chr45

Oral Examiners Remarks (2007)

For reading, students who did not score well are those who have weak articulation and monotonous reading. Students also need to aritculate the end-consonants clearly otherwise clarity is compromised. Students who read expressively (faster or slower, louder or slower ) as based on the emotions reflected by the characters tend to score better than those who don't even attempt at all.

 

For picture discussion, students who scored for today's picture discussion (based on a group of students handling parcels of toys) are those who could develop their thoughts. What I mean is that these are the students who gave themselves more option / room to develop their interpretation by saying that the children were wrapping presents for charitable organisations as versus those that said that the children were receiving presents. There is a whole lot of ideas that were spun off based on general themes such as giving, building of positive social values, helping others who are less fortunate. Of course, students cannot just mention these things and then that's it... they need to develop their ideas further with examples and reasons as to why they make the link / connection. 

 

For conversation, the better students distinguish themselves by being able to back up their stand with reasons and elaborations based on real-life examples and personal responses. Students when responding to questions that require them to "Agree" or "Disagree" need to be totally consistent in their approach. Students who develop their arguments counter to their initial response were deemed as making disjointed responses and were marked down. Simply put, if students agree to a particular statement, then make arguments as to why they agree. Their arguments must correspond to their stand.

 

In general, we mark down on candidates who use Singlish or broken English such as "He didn't bought..." so students need to be reminded to use standard English at all time for the 3 sections.

 

(Mdm Angel Lai, 13 Aug 2007)

 

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