The PSLE for primary school pupil in Singapore also has a mother tongue section. This exam is not compulsory, but a lot of children take it. The mother tongue languages include Malay, Tamil, and Chinese.
Learning memory techniques is important for your child to excel in education. Jotting points in class, visualizing images, and presenting to friends are ways to build retention. With all the distractions around them, your children may not be able to remember what they have learned at school.
Helping them to learn memory techniques increases their chances of doing well in school and life in general.
Memory Techniques For The Chinese Language
Teaching your children memory techniques to excel in exams is a good idea. However, Chinese is a language subject, so it might not need a lot of memorization. That doesn’t mean that memorizing some things won’t be necessary. Instead of cramming entire sections of the Chinese language, your child can memorize specific things for the exam.
Make sure that you hire a good tutor for your child. Study sessions and classes in Chinese can’t be negotiated. Your children need to know what it is that is writing, not just memorizing things and putting them down for marks. Excellent tuition is one of the ways for your child to pass the Chinese language exam.
For Essays
The essay part of the Chinese language exam is a standard for that exam. All students taking the exam will have to write it. It is a rather simple paper to pass since you can predict the structure of it based on past exams. However, memorizing all those essays for a particular dance may not work.
The questions will definitely be different, and you will waste time studying for something different.
Instead, memorize the following for the Chinese language exam:
Short Phrases
Short phrases are your best bet when memorizing for the Chinese language paper. These phrases are usually similes, idioms, proverbs, and other colloquial expressions.
For every Chinese essay, there are phrases included that challenge the minds of your children. These also improve the standard of the exam. Examiners also give extra marks to pupils who demonstrate proficiency in Chinese. This could be by using phrases that are complex in nature and writing all the characters correctly.
Here are some things your child should know about phrases. They can memorize these as well.
1. 成语 or 俗语: using either one of these in the proper way can get you a higher score. There are two aspects the examiner considers when marking the exams. These are the content or 内容, and the grammar, or 表达.
If your child is able to use phrases the right way, they can get high scores in both content and grammar. This applies to all types of essays, including argumentative essays, narratives, and newspaper reports.
2. Learning how to write good phrases: when memorizing phases, make sure your tutor teaches the child what the phrases mean. Your child should write phrases with clear meaning. This will communicate intent clearly to the examiner. Wrong use of phrases will attract heavy penalties. Your child could fail that paper entirely.
Your Chinese tuition shouldn’t focus on memorizing phrases alone. It should also be about knowing what the mean. There are many resources available, from books to the Internet, that can help your child in preparation for the Chinese exam. Use these to make sense of the phrases you are memorising.
Quotes
Using quotes in your Chinese paper is also a good way to earn high marks. Quotes can be used in expository essays, newspaper reports, and argumentative essays. Memorizing quotes by famous people will help you in the exam, as it will add more depth to your essay. Your paper will be more convincing, and your content and grammar scores will get a boost.
While quotes are a gold mine, you should not memorize too many of them. They may be great in essays, but the opportunities to use them are few.
Also, examiners are quite strict when it comes to using quotations. You can’t afford to get anything wrong. If you get one character wrong, you can lose marks. There are good websites you can go to for quotes, organized by category.
Format
The essays in the Chinese language exam are divided into two: Paper 1 and Paper 2. Each paper has a different type of format. Knowing what format each paper has will go a long way and scoring your child higher marks.
Paper 1
Paper 1 usually has two formats. These are situational writing and newspaper report. The format for a newspaper report is as follows: the introduction, the body, and a conclusion, with transitional paragraphs between all three of them.
Memorizing this format is necessary to pass this paper. Any slight mistakes, such as ignoring the transition paragraphs, will cost you a lot of marks.
The format for a situational essay is quite easy to remember. You may not write well, per se, but you will get marks simply for getting the format right.
Paper 2
This paper usually contains a comprehension and an open-ended summary. Also, you may only write these if you are taking higher Chinese. Here, you just need to learn the format of certain questions in terms comprehension. To answer comprehensive questions, you need to get proof from the comprehension itself. This will get you good marks.
Good tuition is still necessary for you to pass the Chinese language paper. You can get a tutor online or hire one to come to your house in Singapore for tuition sessions. Memory techniques are good for passing exams. That doesn’t mean you should rely on memory alone, at the expense of truly understanding what you re learning.
Teach your child to study Chinese phrases and quotes. Know what they mean and the right contexts to use them in. Train them on the proper ways to write Chinese characters. Getting all these right will earn them higher marks. Know the formats of writing newspaper reports and situational essays. Truly understanding these things will get you good scores in the Chinese essay exams.
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