This article was contributed by The Learning Lab’s Lead Subject Head of English, Juliana Cheong. Having taught English at The Learning Lab for close to ten years, she has seen multiple batches of Primary 6 students through their PSLE examinations. Through her years of teaching, she has seen first-hand the common mistakes made by students and is familiar with how students can avoid these common pitfalls. In this article, Juliana shares 5 tips on how your child can excel in Situational Writing.
As the new academic year approaches, some students will be moving to P5 and encountering the Situational Writing component for the first time while students entering their PSLE year will be working to perfect their score for it. What students may not realise is that the 15 marks awarded in Situational Writing during the PSLE are there for their taking if they are meticulous with details and mindful enough of their tone and context.
For the unversed, in the Situational Writing component, students are given a context and a visual stimulus, and they are expected to write a response to it. Some text types that may be tested in Situational Writing include letters, reports and emails.
Let’s get into how students should tackle this exam component that is considered one of the low-hanging fruits when it comes to doing well for the English examination.
Ensure that all the key information that answers the question is included in your final work and presented clearly by:
1) Stating the purpose of the piece you are writing
- Are you writing to report your schoolmates’ misbehaviour to your principal? Are you inviting your cousin to join you at a school fair?
- While it’s not compulsory to state the purpose at the start of the letter, you’re highly encouraged to do so in case you eventually forget to include it!
2) Identifying the context and to whom the letter, email or report will be addressed
- This determines if it is a formal or informal setting which influences the tone of the piece you are writing.
- If the name or position of the recipient is given, you have to ensure that you use it in your letter when addressing the recipient.
3) Understanding your identity
- Always keep an eye out for who you are writing as. If the instruction states ‘Imagine you are the boy in the picture’, check the instructions and visual stimulus properly to see if the name is provided. If not, come up with one. Is it a formal letter? If so, you will also have to come up with his last name too.
For formal letters: Use “Yours sincerely” if you know the recipient’s name and use “Yours faithfully” if you do not know the name of the person you are writing to.
Another tip: make sure that the ‘s’ and ‘f’ in ‘sincerely’ and ‘faithfully’ respectively are not capitalised!
For informal letters: Use more personal sign-offs like ‘Best regards’ as you are writing to someone you know well.
· Do not simply memorise past questions and answers. You should never make assumptions about what the question is asking.
· Stay focused and take the time to re-read the questions when they have multiple scenarios or are more complicated.
· Try to rephrase or extract the problem mentioned in the question to understand it.
Once you have read the instructions, move on to the content points. Keep your eyes peeled as you scour the bullet points you must address – there should always be 6 content points. While they might only display 5 bullet points, an extra content point is hidden amongst them.
How do you ensure that you have all 6 content points in your letter?
1) Label the 6 content points you must address and highlight the keywords for each point.
2) Match the details in the visual stimulus to these points. Remember to also number each point once you’ve identified it in the visual stimulus so that you can check that you’ve found the necessary information for each point.
3) Bonus: Some points need to be inferred and are not given directly in the passage. For example, content points such as ‘How did she feel as a result of the incident?’ may require students to look at the events as a whole and come up with a feeling like disappointed or angry.
4) Once you’ve completed your letter, read through it and check that all 6 content points have been clearly addressed.
· Before starting on the exam paper, create a consolidated and personalised formula sheet by noting down all the key formulas, especially the complex ones.
· Rewrite the formulas next to a specific question if necessary.
· Ensuring clarity from the start bolsters your confidence in tackling tough questions while resolving any lingering doubts.
Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation (GSP) errors will cost you precious marks in the exam. Check your work twice to ensure you do not commit this mistake.
Another important tip: Look out for this other error – Phrasing errors. In your haste, you might have missed out a word or repeated a word twice in a sentence! Look out for sentences that are overly lengthy as there might errors in the sentence structure.
No exclamation marks or greetings like ‘How are you?’ should be used for formal writing but you must include a warm greeting in the first liner of your informal writing. In your call-to-action at the end, ensure that you do not demand that your recipient take action. Instead, you can politely suggest they look into the matter if you are writing to complain about bad service, for instance. Writing a good call-to-action is usually something students struggle with and this is something that our TLL Situational Writing lessons will address.
In the PSLE, students are given 1h 10 min (70 min) for Paper 1, which consists of Situational Writing (15 marks) and Continuous Writing (40 marks). Keeping that in mind, students should ideally allocate approximately 20 minutes to the Situational Writing portion – 5 minutes to do the groundwork, 10 minutes to write the actual letter and 5 minutes to check.
For the next section of the exam that is on Continuous Writing, students can refer to our guide on how to write an impressive composition here.
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