cascada:MXYMum:
Being Autistic, my son is very poor at comprehension as most of them are very literal in interpretation and lack social understanding. Hence, he has problems understanding the subtle meanings of passages, especially for Chinese.
The P6 this year is in the pilot programme with the new Chinese syllabus with strong emphasis on understanding (comprehension) and oral. HCL is practically consisted of comprehension passages only, which was the reason he didn't do well. He did well with the old syllabus of which recognition of words were emphasized.
My son's strength is in memorizing things, as he has excellent memory. His sister is much better in Chinese (she's good with writing and comprehension) but cannot memorize things as well.
Hmm ... I really need to think hard when doing school selection.
Thanks for all the information!
Hi MXYMum, I kpo here a bit.
Did u read today's ST Forum. A reader wrote that he was able to get his 2nd child exempted from PSLE CL due to medical condition. Would this exemption help your boy?
I know of someone who was exempted from PSLE CL (not sure what was the reason they gave possibly returning student from overseas), so his t-score was calculated based on 3 subjects. During S1 posting, he was assigned to a more English-focused IP school but he appealed successfully and is now in HCI. I was quite shock to hear that HCI accepted him cos HCI also has very high requirement for HCL. As he didn't take PSLE CL, really not sure how HCI ascertain his CL ability since he also didn't take any CL admission test administered by HCI too.
My understanding was that the PSLE T-Score for those exempted from CL is actually lower, which is why I didn't apply for it. Moreoever, MOE does not grant exemption for all SN kids. If the kid is failing Chinese in school, the school can write in to apply for exemption.
My son was getting A's for Chinese from P1 to P4, he started getting B's from P5 onwards. In fact, he was selected by the school to do HCL last year but was requested to drop HCL when his grades dropped to B.
Anyway, he wants to appear as 'normal' as possible just like his peers, without any special treatment. Thus, he does everything just like the other kids. Just want to keep him happy.
Regardless, it's too late to do anything now.