PSLE English Paper 2: 3 Smart Strategies to Win 45 Marks

AGrader Learning Centre

3 days ago

6 min read

PSLE English Paper 2: 3 Smart Strategies to Win 45 Marks

Your child opens a PSLE English Paper 2 practice booklet and stares at it, unsure which section to revise first. Every section looks equally important, so revision spreads thinly across everything and sharpens nothing. By the time the exam arrives, the hard work has not turned into marks.

Three sections alone carry 45 of the 90 marks in this paper. Once you know how those marks are actually awarded, revision becomes a short list of things to practise.

In this guide, you will find three strategies for those three sections, the percentage breakdown behind each one, and the order your child should work in. Every strategy focuses on where marks are won, rather than where they are lost.

Why three sections decide half of PSLE English Paper 2
Strategy one — start with the grammar blanks in Comprehension Cloze
Strategy two — give a reason, not a quotation, in Comprehension
Strategy three — learn the key word conversions for Sentence Rewriting
How to use all three strategies in your child's revision

Why Three Sections Decide Half of Psle English Paper 2

PSLE English Paper 2 is marked out of 90. Three sections together account for 45 of those marks, which is exactly half the paper.

Section	Marks	What the marks reward
Comprehension Cloze	15	55% grammar words, 45% vocabulary
Comprehension	20	75% of marks reward answers in your child's own words
Sentence Rewriting	10	60% transformation questions, 40% joining two sentences
Total	45 of 90

The mark totals are useful, but the percentages beside them are what change how your child revises. They show which skill is tested most often in each section, so practice time can follow the marks.

This matters because children often revise by topic rather than by weighting. A child who spends every session on vocabulary lists is preparing for 45% of the cloze blanks and leaving the other 55% to chance.

Each of the three strategies below targets one of these sections. Together they cover the half of the paper where focused practice makes the clearest difference.

The first strategy starts with the section many children find the most uncomfortable.

Why Three Sections Decide Half of Psle English Paper 2

Strategy One — Start With the Grammar Blanks in Comprehension Cloze

Comprehension Cloze is worth 15 marks in PSLE English Paper 2, and most children work through the blanks in order from the first to the last. There is a better order to follow.

The blanks in a cloze passage are not all the same kind of question:

55% are grammar words — prepositions, connectors and pronouns. These are the small linking words that hold a sentence together.
45% are vocabulary blanks — words that depend on the meaning of the passage around them.

This split gives your child a clear plan for the section:

Fill the grammar blanks first. Read through the passage and complete every blank that needs a linking word.
Build momentum. Children who clear these blanks early gain confidence before the harder blanks.
Return for the vocabulary blanks. Work through the remaining gaps using context clues from the sentences around them.

The reason this order works is confidence. Grammar blanks are the more predictable half of the section, so answering them first means your child is never staring at a blank page. By the time the vocabulary blanks come round, the passage is already familiar and the context clues are easier to spot.

For more practice on this section, see our guide to 5 Cloze Passage Tips to Excel in Primary English.

The next strategy applies to the largest of the three sections.

Strategy Two — Give a Reason, Not a Quotation, in Comprehension

Comprehension carries 20 marks, the highest of the three sections, and the marking rewards one skill above all others. Around 75% of comprehension marks go to children who explain in their own words.

This is paraphrasing, and it is a habit rather than a talent. A child who lifts a line straight from the passage has shown they can find the answer. A child who rewrites it has shown they understood it.

True or False questions follow the same principle. The mark is not for the verdict alone — it is for the reason your child gives.

Quoting only tells the marker what happened in the passage.
Giving a reason explains why it happened, which is what the question is asking for.

Here is the kind of answer that earns the mark:

"He went home because he was upset about the game, which shows he was disappointed."

Look at what that answer does. It names the action, connects it to a cause, and then draws out what the cause reveals. The word "because" carries the reasoning, and "which shows" makes the inference explicit.

When your child practises open-ended comprehension questions at home, the useful check is simple. Ask them to read their answer aloud and point to the part that explains why. If they cannot find it, the answer is a quotation rather than a reason.

Our guide to 5 Ways to Tackle Difficult Primary English Comprehension Open-Ended Questions covers more practice of this skill.

The final section is the smallest of the three, and the most predictable.

Strategy Three — Learn the Key Word Conversions for Sentence Rewriting

Sentence Rewriting is worth 10 marks. It is the shortest of the three sections in PSLE English Paper 2, and the one where preparation pays back most reliably, because the question types repeat.

Question type	Share of the section	What your child is asked to do
Transformation	60%	Rewrite a sentence in a new form, such as reported speech
Synthesis	40%	Join two sentences into one

The 60% figure is the important one. Transformation questions, including reported speech, make up the majority of this section, so they deserve the majority of your child's practice time.

There is one habit that helps across both question types: learning key word conversions. These are the changes a word makes when it shifts from one form to another.

refuse → refusal
humble → humility

Once your child recognises these patterns, transformation questions stop feeling like guesswork. The sentence is rebuilt around a converted word, and knowing the conversion is often most of the answer.

These transformation skills have come up every year from 2018. That consistency is what makes this section worth targeting — the format your child practises is the format they will meet.

Our guide to 5 Tips to Help Your Child Master Synthesis and Transformation in Primary English has further worked examples.

How to Use All Three Strategies in Your Child’s Revision

The three strategies work together because each one follows the marks rather than the topic. Used across a revision session, they turn PSLE English Paper 2 from a long list of sections into three clear jobs.

Section	Marks	The strategy
Comprehension Cloze	15	Answer the grammar blanks first, then return for the vocabulary blanks
Comprehension	20	Explain in your child's own words, and always give a reason
Sentence Rewriting	10	Practise transformations most, and learn key word conversions

Of all the PSLE English tips parents hear, the ones tied to how marks are awarded are the ones worth keeping. A simple way to apply this at home is to ask your child which of the three jobs they did in a practice paper. If they cannot name one, the practice was reading rather than revision.

None of these strategies require extra hours. They only ask that the practice hours your child already puts in are pointed at the half of the paper where 45 marks are decided.

Parents often come to AGrader with the same description of the problem. Their child reads widely and works hard, yet the Paper 2 marks stay flat, and nobody can say which section is costing them.

AGrader's Primary English Tuition Programme runs weekly English lessons for Primary 1 to Primary 6, with online classes available for Primary 5 and Primary 6. It is available at over 19 locations island-wide.

Lessons are aligned to the latest MOE syllabus and taught ahead of school, so your child meets each topic before it appears in class. The curriculum follows a Cyclical Approach, revisiting Cloze, Comprehension, Grammar and the other exam components across the year rather than once. Every student also receives free, unlimited access to the EverLoop Improvement System, an after-class support system with past year paper packs, revision packs, topical packs and lesson recordings.