KiasuParents - Parenting in Singapore

MY PROBLEM: I'm in a neighbourhood school and my current english teacher sucks, seriously, no joke. I'm in the express stream and she teaches other streams, so saying my class is the only express class that she teach. She can't teach, and she is so irresponsible when it comes to work. She takes more than 2 months to return us an assignment! She keeps complaining that English is hard to mark, blah blah blah, but why do I see other english teachers being able to return the worksheets to their classes within a day? Furthermore, she's my form teacher and she only teaches 3 classes in the whole school, so how is she busy?!
I'm really frustrated of these crap and thanks to her, my whole class is stuck with english grades that NEVER go beyond a C grade. I'm sick of getting a C5 all the time!! I've been consistently doing English comprehension assessments but i still don't seem to do well for my exams because she's the marker and she's JUST SO DAMN PICKY when it comes to chinese (she's a malay). I failed my english common test with a D7. I'm sec 2 btw so this year is my streaming year (as you know, one cannot fail english or he/she has to retain or drop down a stream)
PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME BY GIVING ME SOME TIPS TO OVERCOME MY PROBLEMS AND ALSO SOME SKILLS ON SCORING AN 'A' FOR ENGLISH. PLEASE

Go find a tutor.

The entire exam paper is unlikely to be set by her only nor is she the marker for her own class. Besides, there are likely to be 2 markers.

Dun lose heart.

P.S. your remark abt her being racist might not be appropriate unless you hv concrete evidence to prove your point.

In order to do well in compre, you need to learn reading strategies, such as summarising and predicting. Reading a compre passage is different from reading a story for fun. There are some students who are already good at reading, so the answers seem to come naturally to them. For most students, however, they need to be taught how to be active readers. You have to be patient, though. Improvement in compre, unlike improvement in Maths, doesn't happen so quickly. It may take you a few months to get the strategies right.

Since your grammar looks fine in your post, I think that all you need are suggestions on how to improve your reading and answering skills. You also need to read more in your free time. Newspapers are a good start. Having general knowledge will help you to understand the compre passages.

I'm sorry that you don't think much of your school teacher. Nevertheless, do respect her. Perhaps she is bogged down by a lot of other administrative duties and doesn't have time to mark your assignments.

1. please don't mention race. It is taboo

2. I also know a certain school, the whole school, during mid-year or EOY exams, the English papers had most people scoring below 70 at best, and most of the time from sec 1 to sec 4 they manage to just scrap by.....and hey, at the O levels, many of them got A1 / 2

Mdm Koh wrote:In order to do well in compre, you need to learn reading strategies, such as summarising and predicting. Reading a compre passage is different from reading a story for fun. There are some students who are already good at reading, so the answers seem to come naturally to them. For most students, however, they need to be taught how to be active readers. You have to be patient, though. Improvement in compre, unlike improvement in Maths, doesn't happen so quickly. It may take you a few months to get the strategies right.

NowSince your grammar looks fine in your post, I think that all you need are suggestions on how to improve your reading and answering skills. You also need to read more in your free time. Newspapers are a good start. Having general knowledge will help you to understand the compre passages.

I'm sorry that you don't think much of your school teacher. Nevertheless, do respect her. Perhaps she is bogged down by a lot of other administrative duties and doesn't have time to mark your assignments.

With the revised eng o level syllabus, will reading newspaper still help?cos tuition centre says that the new eng syllabus is literacy based.

I really understand. My dd's school has the same problem. Teachers are not efficient. Besides, trainee teachers come and go. In fact, every two term there are a change of teachers. The teachers do not go by text books, they give notes. My poor dd has notes of different subjects all over the place.
DD is having SA1 in two weeks' time. The kids were told last week that they are tested chapters 7 to 10 on chinese. The teacher, at that time, just finished chapter 6! From Jan till last week, she only managed to finish half of Sec 2 text book....so I guess she will rush through chapter 7-10 for these two weeks. Sigh...no eyes to see.

concernmother wrote:I really understand. My dd's school has the same problem. Teachers are not efficient. Besides, trainee teachers come and go. In fact, every two term there are a change of teachers. The teachers do not go by text books, they give notes. My poor dd has notes of different subjects all over the place.
DD is having SA1 in two weeks' time. The kids were told last week that they are tested chapters 7 to 10 on chinese. The teacher, at that time, just finished chapter 6! From Jan till last week, she only managed to finish half of Sec 2 text book....so I guess she will rush through chapter 7-10 for these two weeks. Sigh...no eyes to see.

Its saddening to see teachers come and go but that is mostly because there are insufficient teachers. Furthermore, some teachers have just too heavy a workload to handle. These would definiately affect the children's studies but one must take more responsibility.

File the notes properly according to subjects and read through them. Compare them with the textbook noting down the differences and similarities. This will help you understand the subject matter better.

You may want to look for the school counsellor or even the principal to share your thoughts.

Instead of being antagonistic in your approach, ask them humbly what you should do. From what I read from your post, you might be resistant getting help from your form teacher. Tell the counsellor or principal about your feelings but don't badmouth the teacher. Ask for alternative help from school where possible.

Tuition should be the last resort. I am sure your parents will be proud of you that you are looking for alternatives to improve your grades instead of asking them to pay for tuition.

Herbie wrote:
With the revised eng o level syllabus, will reading newspaper still help?cos tuition centre says that the new eng syllabus is literacy based.

The new syllabus seems to emphasise expository texts. I think reading the newspapers will become more important.