especially important, since the recent trend is for MOE exams to move away from expository and narrative type essays towards argumentative type essay questions.

Our English tuition classes also teach students how to speed read vast amounts of texts, and identify the authors key points, so they can then summarise it for their notes. Over months of readings, these accumulated points form what we call general knowledge “content”, that will enable students to support their argumentative points with relevant and informative examples in the essay. Since content marks make up almost two-thirds of the total marks allocated for an essay, we believe this technique has helped our students perform consistently better than their peers in Continuous Writing papers.

Finally, our English tuition syllabus also requires students to do one situational writing exercise every two weeks. Students are given a variety of situational writing exercises, from writing letters to email, and writing speeches and reports. Students will also have to write about topics that cover about 20 different genres throughout the secondary 4/5 academic year. Because of the intensive practices given, our students are usually able to write a stunningly organised and informative situational writing piece once the exam arrives.

Paper 2: Visual Text, Narrative & Non-Narrative Comprehensions, Summary Writing (50 marks, 35% total weightage)

Like Paper 1, Paper 2 also comprises 35% of the entire weightage of the English paper. In other words, more than one-third of the entire grade comes from Paper 2. Paper 2 comprises 3 parts, the Visual Text, and then 2 comprehensions of different passage types.

Based on our experience, many students do not do well in Paper 2 because they are lacking in inference reading skills. Inference reading, or reading “between the lines” is a skill-set that is not taught at the Primary school level. Students must learn to infer the author’s intended meaning from the text based on the context of the writing. This requires students to understand each paragraph’s main points and any figurative language in the text. At The Education Lab, our English tuition classes teach students, step-by-step, the 10 different inference type questions, and the techniques to do well in each type of question.

The other skill which is tested heavily in Paper 2 is paraphrasing. This is tested both in the direct / literal SAQ question types, as well as in the summary. Students must have good semantic and synthetic paraphrasing skills, coupled with excellent vocabulary, to excel in the summary. Our English tuition syllabus calls for summary practices every 2 weeks. We also have 3 different paraphrasing modules that students have to go through. We do this so that students will have to know-how to do well in the paraphrasing questions, whether its the summary or SAQ.

Last but not least, Visual text requires students to infer messages from a graphic content (for eg. a poster), to determine the author’s intended message to the readers of the poster. This requires students to look at font sizing, placement of text, layout of the graphc etc. Our English tuition syllabus has a module that teaches Visual text, including doing 25 practice papers. Because although the Visual Text is not a large percentage of the marks, it is a section that tests technical skills which ALL students can actually perform well in. Moreover, the Visual Text is the first section of Paper 2, and can affect the moral of students throughout the whole paper 2 exam.

Paper 3: Listening Comprehension (30 marks, 10% total weightage)

The Listening Comprehension is one of the easiest portions of the English Exam for scoring very high marks. The paper itself is relatively straight-forward, students will sit through a cassette recording that runs about an hour long. There will be numerous narrations and conversations being played in the recording. Students will then answer a series of MCQ questions based on the different recordings, and also a written section at the end.

At The Education Lab, our English tuition classes conduct listening comprehension practices every 3 weeks. Students will listen to a range of audio recordings, that talk about numerous topics. One of the key skill-sets that we teach students during this module is the ability of listen for keyword(s) in the recording and match them with the keywords presented in the answer. This is often not as easy as it sounds as MOE listening comprehension recordings often do not give the exact same keyword(s) as those listed in the answer script. (For eg, a recording may talk about “mammals” while the answer script shows “animals” as the correct answer.)

As such, our English tuition classes also train students in advanced note-taking skills, so that they can quickly summarise, in short-hand, what the gist of the recording is about (much like how a secretary writes down the minutes of a meeting). We also teach students to recognise the various features of English pronunciation, so that they hear the recording clearly and accurately. Through years of experience, we have found that applying a combination of these skills enable students to perform superbly well in the listening comprehension paper.

Paper 4: Oral Communication Exam (30 marks, 20% total weightage)

Students often get nervous about the oral exam, but its actually one of the easiest papers to do — you spend 10 minutes reading and chatting, and you’re done with one-fifth of the entire English paper! Ok, that’s a little bit of oversimplification. But the oral exam genuinely is not a difficult paper, and in our opinion, one of the few papers that actually teaches practical life skills. In short, the oral exam tests a student’s ability to read and then articulate their ideas, in a clear, concise, and knowledgable manner.

Our Sec 4 English tuition syllabus calls for developing a student’s speaking ability from around the month of May. This gives students about 5 months of practice before they would have to take the Oral Exam. Students are taught how to pronounce properly, how to enunciate words, and how to confidently articulate their points of view. There are numerous practices where students will practice reading aloud using the proper tone, and at the correct pace — when to speed up (for excitement), and when to slow down (for emphasis). Students are also taught to memorise commonly known facts related to popular oral exam topics. Finally, students are also taught basic body language, from a correct posture, to hand gestures, to making eye contact with the examiner.

We believe our English tuition classes give a significant practical advantage to our students because we train them with the intention that they not just do well in the oral exams, but also for the real world. We believe the true test for our students comes where they will have to use these skills in interviews, corporate presentations, and in social interactions.