Are you preparing for PSLE Chinese oral?
If you are, it might be a good idea to try out this primary 6 PSLE Chinese oral practice passage that went viral in 2020.
Yes, I couldn’t believe that a Chinese oral passage can go viral too when I heard about it (usually it’s the PSLE math questions that gets all the attention…). Anyway, it got me curious too, so I went to dig deeper.
Apparently, there was this person who posted a Primary 6 Chinese oral passage practice which seems like it’s from one of the primary school assessment books. He commented on his “P6 oral exam experience” and suddenly, people started to tag their family and friends to test their Chinese proficiency turned it viral.
This is the Chinese oral practice passage:
Source: Facebook post
In case you need some help deciphering this Chinese oral passage, here’s the English translation by yours truly:
Franklin is one of America’s greatest scientist and politician in US.
There is this farmer on the farm that admires him a lot.
Hence, he decides to pay him a visit.
Before departing, the farmer asks Franklin to gift him with some words of wisdom.
And so, Franklin wrote on a piece of paper “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”
The farmer goes home happily.
Upon reaching home, the farmer saw that his family had harvested their wheat for the day.
However, they did not move the wheat into their house.
His family said, “We’ve been working for more than 10 hours, and we’re very tired.”
The farmer recalled the words that Franklin wrote and echoed what Franklin said to his family.
There was a thunderstorm that night.
The farmer was glad that they have moved the wheat indoors.
What’s the real level of difficultly for this P6 Chinese oral practice passage?
That was the first question that popped up in my mind after reading this whole chunk and I’m sure you’re as curious too.
Having vetted many oral exam passages in school, I decided to vet this according to the schools’ standard and to find out what’s the real difficulty level of this Chinese oral passage (I know…职业病 zhí yè bìng at work!)
I’m going to analyse this entire passage according to what an average Primary 6 kid might know.
1. Word difficulty of this oral passage
Let’s start with word difficulty.
Afterall, this is what determines your oral fluency. The more Chinese characters you have problems recognising, the more difficultly you’ll have reading the whole passage in Chinese.
This is the most fundamental thing to remember before you start thinking about how to read the passage expressively.
I’m not going to judge this based on what the average Singaporean adult can recognise because many would have lost touch with these Chinese characters over time.
So imagine your 12-year-old self in Primary 6. How many Chinese words will you have trouble with?
In terms of recognizing the Chinese characters in this passage, I’m guessing that some weaker students in Primary 6 is going to have trouble reading the characters 兰 (lán), 克(kè), 政(zhèng), 仰(yǎng), 暮(mù), 赠(zèng), 毕(bì), 麦(mài) and 割(gē). 9 difficult words.
The usual number of difficult words that we have in school is usually 1 to 2. ^^”
Verdict: Word difficulty – Hard
2. Understanding this Chinese passage
Next, let’s look at whether a Primary 6 can understand this Chinese oral passage. Being able to understand what you read makes it easier for you to chunk words together and read them fluently.
Looking at the Chinese characters, it then becomes very important for a student to be able to tell that the four words 富兰克林 go together because it’s a name of a person, 政治家 is a job and 今日事今日毕 is an idiom.
These words have to be read together to make sense. Otherwise, it’s going to sound really unnatural and affect your pausing.
Verdict: Understanding – Medium
3. Any tricky pronunciation in this Chinese oral passage?
Yes. In fact, 2 of them – 村 and 赠.
These characters are commonly misread by many primary school students. The hanyu pinyin of 村 is cun4 instead of chun4 while the hanyu pinyin for 赠 is zeng4 instead of zheng4.
These differences in pronunciations are really subtle but they affect the accuracy of your pronunciation.
Verdict: Tricky pronunciation – Medium
PSLE Chinese oral practice notes using this oral passage as sample
Since I suggested to use this Primary 6 oral passage as a PSLE Chinese oral practice, I’ve highlighted the important parts to take note of when you are practising
Try reading this again to see if you’ve improved from the first time.
富兰克林是美国历史上一位伟大的科学家和政治家。
住在农村里的一个农夫非常仰暮他的大名。于是，农夫决定去拜访他。
道别时，农夫要求富兰克林赠送他几个字。因此，他在纸上写下“今日事今日毕”。
农夫兴高采烈地回家了。
到家后，农夫看见他的家人已经把麦割好，却没有把麦搬进家里。
家人说: “我们已经工作了十多十小时，很累了。”
农夫想起富兰克林写给他的那些字，便对家人说: “不可以! 今日事今日毕! ”
就在那天晚上，下起了倾盆大雨。
农夫很庆幸麦已搬进了家里。
How many marks would you give yourself out of 20 if this passage appeared in your Primary 6 oral exam?
Tips to score better at PSLE Oral Chinese
As some of you might have already know, the PSLE Oral component takes up 25% of the entire PSLE Chinese exam in Primary 6.
Reading the oral passage well will help you secure the 20 marks easily so that you can focus more effort on the harder video description component.
If you are looking for some more PSLE Chinese oral reading passages sample, your best source is to grab a copy of the past year PSLE Chinese booklet from your school bookshop.
Aiming to get a perfect score for reading the passage? Check out this post where I share more simple tips to help you prepare for your Chinese oral exam and what to do when you are taking the actual examination.
