Rishisusee:

Hi Mummies My DD will be in Sec 1 next year and I would like to get suggestion from you that What type of English books she has to read ? Please help me by giving name of few books for english Practice


TIA

SoWoW:

mummies who gotta the tutor's contact number from hopeful4future, how is the tutor?

hopeful4future:

Hello Huang, Thought i should share my experience... My nephew also face the same problem when he entered sec school as its really a big difference from primary school. He got in touch with a tutor who taught him the right methods and showed some improvement.

Actually for languages he should also read up a lot. Does your son read? Maybe its the tutor's way of teaching. The tutor my nephew had gave him a lot of practices and had good tips on essay writing. She focus on forming his ideas and gave him reading materials to supplement. She is quite effective, and said its impt cos in JC they will have general paper. i can pm you the contact for her if you want.

Maybe your son should try to read more, it will help for languages.. How is he doing in mother tongue?

I'm really quite afraid of my kids entering secondary school cos of the big jump, so i'm trying to do all i can to secure their foundation in languages now :lol: so far for english they are ok but their mandarin grades are very poor!

Cheers and good luck

p.s. i pm-ed you this earlier, but realise i should post it up


~We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.

daisyt:

Huang:

Hi there,

Need suggestion on how to help my boy's english. He is doing pretty badly in school (in secondary 2 now).
He is failing both sections and in the composition section all the teacher's comments revolve around fair effort or you should work on your grammar. What could be wrong? I have went to tutors that have said that he has this or that problem... However, as we change the tutors, the problem changes too.
What should I do?

Hi Huang, since he is already in Sec 2, I guess he has to put in more effort to sort things right. Apart from reading those Nat Geo, Asia Geo, Readers Digest as suggested by a few parents here, he has to go a bit further. My suggestion is every day, choose an article from these magazines, read, identify the difficult words, find the meanings, make sentences from the difficult words, write a review on the article (reader's review). He can also get a small notebook to write down all the difficult words he has encountered and revise when he has free time. He can also do the above for newspaper articles. You can also get him those model essays to read and do the above. My girl was exposed to this type of teaching when in P6 and now in Sec 1.

What are the methods the tutors used to make him improve ? Simply doing assessment books for languages, is not helping much.

What are the syllabus taught in your son's school for English ? What are types of work he does in school and the type of homework he is doing at home ?

Huang:

Hi there,

Need suggestion on how to help my boy's english. He is doing pretty badly in school (in secondary 2 now).
He is failing both sections and in the composition section all the teacher's comments revolve around fair effort or you should work on your grammar. What could be wrong? I have went to tutors that have said that he has this or that problem... However, as we change the tutors, the problem changes too.
What should I do?

mathsparks:

schellen, readers' digest is ok for upp pri. son looks forward eagerly each mth to the new copy and he reads them from cover to cover. Anyway, if every other kid orders thru school, it's hard to say no to yr child, right?...in the rare chance that the teacher may want to discuss some topics in class..though that hasnt happen yet in my son's class. Also, some compre are excerpts from the digest too.

schellen:

I can't stand it when I encounter students who read Readers' Digest because they were told to subscribe so they do it only in school. When they choose, these students tend to choose only certain light and simple novels. (For example, only reading romance and horror stories or reading only works by 1 or 2 authors.) Once they get used to reading such genres and styles, their reading habits become hard to break when they reach upper secondary levels.

I'm not saying that they should read the original, full length publications but they should at least try the abridged versions first before writing them off completely. Readers' Digest excerpts are too short and not all of them are taken from publications that are considered \"high brow\" and \"stuffy\". They should not rely only on excerpts when asked to expand their reading repertoire.

mrswongtuition:

Reader's Digest is good for students who do not have the habit of reading and want to pick it up. It has shorts bits of comedy snips/interesting bits spread out in the magazine. Good to start them off with Reader's Digest instead of the actual publication (which might turn them off due to it's length).


Reading actual publications will be more for upper secondary kids.

Don't kill their interest. Build it!

mathsparks:

Just for reference:


some recommended mags for students, though I'm sure there're others. Pls add to list.

P1-3 - discovery box
P4-6 - readers' digest
S1-2 - can't remb
S3-4 -nat geog
J1-2 - time

schellen:

Don't just stick to a particular genre or style of writing as your writing will suffer.

schellen:

Yes, reading helps a lot. I started reading to DD1 when she was 1yo but I regretted it since I could've started even earlier. (She's now 7 and enjoying chapter books in paperback format.) I also got her a variety of books from different genres, brought her to the library (my sis signed her up when she was a baby) and sashimi and I are avid readers too. We read to her every night before bedtime and we still do. Don't just stick to a particular genre or style of writing as your writing will suffer. And please, don't tell me that it is enough to read only Readers' Digest; it is only a \"digest\" so if you like what you read in there, go find the actual publication the excerpt is from and read it!