School Marks Standard English; Home Talk Can Stay

Parents hear Singlish at dinner and panic about school. The useful rewrite is tonight’s marked sentence, not the whole home.

Home talk can stay; the marked line cannot

School marks Standard English; home talk can stay. Rewrite the next composition or oral answer so a teacher outside the family can parse every particle.

Do not turn dinner into an accent drill. Change the line that will be marked.

Formal school work needs internationally readable grammar

MOE has said formal communication should not use Singlish, while appropriate Singlish in direct speech may be accepted. Speak Good English guidance treats Standard English as grammatical and intelligible, not an accent.

If the teacher wants Standard English in narration, keep Singlish, if at all, inside inverted commas. Confirm that instruction. A newspaper line is not a marking scheme.

The rewrite worked if a particle disappeared

The rewrite worked if one particle such as lah, one missing verb, or one can-or-not tag is gone and the meaning stays. iWorld Primary English can host later sentence practice. Confirm live terms.

Open Primary English only if the same particle returns on three marked scripts. Omit fees.

Write the old line and the new line on the same page. If the meaning changed, the rewrite failed. Keep the meaning and lose only the particle, the missing verb, or the tag.

This is not the PSLE-allowed page

That page answers allowed or not in PSLE. Tonight only switches tonight's school sentence.

Keep exam-script cuts on Singlish in a PSLE or O-Level script.

FAQ

Accent is not the test.

Does my child need a different accent for school?

No. Standard English is grammar and wording, not accent training.

Can a character in a story use Singlish?

MOE has said appropriate use in direct speech may be accepted. The narration still needs Standard English. Confirm the teacher's instruction.