Preparation for Written Expression Exam

Dear all,

Just a reminder that the Written Expression exam is on
7th October 2008, Tuesday.

Please revise from:

• Let's Create book (Composition book) - Especially on the stories 'A Brave Knight', 'Rescuing a Lost Dog' and 'A Greedy Boy'
• Story on 'Grandfather playing board games and fainted' (Written on paper)
• Story on 'Skipping P.E lessons by lying and being punished' (Written on paper)
• Spelling Lists (especially Term 4 where there are idioms)
• Specialist Vocabulary Lists (given out today)

For the exercises written on paper, I've marked them and written comments at the bottom of each piece of writing. I've returned your child both these writings today (Unless your child has not handed in their work to me)

Please take time to go through your child's writing with him/her and reiterate the points I've written for him/her. After which, kindly file in their red file.

I've also prepared good sample writings from 2 pupils in the class as well as compiled a list of common mistakes made during their writings. Take time to read these as well as it would help them avoid these mistakes.

I will list some of the common mistakes below:

• Lack of paragraphs/ Paragraphs are missing
• Past tenses were not used or pupils do not know the correct spelling of the words. For instance, the past tense of ‘wake’ is ‘woke’ and NOT ‘woked’. The past tense of ‘bring’ is ‘brought’ and NOT ‘brang’.
• Setting of the story is not established although it is in their writing plan.
• ‘Body’ of the story is lacking. Too little information
• Sequence of story is jumbled
• Ending was not clear. Conclusion? Morale? Lesson learnt?
• Weak sentence structures
• Lack of good vocabulary words
• Spelling errors for words given in the helping box.
• Inconsistent characters. In the beginning, pupil can refer to a name, and in the middle and the end, they refer to ‘I’.
• Stories did not follow the writing plan, hence there is no structure.
• Pupils started sentences with ‘But’, ‘So’, and ‘And’. This is incorrect.
• Some pupils like to use dialogues/conversations in the story. This is a refreshing idea. However, if they are unsure of the punctuation, dialogues are discouraged, as they make the sentence structures confusing and weak.
• Sentences are incomplete. Pupils are reminded to read their writing many times to ensure their story flows and make sense.

In short, there are some important things to note when writing a recount:

• Use past tenses
• Use of paragraphs to separate introduction, body and ending
• Setting is important for introduction
• Description of characters would make the story more interesting
• Use of good vocabulary words, phrases and idioms (where suitable)
• Sequence of events
• Elaboration of events

Thank you for reading through this lengthy entry. May the children rise up to the occasion =)