The PSLE English Oral exams will be held on 13 and 14 August 2025. Some parents have asked me what they can do to help their child in this area. With the changes in the PSLE, there is a higher weightage now for the Oral exam. Before 2024, the Oral exam carried 30 marks (10 for Read Aloud and 15 for Stimulus-Based Conversation). From 2024, Oral is now 40 marks (15 for Read Aloud and 25 for Stimulus-Based Conversation).
I’ve noticed that since Covid19, more primary school students have become rather self-conscious and these students prefer to hide behind their masks when possible. Needless to say, their Oral exam is often affected due to lack of self confidence. Besides this group of students, there are also many students who speak monotonously or do not make the ending sounds of words (out of habit).
There are also students who struggle with articulation. That means they can’t coordinate their lips, tongue, teeth, palate and lungs to produce certain sounds.
I believe some students struggle to articulate words well when English is not spoken at home and their school teachers were masked up during the pandemic. I also believe more students flunk their Oral exams post-Covid, then pre-Covid.
One word that many local students mispronounce is “sew”. Firstly, who sews these days? So it is seldom used in their daily conversations yet the word “sew” appears in Comprehension and Read Aloud text and the poor child will often say “siu” instead.
To prepare my students for the Read Aloud, I audio record them individually, reading a passage. I then play it back for the student to hear. They usually laugh at themselves when they realise how flat or rushed or unclear they sound. Since monotony is the main problem, they can see the correlation of their monotony with the sound waves that is displayed on the screen (mobile phone) along with the audio playback. We will then practice clause by clause to correct their intonation, stresses, expressions and ending sounds. Then, we do a few recordings until the student is happy with his/her end result. My motto when it comes to their exams is they “own” it and they stop practising when they are satisfied with their outcome . Only then will a confident child emerge. ( Note for parents: it is the confidence of the child that wins the hearts and marks of the Oral examiners.
When I had been barely into a year of teaching, I was dispatched to another school as a PSLE oral examiner and thankfully, partnered with a very senior, experienced teacher. One student in particular stood out for me because he sat before us “reading” a passage that was not the passage in front of him. I was dumfounded! He had clearly memorised something and he regurgitated it so confidently and fluently! The senior teacher explained to me that the student probably had a severe form of dyslexia and we should pass him because he had taken the effort to memorise a passage from somewhere. I’m not saying that a P6 kid should do what that boy did because every student is different and the examiners will meet each student where s/he is. I happened to meet that p6 boy some years later in a non-profit youth outreach. I remembered him for his outstanding performance. He remembered me for passing him! And till this day, that boy now a man can barely read but he got through school to the best he could.
Below the calendar, I have attached an audio recording of a former P6 student whom I had audio recorded a few times. This is the final product she was satisfied with and she went on to score full marks in Read Aloud for her Preliminary Oral Exams. 15/15 is possible but importantly, read loudly, clearly with confidence and at the end, SMILE and make eye contact with the Oral examiners. YOU GOT THIS!
Miss Khong's English Class Blog 