Students have their own ways of preparing for formal exams. For something as challenging as the PSLE exam, Primary students spend months and weeks preparing for all five subjects. However, due to some unforeseeable circumstances, your child may have to do with last-minute preparations.

Last-minute preparations for any exam are quite challenging but not impossible. The most prudent thing to do at this late stage is to avoid trying new strategies because of the lack of time.

Our blog shares some tested measures your child can apply to optimise their PSLE preparation.

5 Last-Minute Revision Tips for PSLE English

1. Sharpen exam skills

Last-minute cramming is not the time to force your child to memorise vocabulary or polish their grammatical skills. Instead, you can make them practice better time management by doing activities from practice books or question papers from question banks. This practice will help break up the revision into manageable chunks and prompt students to take up repetitive revision as a daily habit.

2. Read, read, and read again

Reading is not the same as memorising. Repetitive reading, even at this late stage, can significantly impact your child's PSLE English oral preparation, as long as they reflect on what they read. You can encourage a healthy, post-reading discussion to assess how the narrative is made interesting and how to give impressive answers for PSLE oral exam.

3. Retrieve those old compositions

Now's the time to retrieve your child's old compositions written over the past academic year. These compositions are treasure troves because they give you a direct glimpse into your child's strengths and weaknesses in their writing skills. Point out mistakes and allow them to explain how they can rectify those mistakes or how they can make their composition clearer and more exciting.

4. Practice with a purpose

With the exam date just around the corner, there is no time to waste revising the entire syllabus. What really helps in these last-minute revisions is focused and targeted practice. Target the tasks where your child is scoring less than average marks. Focussing on these weak areas is more likely to help them gain more marks in the final exam.

Also Read : Stop Making These Common Mistakes in PSLE English

5. Discuss with your child

Your ward is facing the brunt of PSLE oral exam pressure coupled with the lack of time and last-minute preparations. It will do good to have an honest discussion about what will work within the limited time frame, the tasks to target, and what to drop from the syllabus. An honest discussion will also help reduce your child's mental stress by focussing on unnecessary tasks.

Special Tips to Handle Papers 1 & 2 in PSLE English

Paper 1-Situational Writing

• Understand the four formats for situational writing.
• Understand and practice the informal and formal ways of writing letters.
• Practice the right way to sign off your letters.
• Remember the difference between a friendly and a formal letter.
• Remember that an email can be either formal or informal, depending on the context.
• Have in mind that a report is always a formal communication.
• Read all the questions carefully because they contain all the information that should be included in your answer.
• Do not miss out on the pointers given in the question.
• Remember the acronym PACT:

1. Purpose of the task.2. Audience whom you are writing it for.3. Context of the content (formal or informal)4. Tense used (past, present, or future)

Paper 2 Booklet A

Booklet A contains multiple-choice questions and is believed to be easier than Booklet B. However, your child needs to be extra careful about making careless mistakes that may cost some valuable marks.

Booklet A, Sections A, C, and F deal with Graphic Stimulus, Punctuation, and MCQ Comprehension, respectively. These sections are fairly easy, and with careful observation, your child should have no trouble reaping the 13 marks awarded collectively for these sections.

The duration of the PSLE English paper is one hour and 50 minutes, which is plenty of time to carefully go through the question paper, write the answers, and check before submitting the paper.

Do not forget to help your child practice questions with "either" "or" "neither" and "nor".

Three Tips to Follow Before Facing Your PSLE English Oral Exam

Whether it is a year's preparation or a week's hasty practice, your P6 ward is bound to feel anxious and tense on the PSLE English oral exam day. The anxiety is quite understandable because this exam requires your child to read and discuss fluently with the examiner.

Here are some simple tips to help your child deal with those last-minute jitters. Your child can:

1. Drink some warm or cold water to calm the nerves and moisten the throat, so their voice doesn't sound scratchy and hoarse while conversing with the examiner.

2. Take several deep, conscious, evenly-paced, smooth exhalations and inhalations to centre the energy, lower the heart rate, and focus the thoughts.

3. Create an energetic mindset by boosting their confidence with positive thoughts rather than psyching themselves with negative thoughts about the exam's outcome.

The Takeaway

The most important thing is to ensure your child feels as confident as possible on exam day, regardless of whether they have the academic skills to be more hands-on or not. Remember that last-minute revisions are not so bad. The trick here is to polish those areas where your child already shines instead of trying new strategies and tactics.

To help your child to do the last-minute revision for PSLE English, give them the StudySmart advantage. Our AI-powered app is an ideal learning platform to personalise your child's PSLE preparation.