Wondering what’s the best way to help your child prepare for the year-end exams? 

It’s the method already recommended by schools, enrichment centres, and tutors: working on past-year papers! 

Although it may seem time-consuming and draining, it’s much better for your child to work on sample exam papers, as opposed to re-reading their textbooks, highlighting important concepts, and making summary notes.

Why is this so? It’s because answering exam questions will require your child to:

1. Put effort into retrieving information from memory
2. Use this information to solve problems in new contexts

Based on your child’s ability to answer the questions, you will have instant feedback on whether concepts were retained and understood. Research has also shown that when we have to work hard to retrieve and use information, it becomes more memorable to us. That’s why it’s preferable to work on open-ended questions, rather than multiple-choice questions (MCQs) or True-False questions.

Read on to find out where to get exam papers in Singapore, and how to use them properly!

Should I buy exam papers or look for free downloads?

You can certainly download past-year exam papers for free, from sites such as:

• testpapersg.com
• TestPapersFree
• SGTestPaper
• FreeTestPaper

However, many parents prefer to purchase them instead. This is because it can be a hassle to print out exam papers at home — you’ll find yourself running out of printer ink and paper fairly quickly. If you try to conserve paper by printing more questions on a page, it may become difficult for your child to read the questions.

For convenience, it may be easier to buy your papers from sellers who print and organise the papers for you by subject. One such seller is Jeremy Exam Paper, which has a physical store at Thomson Plaza. They also provide the option of delivery, and if you are looking for this year’s school prelim papers, they will typically offer these for sale by late August or September. To save costs, you could make a group purchase with a few friends, and share the papers. 

My child is stuck on a question and I can’t solve it either. What should we do?

If your exam paper doesn’t include a detailed answer sheet, try googling the first sentence of the question, enclosed within quotation marks. For instance, googling “A fruit seller bought some plums” will lead you to the video of a tutor explaining how to solve this maths problem, which is from a school exam paper. You can let your child watch the video alone, or watch it together to see if the explanation makes sense. After that, let your child try solving the problem without referring to the video.

Some enrichment schools and tutors have also provided detailed answer sheets for past-year exam papers, and these should turn up during your search as well.

If not, you can message your child’s teacher or tutor for help, or ask within your parent networks. Local parents are generally quite eager to solve ‘tricky’ problems and share their solutions!

What should my child do with a paper after it’s been marked?

You could take several approaches. First, without providing any prompts, you could let your child reattempt questions where they’ve made careless mistakes, to see if they can get the answer on the second try. You could also highlight questions that were particularly challenging for your child, to reprint for retesting after a week or two. 

Tip: If you prefer not to reprint questions, ask your child to leave the practice papers blank and write their answers in a notebook instead.

If you and your child have time, consider colour coding each practice paper after it has been marked. You could come up with a colour scheme such as:

• Red: questions that stump your child
• Orange: questions that your child can answer, but not confidently
• Green: questions that your child can answer with no issues

The purpose of this exercise is to give your child (and you) a visual representation of where they currently stand. The aim is to work towards more “green” questions, with more practice.

How many practice papers should my child complete in a week?

It can be mentally exhausting to work on exam papers, especially since most exam papers come in two parts. If your child has no homework assignments for the day, they could complete either Paper 1 or Paper 2, take a break, and then go over the answers with you. That’s enough for one afternoon — don’t tire your kids by making them do more. 

It’s reasonable to aim for completing two or three exam papers in a week, if your child is about to sit for a milestone exam like the PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination). But what’s more important is ensuring that your child also has time for play and rest.

Should we tabulate the total score for each practice paper?

For high-ability students, you may want to do this, especially if many marks are being lost to carelessness. But for average or struggling students, seeing these scores could be demoralising. 

If you sense that your child is dealing with a lack of confidence or low morale, use the colour coding method recommended above instead. Ultimately, the scores are less important than your child’s attitude — those who are willing to work on practice papers are already on the right track.

Want to chat with other parents about exam preparation? Visit the KiasuParents forum to find a suitable conversation to join!