The P5 2024 batch will be the first to experience the changes in the PSLE 2025 English components. There will be quite a few changes in the formats of different components and marks awarded in the English paper.

Let us take a look at all the PSLE English changes in the table below :

The biggest changes comes from the Oral and Situational Writing components.

For this post, I would like to focus on the PSLE English Oral changes in 2025, now that some of our P5 students have completed their oral testing and some have even gotten back their marks. Their marks indicate that we are teaching our students accurately in the new Oral format. Let us take a closer look at the changes in this component.

Reading

Students must read one of the following passages:

  • a narrative
  • a speech
  • a newspaper report

The length of reading passages can also vary, depending on the type of passage tested.

We started our Oral training in the new format in June during our combo lessons and continued from the end of July. During individual oral testing sessions, we created different reading passages like the ones above and encouraged our students to use the appropriate tone for each type of Reading passage.

Stimulus-based conversation

The main changes in the SBC format are the picture given and the first question asked.

Students are given a picture of people doing something and they need to analyse and talk about the picture.



Students will need to analyse the picture and give responses as accurately as possible. This can be overwhelming for some students, especially if many things are going on in the picture given and if the picture isn’t clear enough. We taught our P5 students to organise their thoughts by focusing on three main points of the picture – setting, attire, and facial expressions.

Then, they should give their responses in 3-4 points as detailed as possible. Using the TREES approach, students can follow up by giving a similar experience to the one in the given picture.

Questions 2 and 3 or even more, are usually opinion-based questions and personal recounts. The most challenging question types for P5 students will be opinion-based and the easiest will be recounting personal experiences. With the focus on critical thinking in our Singapore education now, we are assuming that opinion-based questions will be the focus for oral examinations.

So, what do all these PSLE English Oral 2025 changes mean?

The Oral component is more heavily weighted in terms of marks with an increase of 10 marks from PSLE 2024. This means that expectations are higher for a student to score well. While testing our P5 students this year and scoring them, we found this to be true. Nevertheless, we will continue to encourage our students to aim for the first band (36-40) for their 2025 PSLE English Oral component, as we have been doing with our P6 students every year.

With the change in the picture for SBC, students will have less help in answering the first SBC question. Before the change, students would be given a poster with words to indicate the time, date, and even information about the poster. Students could use this information to the fullest to answer the first question. The information could also give them ideas on how to answer the other questions by the examiners.

Now, students will need to analyse the picture given carefully. With no words to guide them, there is a possibility that they may misunderstand what the picture signifies and analyse the picture wrongly. This happened once or twice during our individual oral testing sessions at TF.

Students will also be faced with more critical thinking questions and must be prepared to answer them confidently.

Below are some themes that our P5 students were tested on for their SA2 Oral examination this year.

2025 SA2 Oral examination theme list

  • Family & Chores
  • Reading
  • Teamwork
  • Sports
  • Book Swap

Some critical thinking questions asked were :

  • Do you think that it is important to help out at home?
  • Do you like your things neat and tidy?
  • Do you enjoy working in a group?
  • If there is no teamwork in a group, do you think that you can succeed?
  • Do you think that sports is important?
  • Do you prefer new books or second-hand books
  • Do you prefer reading in hardcopy or softcopy?

We hope that the 2025 changes to the English Oral component and the examples we shared have been useful for you!

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2025 P5 English Tuition Timetable

BranchDayTime
Bukit TimahTUE - FULL - WAITING LIST3 pm to 5 pm
Bukit TimahWED - FULL - WAITING LIST3.30 pm to 5.30 pm
Bukit TimahFRI - NEW CLASS 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm
Bukit TimahSAT - FULL - WAITING LIST9 am to 11 am
HougangTUE5.30 pm to 7.30 pm
HougangSAT9 am to 11 am
* Virtual branch = 100% online live tuition
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