A) Why you need to score in Oral?
Because Oral is 25% of the Whole Paper! and its the one that uses your mouth and mind to score.
B) What is the PSLE Chinese oral new format? (video oral)
PSLE Chinese new oral format is summarized as such
“Students will be given 10 minutes to prepare – they will have to plan their time to review both the reading passage (on computer screen), and the video for oral within that time frame.
Upon entering the exam room, they will then proceed to read the passage on screen, and watch the video once.
Subsequently, the examiner will ask 3 guiding questions related to the theme in the video –
a) A question about the content of the video – what happened, what did you observe? For example, Tell me about an event related to “helpfulness” that you have seen in the video.
b) The student’s thoughts/views/comments related to the theme, what did you learn? e.g. What helpful deed have you done for your friend and what did you learn?
c) To share a similar/relevant experience, or to further extend the theme to school, Family or community. e.g. How do you think the school should encourage pupils to care for each other?”
d) Other then the guiding questions, students need to answer related questions as the examiners guide the students in answering those questions. Those extra questions are there to help examiners correctly assess the students ability.
(Extra questions are used to assess pupils’ ability and will not penalize the pupil.)
C) What is difference between the old and new format?
The old format focuses more on locations and their related activities and students need to know names of common things, common activities and a lot of action words. (note: What Primary 1-3 has been teaching is very good for the old format.)
Now the new format changed its focus: The content(topic) of the exam is very important now as your child need to know the topics by heart.
1) Hobbies like reading, Habits like helpful and study.
2) Go Green, earth hour, recycling, reuse, Keep our environments clean etc
3) Traffic safety, alertness in emergence exercises/fire drill.
4) Healthy eating and living, Sports and exercise.
5) Helping the needy, and giving seats to the most needy people etc
6) Be independence like learn to cook, organizing school bags etc.
7) Values such as Responsibility, hardworking, Caring could be a topic too.
D) Resources:-
a) There are several books with videos so that you can practice with your child, they are quite X tho.
b) Get the apps for PSLE Chinese Oral Exam Guide (口试精编(小学)) it has some free video for practice.
https://itunes.apple.com/sg/app/psle-chinese-oral-exam-guide/id1180488110?mt=8
c) School often gives out Oral booklets from primary 4 to 6, if you collected them then they can be helpful.
d) I personally find the guide book need to have the full A* script to be useful for most students. mind map ones benefited only those who are trained in it.
e) some useful sites are listed below
https://zbschools.sg/
https://www.zaobao.com.sg/keywords/da-mu-zhi-0
E) Oral Recitation
As for Oral Recitation, Please make sure your child read out loud one paragraph daily in Chinese as a practice.
Use smartphone to record so that parents can check.
Before their examinations, Ask them to read out the passages from PSLE booklet or PSLE oral books within 30 seconds to 45 seconds without any hesitation/stops at all. This is to train 通顺朗读能力 fluency. (Yes its 250 words in 30-45 seconds.)
Just before exams, memorized the topical scripts for question 2 and 3. Bring all oral notes and booklet to exam waiting room.
Now for some entertainment, lets hear some interesting names.
(Listen more will help too.)
And lastly good luck and be polite.
Note check out SEAB guide on what to do in PSLE Oral examinations.
https://www.seab.gov.sg/content/e-Oral%20Examination%20Guide%20for%20Candidate%20PSLE/story_html5.html