Many children may have been able to get buy copying sentences when they were in lower primary because the passages were easier, and the questions not as complex. However, in upper primary, being over-reliant on this technique can be their downfall.

Lifting sentences to answer questions implies to the marker that:

• your child does not understand the question and/or
• your child lacks the language skills needed to adjust the focus of the sentence.

Let’s take a look at a lifted response to a True/False question:

What’s wrong with this response:

• The student has copied the sentence wholesale from the passage, including the first-person pronouns “my”, “me” and “I”. That’s definitely incorrect! The student is not the author of the passage.
• The response does not answer the question at all. The focus of this question is to reflect WHO benefitted from the project, not to indicate where the project expanded to.
• In addition, there are also “distractors” or what we call “unnecessary details” given in the response.

What the correct response should look like:

TIP: Ensure your child does not respond using first-person pronouns. It is rarely possible to copy answers wholesale. Get your child to use the question stem to frame this/her response to the question.

I have seen many students make this mistake, even those who are considered better in the English language.

When answering Reading Comprehension questions, it is always better to be specific than vague. Being over-reliant on pronouns is often the main reason why this occurs:

• Overuse of pronouns (he/his) instead of names, especially when there is more than one male character in the passage
• Use of pronouns instead of specific details (g. He was upset about it vs. He was upset about being asked to give up his room)

TIP: When responding to any Reading Comprehension question, make the choice to be specific and detailed. Avoid using pronouns as a shortcut.

This often arises for questions that are worth 2 marks, or for True/False questions. The simplest technique to assume is that 2 marks questions require 2 points. Hence, if your child’s response is too short, he or she is definitely not attaining the full mark for this question.

“But my child’s response is not short! It is actually long, yet he’s still not getting 2 marks.”

If this happens, it is likely that your child’s long response is not answering one of the “points” the question requires. Alternatively, in relation to Point 2, your child’s response to one part of the question is not specific enough to attain the mark.

Let’s look at two incorrect responses:

What’s wrong with this response:

For this response, the pupil has only mentioned the injuries the author suffered, but has neglected to “explain why” this has affected the author’s career.

What’s wrong with this response:

Even though this pupil thinks he/she has linked the injuries to the reason that the writer had to stop running, he/she is in fact just copying the question without proper explanation.

What the correct response should look like:

Why this response is right:

This pupil has mentioned the injuries the writer experienced. In addition, the pupil has linked it to the writer’s inability to participate in future competitions, explaining why the writer’s success as a runner was stopped abruptly.

TIP: To avoid make this error, ensure your child underlines or annotates the question for the 2 necessary points to respond to. Look out for key words such as “explain why” or “describe how”.

Fine-tune Your Child’s Reading Comprehension Skills with LiteracyPlus

At LiteracyPlus, we have crafted a skills-based programme to ensure that your child is able to confidently tackle a wide variety of reading comprehension questions. Through a series of question analysis and marking exercises, in addition to full-length reading comprehension practices, our students are empowered to ace the reading comprehension segment. To find out more about our Enhancing English Language Skills (EELS) programme, click here.