Many students get extremely nervous when faced with the PSLE oral. In this blog post, we will share three essential tips that will help you ace the oral test. So, relax, take a deep breath, and let’s get started!
Many students worry a lot about the oral segment – after all, it is 25% of the total score (more than compo and comprehension), and many find it the hardest since they don’t speak any Chinese at home.
But actually, it can actually be the easiest of the three killer sections to score well on, and can even help to compensate for lower scores on Paper 1 and Paper 2.
Tip 1: Practice reading aloud daily, and be mindful of words with different pronunciations (多音字)
The first section of the oral test is Readaloud (20 / 50 marks), and most are more comfortable with this section. However, there are two key parts that can trip up students: unknown words and words with multiple pronunciations (多音字).
If you encounter words that you really cannot remember, try to guess by pronouncing in a way that sounds similar or smoothly skip over it. Be sure to not pause at the unknown word while reading!
The other area that trips students up is 多音字. For example, “背” can be pronounced as bēi in the phrase “背书包” (to carry a backpack) or “bèi” in the phrase “背后” (behind).
We advise students to flip to the end of the P6B textbook, which contains a list of the common 多音字. Make sure you are familiar with how the pronunciation of these words change depending on the context.
Lastly, this might sound obvious, but with just a few more days to go, it’s incredibly important to practise reading the textbook and passages aloud.
While some would recommend students record and playback their audio, we don’t think this is the most effective approach because often a child who mispronounces a word wouldn’t know that from replaying his or her recording.
Instead, we recommend one of the following:
- Have someone (parent, adult, elder sibling) who is able to provide immediate feedback on pronunciation present
- Practise sample passages that have a pre-recorded model answer so you child can listen to the answer and compare the difference
- Use VocabKing’s Speech AI engine to get immediate pronunciation feedback
Tip 2: Use the narrated verse (旁白) to get the topic gist and predict questions
The video conversation/e-oral is often the most difficult part of the PSLE Chinese oral test for students, which is why the next two tips are focused on it.
You will be given ten minutes before the oral exam to review the read-aloud passage and watch the video, and when watching the video, it’s extremely important to listen carefully to the narration (旁白), which summarises the video’s main theme and help you predict potential questions.
The importance of predicting questions
It’s extremely difficult for anyone, much less a 12 year old, to come up with a coherent free-response answer in Chinese on the fly.
However, it’s much easier once we realise the three questions tend to revolve around the narration and follow a similar pattern. Thus we can predict potential questions and mentally go-through rough bullet points should they be tested, during the 10 mins we are given to prepare and during the waiting period.
- Question 1 will be to describe a detail or summarise the video
- Question 2 is usually about your own experience with the topic
- Question 3 typically asks the student to provide suggestions about the topic, usually from the perspective of the school or society
Case Study:
One of the PSLE Chinese oral topics in 2022 was on the topic of helping others, and the narration (旁白) is below.
Pay special attention to words and phrases that are repeated or are key to the sentence, as they are likely to arise in questions or describe the central thrust of the video.
Based on the narration above, we can guess that the questions will most likely be about proactively helping others in need, in our daily lives.
Question 1
As mentioned, the first question is about describing a detail or summarising the video. From the narration, we know that the key theme is “helping others”, so we can pay particular attention to the segments of the video that involve helping others.
The actual question was “在录像中，你看到一件吸引你注意的事了吗？说一说你看到什么？”.
Note that it’s very common to not be able to remember all the Chinese vocab for the objects in the video. Try your best to recall them, but if you cannot, do not panic and simply substitute them with a generic term that you know.
Remember that the video description question is just one of three free-response questions, and the object you cannot remember is just one part of that question. Staying calm is critical to doing well in the rest of the questions.
Question 2
Since the second question is about our own experience and the topic is about helping others, we can predict that we could be tested on “how we help others in need in our daily lives”.
That means that we can prepare a few bullet points on what to say in case it is actually tested.
The actual question was “你曾经帮助过别人吗？说一说你的经历。”, which is extremely close to our guess.
Note that if you do not have any personal experience on the topic, you can talk about a time when you saw someone else deal with a similar situation or use your imagination to come up with a creative solution.
The most important thing is to show that you are able to think critically about the situation, and even if you do not have any personal experience, you can still give a thoughtful and informative answer.
Question 3
The last question is often the hardest to predict – it tends to ask the student to provide suggestions about the topic, usually from the perspective of the school or society, but it has the most leeway.
Our suggestion is if the video showcased positive values that the society typically wants to adhere to (e.g. saving the environment, helping the needy), think about ways you, the school and society could encourage people to uphold these values.
Conversely, if the video showcased a child engaging in bad behaviour (e.g. excessive usage of tablets instead of studying, littering), think about ways you, the school and society could encourage NOT to do them.
The actual question was “你觉得学校应该怎样鼓励同学们去帮助别人？”.
The final question is often the hardest because it can be hard for students to come up with suggestions, especially if it’s an unfamiliar topic. That’s why it’s important to practise topics and templated phrases.
Tip 3: Practice common topics and situations
Practising common topics and situations that may be covered in the PSLE Chinese oral test helps students feel more confident and prepared.
Disclaimer: if you have 3-6 months to prepare, we recommend reading news and having informed discussions on sociomoral topics. But if you only have 7 days, it’s time for more exam specific preparation.
Topic Picking
While it is impossible to know exactly which topic will be covered in the PSLE Chinese oral test, there is a pool of commonly tested topics, such as environmental protection (环保), caring for others (关爱), and helping others (帮助他人), etc.
Most primary schools will provide a list of topics for you to practice. When revising, don’t focus only on good vocab (好词佳句) and model answers, but also spend time on understanding the “content” by writing bullet points.
From experience, many students stumble on the exam not just because of vocab but because they don’t know what to say.
Templated phrases
Templated phrases are general phrases that apply to a wide variety of situations (because you might always end up with an esoteric topic that you didn’t prepare for).
For instance, consider the following template that can be used if the question is about “provide suggestions on what can the school do to <promote a positive value>” and you are running out of ideas.
学校可以举办一个设计海报比赛，主题是_______。比赛可以是小组的形式，或者年级的形式，或者班级的形式。我相信这样的比赛可以让学生_______。
学校可以举办一个设计海报比赛，主题是环境保护。 比赛可以是小组的形式，或者年级的形式，或者班级的形式。我相信这样的比赛可以让学生养成良好的环保意识，为环保尽一份力。
Summary
We hope this blog post has been helpful for those of you who are preparing for the PSLE Chinese oral test. We wish you all the best in your exams, and we know you will do great!
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