Friday, November 26, 2010

He's the top PSLE student

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Nov 26, 2010

He's the top PSLE student


-- ST PHOTO: JOYCE FANG

Rosyth School's Alex Tan is the top scorer in this year's Primary School Leaving Examination, out of 45,049 pupils who took the exam. His aggregate score is 282, with A*s in English, Chinese, mathematics and science, and a distinction in Higher Chinese.
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Prime News

Home > Prime News > Story

Nov 26, 2010

Top PSLE boy loves all things Chinese

Rosyth pupil's interest sparked by children's songs he listened to as a toddler


WHEN Alex Tan likes an English book, he looks for a translated version in Chinese and devours that too.
Besides Chinese literature, the self-confessed Sinophile is an accomplished player of the Chinese string instrument erhu, and enjoys playing Chinese chess.
The Rosyth School boy topped this year's Primary 6 cohort with a Primary School Leaving Examination score of 282. He scored 4A*s in English, Chinese, Mathematics and Science, and also achieved a distinction in Higher Chinese.
Overall, the results for this year's PSLE cohort were similar to those of last year's batch.
Of the 45,049 Primary 6 pupils who took the exam this year, 97.3 per cent or 43,826 pupils did well enough to move on to secondary school.
In total, 63.5 per cent did well enough to qualify for the Express stream, while 22.1 per cent and 11.7 per cent made it to the Normal (Academic) and Normal (Technical) streams respectively.
There were 2.7 per cent or 1,223 pupils who did not make it to secondary school.
Of these, pupils who have attempted the PSLE once and are not older than 15 can choose to apply to Assumption Pathway School or NorthLight School, or repeat Primary 6. The remaining pupils, who have been unsuccessful after repeated attempts at the PSLE or are overaged, will be offered a place in Assumption or NorthLight.
Alex, who is in the Gifted Education Programme, said his love for anything Chinese started with the children's songs he listened to when he was a toddler.
He would ask his mother, aesthetics doctor Cindy Yang, 41, to write down the lyrics of the songs in a notebook, and learnt the characters that way. His father, Dr Tan Yi Ryh, 41, is a general practitioner.
Dr Yang said: 'We were very surprised when we found out that he could recognise Chinese characters on signboards and could read them out from the age of three. I think he likes the language because he had an early start with it.'
Dr Yang said the family speaks English at home, but she and her husband exposed Alex to Chinese by buying him Chinese books and magazines.
In Primary 1, the boy was enthralled by the music played by his school's Chinese orchestra during a performance in school, and set his heart on mastering the erhu. He said he looks for the Chinese version of books he particularly likes, such as the best-selling children's book The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, because he 'wants to see how the Chinese version was written and whether it has captured the meaning well'.
Gearing up for the PSLE was not stressful, he said. Preparation started about two months before the exams, and he would spend about 'an hour usually or two hours at the most' reading his notes and working on assessment papers.
He will be attending Raffles Institution next year - he secured a place there through the Direct School Admission exercise, which allows schools to offer students places based on their academic and non-academic achievements before they get their PSLE score. 'I don't know what I want to be when I grow up,' he said. 'Maybe I will follow my parents and be a doctor or maybe I will do something connected with languages since I like English and Chinese.'
ameltan@sph.com.sg
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