2024 PSLE Chinese Comprehension: Tutor’s Review And Tips

This year’s PSLE has come and gone, so let’s do a quick review of one of the talked-about papers from this year’s exam – the Chinese Paper 2!

The Paper 2 in Chinese consists of several components, including multiple-choice questions on language use, a cloze passage, completing a dialogue, and comprehension passages. Of these, the component that raised the most discussion amongst students was the open-ended comprehension question.

Curious to know what was tested and what students thought about the paper? Let’s take a closer look at some challenges students faced and our Chinese tutors’ tips for tackling comprehension passages!

Summary of passage

Little Kangaroo （小袋鼠）’s parents want him to become a boxer just like them, so they trained him intensively. One day, the little kangaroo’s grandfather noticed little kangaroo looking frail and tired, and let Little Kangaroo stay at his home to rest. Soon, Grandfather discovered that little kangaroo’s passion lies in performing magic, not boxing! Grandfather spoke to little kangaroo’s mother to change her perspective about little kangaroo’s future.

Challenges encountered by students

1. Unfamiliar words

The comprehension passage was a little unusual, and some students had trouble with unfamiliar terms like ‘kangaroo’ （袋鼠）, ‘boxing’ （打拳）, and ‘magic’（魔术）.

Although these words are not too common in everyday usage, students are expected to know them at this level. This emphasises the need for students to read widely and develop strong vocabulary. Our tutor’s tips? There’s no easy way out, unfortunately. The best way to improve vocabulary is to read – we recommend a variety of texts including news articles as well as story books.

Apart from vocabulary, it is also useful for students to know strategies to overcome ‘surprises’ in the exam. For example, what should they do when they encounter words they don’t understand?

We believe these are exam skills that every student needs to know! Here are some strategies we teach in our Primary school Chinese tuition classes:

1. Use the radicals （边旁） of the word to guess the meaning.
2. Use the sentence structure to deduce the function of the word (e.g., is it a noun, verb, or adjective?)
3. Use contextual clues to figure out the meaning and how it fits in the story.

In some cases, having an exact understanding of the word meaning might not even be important – such as, in this case, whether the characters are kangaroos, squirrels, or something else! Through plenty of practice, students will be able to improve their deduction and discernment skills.

2. Questions without direct answers

Some students were stumped by a few of the questions that could not be answered by directly lifting from the passage. These are higher-level inference questions that are often used to differentiate good performers with the top-scorers. One such question was ‘What kind of child is Little Kangaroo?’ (小袋鼠是怎样的孩子？)

At the primary school level, students are used to being able to find the answer directly in the passage. Most answers can be lifted from the passage, with minimal paraphrasing. Although every comprehension paper tends to have at least one inference question, students still get stuck because they have comparatively less practice with these types of questions.

In fact, ‘What kind of XXX is YYY?’ is not an uncommon question. It has appeared in several primary school prelim papers in recent years – so students should have some exposure to it. As tutors, we are able to spot these kinds of question trends and guide students through a framework for tackling them.

This question type is essentially asking students to describe the character’s characteristics or qualities. So, students firstly need to have the vocabulary to describe a person’s qualities. Secondly, students need to be able to find the clues that point them to the qualities. Usually, these clues are in the character’s actions or speech.

So, in the kangaroo story, here is how students can approach the question:

1. Scan the passage for clues that reveal Little Kangaroo’s character. Pay close attention to his actions and words.
2. What are some suitable words to describe his character? (e.g. filial, resilient, submissive)

Conclusion

As the PSLE evolves over the years, there has been a gradual shift towards less content-based questions, and more questions that test students’ abilities to think critically, apply existing knowledge to new situations, and think on their feet. This is seen across subjects – and in this case, we have seen how it occurs in the Chinese paper.

Increasingly, parents will find themselves less equipped to coach their own child using the methods that worked for them in the past. As tutors in Singapore, we want to help you! We are always keeping an eye out for the latest educational trends and reforms, and we have led countless students to A’s and AL1 scores through our PSLE tuition classes.

With an emphasis on exam skills, study techniques, and thinking strategies, we equip students with what they need to excel in the current system of education and examinations. If you want to get equipped before the all-important PSLE year, contact us today to book your class for 2025!