Want to help your child ace their PSLE English oral exam? Look no further as this article contains valuable tips to help your child excel on the examination day!
The oral examination accounts for 15% of your child’s English grade, so it’s a great opportunity for your child to improve their overall score. The tips in this article can be used for both the reading-aloud segment and stimulus-based conversation of the PSLE oral exam. Read on to learn essential strategies that will help your child ace the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) oral examination.
Tip 1: Maintain Good Posture and Eye Contact
Students should make a good impression on the examiners from the start. This includes greeting the examiner politely with a friendly smile when meeting them. By working on their body language and posture, students can display confidence in the PSLE English oral exam. For example, they can:
It is important for your child to practise this with you in a supportive environment, as these factors can contribute towards a higher score.
Tip 2: Watch Your Volume and Tone
Students need to vary their tone of voice to convey the right emotions during the reading-aloud component, especially when the passage contains dialogue. For example, if the passage is about a character who is excited, they should use an upbeat tone. If there’s an exclamation point, your child should read that part with a louder voice. They may also want to increase or decrease the pace of reading to match the mood of the sentence.
Encourage your child to look out for keywords that signal emotions during the PSLE English oral exam. It’s also important to pay attention to question marks and change the intonation for questions. Practise conversations with your child to ensure that they’re not monotonous. They should be energetic and confident to handle passages with various situations and moods.
Tip 3: Practice Your Pronunciation
Clear pronunciation is essential for the PSLE oral exam. Students should learn about commonly mispronounced words and practise saying them correctly. You can also encourage them to read aloud on a regular basis. This can entail reading newspapers, magazines, books or any English-language material that they’re keen on. When reading aloud, ask them to be attentive to each word’s pronunciation and guide them in how to stress the correct syllables and enunciate the sounds clearly.
Listening to English language programmes, such as news broadcasts or podcasts can also help them in their pronunciation. They’ll be able to observe and mimic the enunciation and natural rhythm of a confident and eloquent speaker. When the speaker pronounces difficult or unfamiliar words, get them to repeat those words out loud.
Rushing while reading the passage can also lead to mispronunciation. This can happen if they’re anxious. If your child has a habit of reading too quickly, get them to slow down and enunciate their words clearly. They should also pay attention to ending consonant sounds like the “d” in “bumped” or the “th” sound in “booth”.
On top of regular practice and preparation, it’s important for your child to be mentally prepared to encounter words that are hard to pronounce in the oral exam. Students can panic when they see a tricky word and stumble over it and other words subsequently, leading to a poor performance. If it’s a long word, break it up into syllables and say it part by part. They should decide how to pronounce them and recite them several times until they feel confident. When they read it during the exam, they should do it fluently and confidently. Teach them not to stutter, mumble or skip over words they don’t know.
Tip 4: Utilise Active Listening
Active listening is about listening attentively to the speaker, understanding and reflecting on what they're saying and responding to them through your body language and words. It's a skill that enables your child to focus on what the examiner is saying and ask clarifying questions. It also helps them to understand main ideas and pick up key details. Examiners are looking out for the ability to listen and respond in an appropriate way.
There are several ways that you can help your child improve their active listening skills. Help them practise by asking them various questions and prompting them to answer. Get them to ask you follow-up questions to show that they understood your question. You can also ask them to paraphrase or summarise what you said to demonstrate understanding.
If you notice that they get distracted or start to fidget, gently let them know so that they can be conscious of their behaviour and change it. These tips can help your child to listen closely to the examiner’s questions and prompts during the stimulus-based conversation and give thoughtful and appropriate answers.
Tip 5: Prepare For Common Topics For the Stimulus Based Conversation
There are resources available for the different questions that will be asked during the stimulus-based conversation. Students can prepare themselves to speak on common topics ahead of the examination by identifying interesting vocabulary or expressions to use. Ask them questions from each topic so that they start thinking about those issues and practise articulating their thoughts and ideas. This can help them with giving more in-depth answers and naturally incorporating examples. It’s also useful to get your child familiarised with issues that people are discussing currently, such as what’s happening in the country and the world.
Here are some broad categories you can get started on:
Tip 6: Be Specific
When answering the examiner’s question during the stimulus-based conversation, encourage your child to include relevant details to get a higher score. This may include names of activities or places and giving reasons for their desired reactions. Explore these following examples to get a better idea of specific answers:
Bad Example:
Good Examples:
Ace the PSLE English Oral Exam
The PSLE English Oral Exam has a signifcant weightage, and is also easier to study for. This makes it important to be well-prepared, so your child can pull up their grades. Remember—it's not just about what they say, but how they say it. Learning how to talk calmly and confidently is a skill that can stick with them for life. By knowing how to speak fluent English and articulate their thoughts well, they can excel at their exams while building their long-term communication skills.
Keynote Learning offers English classes for primary school students that help prepare them for their PSLE. If your child needs help or if you want to find out more about English classes for primary school students, contact us to find out more about our tuition programme.