From primary to secondary English: What’s new and challenging?

Moving from primary to secondary English can be fearful for many. You may have struggled writing a 150-word composition or find yourself tongue-tied during oral exams. Or, you may have enjoyed English lessons but cannot seem to do well in the exams. No matter how you performed in the English language at primary school, it is not the final scorecard. You can continue to grow in your language abilities in secondary school (and hopefully in your love for the language!), and there are steps that you can take to make that journey a little smoother.

What are some new and potentially challenging aspects of secondary school English?

And how can you prepare yourself well for them?

The challenging aspects of secondary school English

1. Writing more engaging narratives

You will mainly write narratives (or stories) at Secondary 1, before proceeding to the more challenging expository essay. While you have pictures and prompts to guide you along in your composition at primary school, these are not present at secondary level. These essays are also greater in length, but they are meant to give you space to develop your storyline and captivate your reader through vivid descriptions.

You should strive to:

a) Develop more sophisticated storylines, which includes introducing the problem or conflict, building tension towards the climax and resolving the problem meaningfully.

b) Use more vivid descriptions. The more novel and vibrant your descriptions, the more it draws your reader into the world of your story.

c) Think of a meaningful closing, in particular the ‘moral’ or the lesson learnt. This helps your reader to reflect on what they just read.

Example:

Let’s take an essay topic you might encounter in Secondary 1.

Write about a time when you caused great disappointment to a person. What did you do about the situation? (O-Level Paper 1, 2017)

Though prompts and pictures are not available, you can still identify the topic / theme easily — the key words “caused great disappointment”. Notice that it is not just a disappointment, but an especially significant one as signalled by the word “great”. This means you will need to be build up the tension to enable the reader to feel the weight of the disappointment (refer to bullet point 1 above). Also, think about who is likely to be most hurt or let down by you.

Here are some suggested paragraphs that focuses on building up the disappointment through a series of events:

[Context: Writer is having a gathering at her place with new friends from Secondary 1. A primary school friend contacts her for a catch-up, but is seemingly ignored.]

Notice that the first event was the writer’s slipshod reply of ‘ok’ and not responding to her friend’s calls or messages. Suspense is also built by showing how all her friend’s attempts at contacting her were missed. This causes potential misunderstanding and makes the friend think that the writer was ignoring her, setting the stage for disappointment. Think: How would you continue the story to bring it to a climax? What would the writer do or say that would further disappoint her friend?

2. Adopting varying tones in writing

The situational writing component will remain, but you will have to write for a wider range of purposes. This includes writing to persuade (e.g. proposals, speeches), and writing to enthuse or entertain (e.g. feature articles, brochures). This requires you to adopt different tones and levels of politeness, depending on who you are addressing. How would you write to your school Principal, and how does that differ from a speech given to your schoolmates?

3. Appreciating effects of language use

Being able to understand the use of language is important for the comprehension paper (Paper 2). This includes appreciating metaphors, irony and imagery, and how they evoke a certain atmosphere or feeling in the reader. You will have had a taste of this when analysing visual text at primary school, and learning about the impact that a certain word or expression has on readers. At secondary level, you will need to understand them in the context of the passage and articulate it in your answers. But fret not, this skill of explaining concisely and precisely is one you will develop through your years in secondary school.

4. Engaging on a variety of topics

This is beneficial especially in the Spoken Interaction component of the oral exam. The focus will shift from merely discussing the picture stimulus itself, to engaging on topics related to the picture and the passage. Questions are usually about: (i) your personal experience and (ii) your standpoint on issues like animal conservation or technology. This means you will need to be able to think on your feet and develop a response that is well supported and coherent.

Secondary English may present a fresh set of challenges as detailed above, but there are concrete steps you can take to prepare yourself. Pick one of the above 4 areas (or a sub-area for #1) to work on first. Once you have made some progress, move on to other areas. Keep taking stock of where you are, and believe that you can improve your English with the right strategies!