Preparing for Oral Exam

Dear Parents,

Your child will be having his/her Oral exam this Wednesday, 27 April. We have been practising the necessary skills in class. This post contains some tips for their preparation at home.

I will also return their books for preparation this week.

There are 2 parts to Oral -- Stimulus-based Conversation (10m) and Reading Aloud (6m). In the 5 minutes preparation time, start with passage first. Spend 3 minutes on it. The remaining time is for you to look carefully at the picture for SBC and think of the related topic and vocabulary you can speak about.

SBC (10m)

Pupils will usually be shown a picture and the examiner will ask three main questions (prompts).

General Tips:
1. The first question is solely based on the given picture. Use the picture to help you start the conversation. Think about the broader theme and the possible questions that will be asked. You may use descriptive vocabulary related to your five senses to improve your responses.

2. Try to share a similar experience to what is shown in the picture. If possible, give suggestions or opinions related to the topic. Example: with a picture of different types of food, pupils can think about their experience eating at a food court.

3. Speak clearly and confidently during the conversation. Speak in complete sentences as much as possible.

4. Try to maintain eye contact as much as possible.


Reading Aloud (6m)

1. In the 2-3 minutes preparation time, first scan the passage for potential difficult words.

2. Secondly, read again and pause where necessary (look out for commas and full stops). If the sentences are too long, please pause at appropriate places so your reading makes more sense.

3. Pronounce all words clearly, especially at the ending sounds. You may read at an appropriate pace, not too slowly or quickly.

4. Be expressive and try to vary your tone, especially where there is direct speech. Look out for the emotions the character is conveying, i.e. for someone who exclaimed, you may speak in a slightly louder and excited voice.


Hope this helps!


Sincerely,
Ms Cindy Chan

[Writing Tip] Avoid using boring words

Dear parents,

We have learnt in class that we can avoid using boring words in oral exams and composition writing Emotion words like 'happy' or 'sad' can be replaced with synonyms with different extent to accurately convey what we are feeling.

As a class, we listed out different words that can replace 'said' after working in clock buddies.



After that, pupils did a Word Cline in class (pair work). A word cline is a way of building vocabulary for them, by looking at words that all fit into a particular category, and arranging them in order of strength, or how strongly they represent the idea.

Some examples done by pupils:
Arranging by volume of voice (soft to loud)





Arranging by emotions:




I have found some synonym posters online to help your child expand on his/her vocabulary choice.

You may want to select a few words from each list for your child to learn, and consolidate learning through creating their own word clines. There is no right or wrong answers for word clines as they are based on the child's understanding of the words. However, it will be good if they understood the meaning of the words selected before attempting the word cline.

Poster credits to writeathome.com.



I will keep you posted with more resources and exam tips!


Sincerely,
Ms Cindy Chan