Insights By Tutors: Biggest PSLE English Compo Mistakes!

The English continuous writing section of the exam is something many primary school students find tough to grasp. As opposed to closed-answer questions like grammar MCQs and cloze passages, writing an entire composition requires not just strong language abilities but also a healthy dose of creativity.

This is where many students struggle. It is hard to have a good balance of both language skills and creativity! On top of that, students need to manage their time to ensure they dedicate enough attention to each section of the essay.

Common reasons why students do badly in compo

From our observation as English tutors, the major mistakes listed below are those that would cost students a lot of marks in the exam. One or more of these are usually why a student might fail or get a low score on their exam.

Writing off-topic

Even students with amazing writing abilities can fail a composition if they commit this grave mistake! Writing off-topic is usually the result of either: not reading the question carefully, or lack of planning.

Our tutor’s advice:

Before making any marks on the foolscap paper, take a few minutes to pick out the keywords in the question and plan the essay. Circle the keywords which you must address in your composition, and ensure that your essay outline includes these crucial points.

From there, think about the 5W’s and 1H’s to develop your story, and plan out your composition in the order of introduction, body, and conclusion.

Poor grammar

The Language component makes up 50% of the composition’s score, but students also risk losing marks in the Content component when poor grammar gets in the way of expressing their ideas clearly.

Our tutor’s advice:

If you still have a while until the PSLE, invest time to improve your language skills. Read widely to be exposed to good language structure and build your sense of what is ‘correct grammar’. Most students have trouble with subject-verb agreement and using connectors correctly – learn the rules and practice making sentences with these until you can internalise the structure.

If you are sitting for the PSLE very soon, our primary school tutors advise focusing on the few sentence structures that you tend to get wrong. Stick to simple sentences instead of long and complex ones – simple and right is better than complex and wrong! Read plenty of model compositions and memorise some of them in a ‘fill-in-the-blank’ way so that you can adapt the sentence to your story.

Poor time management

It doesn’t matter if you have good language or a most exciting storyline – if you can’t finish writing the composition, it is all going down the drain! Some students also spend too much time crafting their introduction, and end up rushing the ending of their composition, resulting in an unbalanced composition.

Our tutor’s advice:

Doing timed practices is essential for building up time management skills. Under the time pressure, students can get a feel of how fast they need to think and write. We also suggest allocating timeframes for each activity: for example, 5 minutes to plan, 40 minutes to write (about 10 minutes for each paragraph), and 5 minutes to check.

Planning an essay outline beforehand also helps with reducing writer’s block midway through writing. Investing that 5 minutes of planning is definitely worth it!

Mistakes that prevent students from getting their A’s

On the other hand, our tutors have observed students who are already doing alright for their compositions, but they can’t seem to improve. For these group of students, what distinguishes a high ‘A’ from a low A or B usually comes down to the quality of their descriptions and the creativity of the storyline.

Weak descriptions

There’s really nothing wrong with saying “He was so happy,” or “It was a lovely day.” But it just isn’t very… interesting. How happy was he? How could you tell he was happy? What made the day lovely? How can you make the reader feel that it was indeed, undeniably, a lovely day?

Our tutor’s advice:

Practice using the ‘show, not tell’ technique to make descriptions stand out. Employ the use of similes, metaphors, and idioms to express images and emotions more vividly.

It can help to start with memorising model sentences and phrases, but don’t copy blindly! Combine, re-arrange, and tweak the model phrases to suit your story and style of writing to make it more original and flowing.

Storyline not creative enough

When examiners are reading hundreds of essays written from the same questions, it becomes clear straightaway when a storyline is unique or terribly over-used. Examiners are not expecting award-winning plots, but even approaching something ordinary from a unique perspective can be enough to set your composition apart from hundreds of others.

Our tutor’s advice:

Compositions for exams should be ‘safe’ yet not too boring. Avoid unrealistic plots like sci-fi or horror genres – the story should still be realistic! Avoid overly dramatic plots like serial killers or war stories. We recommend sticking to events that you are familiar with so that you can describe them well.

Get inspired by storylines from books or real-life events that happened to yourself, or people around you. It is easier to write these kind of stories because you have more details and the words and phrases to describe these situations. Brainstorm a few of these ideas before you pick the best one for your essay.

Conclusion

If you find your child not performing well in English compositions, did any of the above points ring true for your child? For students enrolled in our English classes, parents will also receive added feedback and guidance about your child’s performance to help you keep track of your child’s progress and areas for improvement.

From the experience of helping countless primary school students improve their essay-writing skills, our PSLE English tutors have developed their own strategies for helping students overcome these common mistakes and weaknesses. If your child is not yet a part of our PSLE tuition class, contact us today to see how our tutors can help your child work in the right direction to improve their composition skills!

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