Previously we have never had a ‘Reading’ Paper. So the question is.

“Is this something we have never seen before?”

Well, not really, Let’s take a look.

Part 1(Question 1 – 8): 8 objective questions (with 3 choices of answer)

This part tests your ability to read and get the meaning of short texts, i.e. advertisement, announcement, phone message, poster, signboard, email, etc). These texts are straight forward and here are what we need to do:

1. Know your vocabulary.

Many of these questions are tricky. They are designed to test your understanding. You want to make sure you know what some of the keywords mean. We’ve compiled a potential list for you. See Reading- Part 1 Vocab.

2.  Read and double check your answer.

There’s a trap in every question and you don’t want to fall into that. Sometime we overlook certain word and we end up choosing the wrong answer. Make sure you have time to go back and reread the questions and answers.

Part 2(Question 9 – 16): 8 grammar questions

This part is similar to what we had in the previous PT3 format. I personally believe that, in terms of the language  difficulty, it will get slightly easier to understand the texts compared to previous years. If you want to find out how to score. We also have a post for you.

Part 3(Question 17-24):  8 information transfer questions

This part is also similar to what we had in the previous PT3 format. Check out our previous notes for info transfer here.

However, the difference we can spot is that in the new format, you will have 2 challenges:

1. They are more than one possible answers. 

2. You can’t get away with not knowing the meaning of certain words.

E.g.

The price of the mug is Rm6.90. However, a promotion is going on so it was only RM5.50. Mother paid RM10 to the cashier and got RM4.50 back.

Discounted price

Challenge Number1:  Say you don’t understand the text and you sort of know the meaning of ‘price’, you would have 4 options in this example to choose from.

Challenge Number2: Questions would use words that don’t appear in the text so you can’t ‘smart-guess’ your answers. You will have to know what ‘promotion’ and discounted’ mean in order to get the correct answer. So time for some synonyms aye?

Answer not more than 3 words and/or a number

Part 4 (Question 25- 32) : 6 Information transfer questions, 2 words with same meanings.

Part 4 is similar to part 5. You have to be careful with more than 1 possible answers and the language that are designed to trick you. In this part, it is possible that the questions are structured in ways that are completely different from what is in the text.

But

1. The text is longer.

2. The text is more difficult to understand.

3. Answers are no more than 5 words and/or a number.

Part 5 (Question 33-40): choosing 8 sentences to complete the passage.

This is the last part of the paper. Students are required to read the text and find the most suitable sentence to fill in to different parts of the passage. It might be the least familiar part for our students and it is challenging to teach them how to pick the most suitable sentence for each blanks.

What you can do:

1. Know the meaning for different types of connecting words (e.g. and, but, however, further, therefore, so, etc.

2. Teachers, I think it’s time we pay some attention to helping students explore ‘cohesive devices’ and how to skim and scan to improve students’ reading skills.

3. READ more !

Any thoughts? Please share with us.