Five simple steps to tackle P4 Comprehension and tips on the Reference Question Type

The Primary 4 Comprehension section in English Paper 2 is one of the most important parts of your child’s language learning journey. It assesses not just reading ability, but also how well students understand, interpret, and respond to a written passage.

For many students, this component can be challenging. Some may find the passages more complex or struggle to infer meaning beyond what is written. Others might lose marks because they misread a question or fail to provide a complete answer.

At Thinking Factory, we guide our students through a structured, step-by-step method to help them overcome these difficulties and develop strong comprehension skills early. By the time they move on to Primary 5 and 6, they are confident, thoughtful readers who can handle more advanced texts and question types with ease.

In this post, we’ll explore the five essential steps we teach our Primary 4 students to master the Comprehension component — and we’ll also take a look at a common Comprehension question type and how to tackle it effectively.

Why P4 Comprehension Skills Matter

Primary 4 is a transition year in the upper primary curriculum. It’s the stage where students move from simple recall questions to more analytical and inferential ones.

This means students must learn not only to understand what a passage says, but also what it implies. They must be able to:

• Identify key ideas,
• Interpret character actions and feelings,
• Explain cause and effect relationships, and
• Express answers clearly and accurately.

Strong comprehension skills at this stage will also benefit other areas of English — from composition writing to oral communication. That’s why at Thinking Factory, we place special emphasis on building a strong comprehension foundation in Primary 3 and especially in Primary 4.

5 Steps to Master the P4 Comprehension

Below are the five techniques we teach our students at TF to help them approach every comprehension passage with structure and confidence.

Step 1 – Read to Understand

Many students tend to read passages quickly, treating them like storybooks. While fluency is important, reading without understanding will not help them answer comprehension questions correctly.

At TF, we teach our students to read actively. This means slowing down to process what they’re reading and asking themselves guiding questions such as:

• Who are the main characters?
• What is happening in this paragraph?
• Why did the character behave this way?
• What message is the author trying to convey?

To reinforce comprehension, our teachers ask oral follow-up questions after reading. These can be factual (“Where did the character go?”), inferential (“Why do you think he did that?”), or cause-and-effect (“What happened as a result?”).

This method helps students develop awareness of different question types and strengthens their ability to think critically about the passage instead of memorising or guessing answers.

Step 2 – Identify Question Types

Recognising question types is one of the most powerful comprehension skills. From Primary 4, we introduce students to the main categories they’ll encounter:

• Factual (Literal) – Answers are directly stated in the text.
• Inferential – Answers require reasoning and reading between the lines.
• Cause and Effect – Explaining why something happened.
• Reference – Identifying what a pronoun refers to.
• Vocabulary-in-Context – Understanding word meaning from context clues.

When students can identify what type of question they are dealing with, they immediately know how to approach it. For example, a factual question means “look directly in the text,” while an inferential one means “use logic and clues from the passage.”

By starting this skill in P4, students are better prepared for Comprehension Open-Ended in P5 and P6, which demands deeper analysis and longer responses.

Step 3 – Highlight Keywords in the Questions

A simple but crucial step! Many comprehension errors come from missing important details in the question.

At TF, we train our students to read each question carefully and highlight or underline keywords that tell them:

• What to look for (e.g., a phrase, a sentence, two words),
• What type of answer is needed (e.g., why, how, who), and
• The focus of the question (e.g., the reason, the effect, the feeling).

For instance some students may make mistakes in the following:

“Pick out a two-word phrase” → student writes a four-word phrase.

“Explain why” → student describes what happened instead of giving a reason.

By training students to pause and identify these details, they learn to answer precisely and avoid losing marks unnecessarily.

Step 4 – Annotate the Passa

Annotation is one of the most effective techniques to improve comprehension accuracy.

At Thinking Factory, we teach students how to annotate efficiently during their reading and answering process. After reading the passage, we give students about five minutes to scan the text again and mark clues, underline useful sentences, or jot short notes beside key ideas.

For example:

• Write “reason” or “effect” beside sentences that explain cause-and-effect.
• Circle pronouns (he, she, it, they) to prepare for reference questions.
• Underline the answers and number them for accuracy.

Annotation helps students see patterns and connect ideas in the passage. It trains them to become active readers who engage with the text instead of passively rereading it over and over.

Step 5 – Answer Accurately and Completely

Once students have annotated and located their answers, the final step is to write them clearly and completely.

We remind our students to:

• Use complete sentences, not fragments.
• Ensure that the answer matches the question type.
• Avoid copying long chunks of text — instead, paraphrase when possible.
• Re-read each answer to check that it makes sense on its own.

Accuracy and clarity are key. A well-structured, concise answer not only earns full marks but also builds strong writing discipline.

Now, let us take a look at one question type.

Reference Question Type

Common P4 Comprehension Question Type: Reference Questions

One of the most useful question types to master early is the Reference Question.

This type tests a student’s understanding of pronouns — words like he, she, it, they, this, that, those — and what they refer to in the text.

For example:

“When Ben saw the dog, he ran away.”
What does he refer to?

In this case, he refers to Ben.

“The children cheered as the old man waved his hat. They were grateful for his help.”
What does they refer to?
They refers to the children.

While Reference Questions are introduced in Primary 3, they become more frequent and challenging from Primary 4 onwards. In upper primary, these questions are often presented in table format and can be worth up to 3 marks or more.

Tips for Answering Reference Questions

At TF, we teach students to:

1. Look above (and below) the line — the noun a pronoun refers to may not be in the same sentence.
2. Check agreement — make sure the pronoun matches in number (singular/plural) and gender.
3. Answer completely — don’t just write tree; write the magical tree.
4. Re-read the passage to confirm your answer makes sense in context.

Here’s an example from a Primary 4 Top School End-of-Year Paper we used in class:

‘Them’ in line 5 refers to ‘the branches of the magical tree’ or ‘the magical tree’s branches’. The answer is not found on the same line but two lines above in line 3.

‘It’ in line 9 refers to ‘the magical tree’. In this example, the answer can be found on the same line. However, students need to answer fully by being precise about which tree the ‘it’ refers to and they have to do so by adding the word ‘magical’.

Practising reference question types is a great way for P4 students to understand the importance of reading and understanding a passage (Step 1) before annotating the passage to find their answer (Step 4). They will also practise answering questions fully and precisely so as not to lose unnecessary marks (Step 5).

Comprehension isn’t just about answering questions correctly — it’s about thinking deeply about what we read. At Thinking Factory, our Primary 4 students learn to approach every comprehension passage with structure, strategy, and confidence.

By applying these 5 simple steps, students develop the habits of effective readers:

• They understand rather than memorise.
• They identify key ideas and question types.
• They read actively and critically.

These skills will continue to benefit them in Primary 5 and 6, especially when tackling more demanding Comprehension Open-Ended sections.

If you’d like to learn more about how we teach comprehension or explore our English programmes for Primary 3 to 6, visit our website.

Please check our library of articles on English Paper2 components to further help your child mastering the English language.