Week 6 (Grammar rules and Synthesis)

Dear all,

My apologies for the break in not updating. It has been a busy week on my side too. We are about to finish up on Unit 2 and 3 soon. I have given out the CA practice paper to you and given you ample time to complete the paper before next Monday. It has be to pass up next Monday so that I can mark through and go through with you. We will be doing filing soon so that you can revise through your work for the 3 units.

For this week, we focused on Comprehension Open-ended, Comprehension Cloze, Visual Text Information, Synthesis and Transformation and Situational Writing.

For today, I went through in detail about your comprehension open-ended questions. The second comprehension open-ended exercise was not that well done. Some mistakes to point out:

• Always identify for the tenses in the question first. Many of the questions would require you to answer in the past tense which many of you are not doing. You still disregard the importance of tenses. Past tense and Present tense are hugely important!!!
• Always highlight the key words in the question first. The 'Why' Questions would always require you to give a reason. 
• Your answers are not specific enough. If it is a 2 mark question, it usually involved 2 parts to the answers. Most of you answered only 1 part. 
• A phrase is part of a sentence. When you list your phrase down, check that it cannot be used as a sentence. 
• When you are asked to quote or write down the phrase, word or sentence, make sure that you write down word for word, spelling for spelling and punctuation for punctuation. You must follow exactly as in the passage.

We also finished up on our Synthesis and Transformation Practice. For Synthesis, there is alot of focus on the grammar rules that you have to know. Let us do an important recap:

In the sentence structure, "Having......................." A verb is after the word 'Having' and the verb is always in the perfect form. 

Having taken the file, I proceeded to pass it to Mr Tan.

In the sentence structure, "Despite" and "In spite of" ..................... We can use the words 'the fact that' after 'Despite' and 'In spite of' to complete the sentence.

In spite of the fact that he trained hard, he did not perform well for the competition.

Despite the fact that it was extremely sunny in the morning, it rained heavily in the afternoon.

In the sentence structure, ........................ whose ....................... Before the word 'whose', it is a person/people. After the word 'whose', it is a noun (item) belonging to the person. 

Daniel whose wallet was stolen had reported the matter to the police. 

In the sentence structure, ............. prefers................ We always use the rule 'Prefer ........ to ........" 

Prefer (Verb in the -ing form) to (Verb in the -ing form)

Tom prefers walking to jogging.

Ali prefers cooking at home to eating out at hawker centres.

In the sentence structure, ................ rather.................... We always use the rule "Rather ........ than ........."

Rather (Verb) than (Verb)

I would rather study than play.

I would rather revise for my examinations than go out and play with my friends.

Homework:

Visual Text 3.1

Sincerely,

Mr Nelson Ong