PSLE Chinese Comprehension: Can You Copy From the Passage?

Parents who grew up with English comprehension know the rule about lifting: copy a sentence straight from the passage and the mark is gone. Many children carry the same rule into Chinese, and it costs them marks in two opposite ways. Some refuse to use the passage at all and write their own sentence, which drifts from the meaning. Others copy the whole paragraph near the answer and hope the marker finds the point. In PSLE Chinese the rule is only partly true, and which part depends on what the question asks.

Three kinds of question

The last section of Paper 2, Comprehension 2, has two passages. The second is a narrative of a little over a thousand characters with seven open-ended questions. Sorted by whether the passage can be used, they fall into three kinds.

Word-finding questions: copying is the task

There are usually two of these, at 2 marks each. The question gives a meaning and asks for the word in the passage that expresses it. If the passage says the brother was 气得火冒三丈 (so angry that he exploded) and the question asks for the word meaning "extremely angry", the answer is 火冒三丈, copied exactly.

• Copy only the word. Writing 气得火冒三丈 adds characters that make the answer inexact.
• Copy character by character, looking at the passage. A wrongly written character can cost the marks.
• If the word will not turn up, go back to the meaning in the question and find where the passage says the same thing. The word is almost always within a sentence or two.

Fact questions: use the passage, but edit it

Why, how and what-did-he-do questions have their answers written in the passage. Answering in the passage's words is fine; the marker is checking whether the key points are there. The trouble is copying whole sentences. An example:

Passage: 我每天放学后都到组屋楼下的篮球场练投篮。下个月就要参加校队选拔了，上一次我就是因为投篮不准才落选的。 (Every day after school I practise shooting at the basketball court below my block. The school team trials are next month, and last time I missed out because my shooting was off.) Question: 作者为什么每天放学后都去练投篮？(2 marks) Why does the writer practise shooting every day after school?

The copied answer, 我每天放学后都到组屋楼下的篮球场练投篮。下个月就要参加校队选拔了。, has three problems. Its first sentence only repeats the question. It still says 我 (I). Most importantly, it leaves out the second point, that he missed out last time because of his shooting. A good answer is 因为下个月作者就要参加校队选拔，而且上一次他就是因为投篮不准才落选的。 Both points are there, and most of the words still come from the passage.

1. Pick the key points. Look at the marks first: a 2-mark question usually needs two points. Find the sentences that answer the question, and leave out anything the question has already said.
2. Change the pronoun. The passage says 我; the question says 作者 (the writer), so the answer says 作者 or 他.
3. Match the question. A why question starts with 因为 (because); a how-did-he-react question describes the reaction, not the reason.

The marks are the best clue. A 3-mark question answered in one sentence has almost certainly missed a point; go back to the passage.

Inference and opinion questions: copying scores nothing

For a question like 从文中看，小明是个怎样的人？ (From the passage, what kind of person is Xiaoming?), the passage will not contain a sentence saying he is careful. The child has to say it, then use the passage as evidence. Copying a stretch of the story hands in the evidence without the conclusion.

A good answer has two sentences. The first states the conclusion with a word for a quality, such as 小明是个细心的人 (Xiaoming is a careful person). The second gives one thing from the passage that proves it, such as 出门前，他把家里的每一扇窗都检查了一遍 (before going out, he checked every window in the house).

The final open question, of the form "do you think he was right, and why", is usually worth 4 marks. A common way of marking it gives one mark for taking a position, one for each of two reasons, and one for linking to the passage or to everyday life. No paragraph of the passage, copied, answers "do you think".

Where the rule came from

Most likely two things got mixed together. English comprehension has questions that explicitly say "in your own words", where lifting loses the mark. And Chinese teachers, when going over inference questions, often say the answer cannot just be copied; children then apply it to every question. For fact questions in Chinese, the marker is looking for the points. Whether the points are in the passage's words or the child's own matters far less.

Practising at home

1. Take a comprehension the child has already done. Before looking at the answers, have them label each question: word-finding, fact, or inference and opinion.
2. For fact questions, have the child put a finger on the line in the passage where the answer is before writing anything. If they cannot point to it, they have not found it yet.
3. After writing, tick the answer against the marking points one by one, and look for the point that is missing rather than whether the sentence looks like the model answer.

Three or four passages done this way, and the child starts checking what kind of question it is before deciding how to use the passage.

Practising on AceLah

AceLah's full PSLE mock papers follow the structure of the real paper, and Paper 2 includes a complete Comprehension 2 whose seven open-ended questions come with model answers and marking points. After submitting, the child can mark their own answers point by point, which is exactly the habit described above. The first two papers are free.