4 Tips to Do Well For Your PSLE English Composition

1. Practice Good Planning and Brainstorming

• Before beginning to write, it’s essential for children to take a few moments to brainstorm and plan their composition. This can involve considering the plot, characters, setting, and the main conflict or problem.
• Creating an outline to organise their thoughts can help them maintain a logical flow in their composition.
• Encouraging your children to spend more time brainstorming before starting to write can be highly beneficial. Brainstorming is a crucial preparation step that can help them clarify their ideas, structure their thoughts and overcome writing obstacles. This process involves creativity and strategy, leading to more impactful and captivating writing.

2. Compile model compositions from top students

• Compiling model compositions from top students across different themes can be a valuable resource for your children seeking to improve their writing skills.
• Parents can reach out to schools, teachers, or educational institutions with a reputation for producing top-performing students in composition writing. You contact English teachers, writing instructors, or school administrators who may have access to compositions from high-achieving students.
• Once you’ve identified potential sources, seek permission from the students and their parents or guardians to use their compositions as models.
• You and your children can take time to analyze the writing style, vocabulary, organization, and creativity demonstrated in each piece. By offering insightful annotations and explanations, you can help your child better understand the writing techniques used by high-achieving students and inspire them to improve their own writing skills.

3. Practice Writing Regularly and broaden your child’s vocabulary through reading

• After good planning and referring to sample writings of excellent students, it’s time to practice! The more your children write, the better they’ll become.
• You can tell your children to try to write short stories, journal entries, or essays on various topics to develop writing skills. Your children can ask their teachers or peers to read their compositions and provide feedback.
• Spend more time reading: Reading books, newspapers, and magazines exposes your children to different writing styles, vocabulary, and ideas. This can improve their writing skills and expand their knowledge.

4. Edit and Proofread

Editing and proofreading are essential, so children need to pay attention to their writing process. There are some helpful tips on adjusting sentences to get higher scores in PSLE composition as follows:

• Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.
• Make sure the composition has a strong opening and a memorable closing statement.
   – Your children can begin the composition with a compelling hook that captures the reader’s attention and piques their interest. It could be a thought-provoking question, a vivid description, a surprising fact, or a powerful statement.
   – Then, the writing ends with a sentence or image that leaves a strong emotional or intellectual impact on the reader. This could be a moral lesson, a surprising twist, a reflection, or a powerful message.
• Use a variety of vocabulary to make your composition more interesting, avoid using repetitive words.
• Pay attention to sentence structure:
   – Use a mix of simple and complex sentences to add depth to the writing. For example:
      + Simple sentences: “The sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky” and “Children played joyfully in the park”.
      + Complex and simple sentences mixed: “As the sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky, casting its warm embrace upon the world, the day promised to be a delightful one. Children played joyfully in the park.”
   – Instead of starting sentences with a pronoun like ‘I’ or ‘he’, swap it with the “-ing” form of the verb you would use after it. For example: Instead of “I sat by the window and I watched the rain pour down.”, write “Sitting by the window, I watched the rain pour down.”
• Use of vivid descriptions for stronger details:
   – Instead of simply stating that the garden was beautiful in the morning, a more vivid description can be created by writing, “As the first rays of the sun stretched across the garden, it bloomed with vibrant colours.”