If your child did badly for Chinese this mid-term, read on. Over a three-part series, we will be covering the key areas students struggle with.

In this post, we explore how to help your child ace Comprehension by building a solid vocab foundation through guided reading. The larger your child’s vocab size, the easier comprehension becomes. But before we dive in, let’s quickly recap how comprehension is graded and where students tend to lose marks.

REFRESHER ON COMPREHENSION GRADING

Students can get a maximum score of 200 for PSLE Chinese, and there are a total of three comprehension passages with a total score of 42 marks. Comprehension has one of the highest weightage sections, and can make or break your child’s Chinese grade.

The first comprehension passage is 10 marks and consists of five multiple choice questions. The second passage is a short announcement, advertisement or letter (通告、便条) worth 10 marks, and consists of three multiple choice questions and a short writing task. And the final passage is worth a whopping 22 marks, and are all open-ended questions.

Paper	Section	Marks (%)
Paper 1	Composition	40 (20%)
Paper 2	Language Use	30 (15%)
	Cloze Passage	10 (5%)
	Comprehension 1 (Multiple Choice)	10 (5%)
	Sentence Completion	8 (4%)
	Comprehension 2 – Module A	10 (5%)
	Comprehension 2 – Module B	22 (11%)
Paper 3	Oral	50 (25%)
	Listening	20 (10%)

PSLE Chinese marks allocation

WHERE DO STUDENTS TYPICALLY LOSE MARKS?

In general, students lose marks in comprehension in three areas: 

1. Do not understand the passage because of too many unknown words
2. Can’t find the correct answer because due to lack of answering techniques (covered previously: Lower Primary, Upper Primary)
3. Unable to answer the last question that requires inference (e.g. 说一说你对….的看法)

While these three factors build on each other, Passage Understanding is the core requirement in doing well as all the answering techniques in the world won’t help if a child can barely comprehend the passage.

 

 

 

Common mistakes parents make

When it comes to reading passages, there are several common mistakes that many parents believe in, which can actually hinder a child’s progress in comprehension (弄巧成拙).

Mistake 1: If my child revises all the words in his textbook, he or she will be fine.

The reason why many children find comprehension hard is because unlike the earlier parts of Paper 2, comprehension will likely include vocabulary that isn’t directly taught in the textbook. Thus, even if your child fully understands all the keywords in the textbook, he or she is likely to run into unknown words.

Moreover, it’s common for students to only revise their current year textbooks, and disregard vocab from previous levels. It’s quite common to see P6 students forget lesser-used P4 words, which is a problem if they pop up in the passage.

Mistake 2: If my child can’t recognise all the words, he or she should focus on “guessing” heuristics like 有边读边，没边读中间

Guessing heuristics are useful when you are currently in the examination, and is sometimes required when encountering “out-of-syllabus” words. 

However, guessing works best when you already can read the majority of the passage and it’s just a few words that are unknown. The more words you don’t know, the less reliable guessing is. In addition, even if you guess a word correctly, chances are you won’t remember the word the next time you see it (akin to “giving your child a fish rather than teaching him or her how to fish”).

Rely on guesstimates when you have an exam tomorrow, but if you have four to five more months until the next exam, the far better solution is to actually build up your child’s vocabulary through reading (more on this below).

Mistake 3: Underestimating the importance of reading speed

Reading speed is one of the key factors in deciding if a child will do well in an exam.

As the authors of Mandarin Companion write, “people who study foreign language assessment understand that reading slowly is an enormous source of error for scoring well on tests. The slower the person reads, the more difficult it is for them to remember all of the things that are involved in a particular text. […] Reading speed and reading comprehension go hand in hand.”

Slow reading speed goes back to vocabulary – the more unknown or difficult to remember words there are, the more time your child needs to spend retrieving the words from memory.

I’ve personally experienced this: when given a Chinese article that is extremely difficult, reading becomes slow, and my comprehension becomes shallow as I’m still trying to remember the meaning of each word. 

IS READING IS A CATCH-22 SITUATION?

If you ask any Chinese teacher how to do better at comprehension, odds are they will tell you to read more books or practise more passages.

Reading naturally exposes your child to more vocabulary, revises forgotten vocab from previous levels and improves reading speed, solving all the problems listed above.

The problem many parents face is: we know reading is the solution, but do I convince kids to read Chinese. It’s a Catch-22 situation: the weaker your child’s vocab, the more he or she needs to read; but to read more, your child needs a decent vocab foundation.

So what can we parents do?

Bilingual reading apps

Over the years, there have been many different tools to help make reading Chinese easier – from amazing dictionaries like Pleco to reading pens.

However, what I find the most useful are actually bilingual reading apps, where readers can click on any Chinese word they don’t know to see the English translation. This is one of the most recommended ways for intermediate adult learners to practise reading, and for good reason.

When I read Chinese articles the “normal” way, whenever I see a word I’ve forgotten or don’t know, I just skip over it, meaning I never learn what it actually means. However, when I read using a reading app, because it’s so easy to just tap a new word to see what it means, I learn and revise a lot more, greatly improving my vocabulary.

I like using Readibu to read Wuxia novels, and MyLingua to read global news. They are free, and are great for intermediate to advanced learners.

However, while bilingual reading apps are amazing for adult learners, they aren’t as suitable for Singaporean children because:

1. The content tends to be geared towards motivated adult learners rather than “unmotivated” children
2. Vocabulary list is based off the HSK* 1-6 levels rather than the MOE syllabus
3. Many readers only show you the meaning of the word, but there’s no further quizzes or games to help you convert these unknown words into your vocab

 

Yet at the same time, there aren’t any Chinese reading apps that are catered for young Singaporean children, with age appropriate content based on the MOE syllabus.

*Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi, the standardised test of Chinese language proficiency for non-native speakers, tends to be for adults

VOCAB KING READING APP

That’s why we have created Vocab King Reading App to make practising comprehension easy and efficient (currently available for P3-P6). It takes the best features of reading apps, while making it suitable for your kids. 

Your child will be able to practise curated comprehension passages based on the MOE syllabus, while learning unknown words by simply clicking on them. Bonus: your child no longer needs to keep asking you when they run into a word they don’t know.

How it works?

1. Open up a comprehension passage on our Vocab King Reading app
2. Tap on unknown words to see what it means, and add important words to your wordlist
3. Revise via fun games and quizzes, while strengthening your vocabulary

Our comprehension passages are self-contained short-stories that include vocabulary from your child’s current level, previous levels as well as out-of-syllabus material. As your child reads through the passages, he or she naturally builds vocabulary and improves reading speed, both of which are key to succeeding in comprehension.

Meanwhile, as your child reads the passage, our intelligent AI system automatically tracks what words your child needs help with, and marks important words out for revision the next time he or she does vocab quizzes.

This three-step process helps your child solidify the key MOE vocab while also exposing him or her to additional phrases that will come in useful for harder sections like comprehension as well as oral and compo.

SIGN UP FOR 7-DAY FREE TRIAL

Vocab King is an online revision tool to master Chinese Vocab, and we use AI to target 100+ new or forgotten words every week. It only takes 10 mins of daily practice, and 88+% of students who practise regularly see significant improvement within two months.

Please see here for more information, or whatsapp +65-9820-7272 to create a free 7-day trial.