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Good advice for writing the composition

How many words to write?

In general, students in Primary 3 and 4 are required to write a minimum of 120 words, while

students in Primary 5 and 6 are required to write a minimum of 150 words. The number ofwords given should serve as a guide how long we should write the composition. I recommend

that students in Primary 3 and 4 write up to a maximum of 200 words, while students in

Primary 5 and 6 up to a maximum of 250 words. Why?

One reason is that if you are a weak or an average student, writing more might only result in

more mistakes. Little good ideas are contributed, instead, more mistakes in spelling and

grammar would make it only more tempting for the marker to penalise you and give you less

marks than in the case you had written less.

Another reason would be that there may be parts of your composition which are quiteirrelevant to the topic you are writing about. You must show the link of each phrase and

sentence to the topic! If you fail to do so, the marker might just cross out those parts. For

example, if you write up to 200 words, but only 100 words have ideas that are relevant to the

topic, then it is as good as you writing 100 words only. The bad thing is that for the other 100

words whose ideas are irrelevant, the marker would look at the mistakes in grammar and

spelling you made and penalise you!

A third reason would be that you may not have enough time to write so much. After writing,

you should READ and RE-READ your composition to see how you could improve on your

first draft! You should look out for mistakes in spelling and grammar, as well as look forways to use better Vocabulary to bring out the effects of the scenarios you describe.

What you should be thinking and doing

Here are some good rules to observe:

-  Before you start writing, do you really understand the scenario given, or the picture

you see?

-  What are the events in the picture you have to write about, and some minor things that

can be linked to the main event?

-  Try to write about an idea in as little number of words as possible

-  From the start, have an idea how the whole story will flow: from the Introduction, the

Body to the Conclusion

-  Ask yourself, is my Introduction too long? How can I make it more relevant?

-  In the Body, what happened and what were the feelings of the characters? Can I

elaborate a little more?

-  I should write in the PAST TENSE

-  Is my story believable?

So let’s get down to thinking of good ideas for our next composition, plan, and get down towriting. Then let me edit your composition!

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An Incident you witnessed at the MRT Station

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Composition Planning Framework

Title: ________________________________________

Place(s):

Characters:

INTRODUCTION

BODY

Key events:

1.____________________________

Sub-event 1 Sub-event 2 Sub-event 3

2.____________________________

Sub-event 1 Sub-event 2 Sub-event 3

3.____________________________

Sub-event 1 Sub-event 2 Sub-event 3

CONCLUSION