Paper 2 carries 45% of the grade across nine components, while composition practice dominates most revision plans. Where the 200 marks actually sit.
By Marcus Toh · 2026-06-25
| Paper | What it is | Marks | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1: Writing | Situational Writing (14) and Continuous Writing (36), 1 hour 10 minutes | 50 | 25% |
| 2: Language Use and Comprehension | Two booklets, nine components, 1 hour 50 minutes | 95 | 45% |
| 3: Listening Comprehension | 20 multiple choice questions, about 35 minutes | 20 | 10% |
| 4: Oral Communication | Reading Aloud (15) and Stimulus based Conversation (25) | 40 | 20% |
The SEAB format makes one thing plain: Paper 2 is nearly half the subject. Its Booklet A runs 25 multiple choice items across grammar, vocabulary, vocabulary cloze and visual text comprehension, and Booklet B runs the open ended core: grammar cloze (10), editing for spelling and grammar (10), comprehension cloze (15), synthesis and transformation (10), and open ended comprehension worth 20 marks, the single biggest component in the paper.
Composition gets the tuition hours, but the arithmetic argues differently. Continuous Writing is 36 marks; comprehension cloze plus open ended comprehension alone are 35, and they are trainable through technique and vocabulary breadth rather than flair. The oral's 40 marks, a fifth of the grade sat in August, splits 15 for reading aloud and 25 for the conversation, where the same answer first habits we teach for older students apply in a P6 sized way.
Every P6 parent I meet can tell me their child's composition band, and almost none can tell me their comprehension cloze score, which is exactly backwards given where the marks sit. Paper 2 is 45% of the subject and it is the most trainable paper, because cloze, synthesis and editing reward method and vocabulary, not inspiration.
So audit the revision honestly. If your child does two compositions a week and one Paper 2 practice a month, flip the ratio for a term and watch the aggregate move. And do not let the August oral sneak up, twenty percent of the grade is decided before September starts, the dates are here, and ten minutes of conversation practice a day in July is the cheapest twenty percent in the whole PSLE.
Continuous Writing asks for at least 150 words on a given topic, with three pictures offering different angles, and the composition must be based on at least one of them, so topic interpretation is assessed alongside language, while Situational Writing tests a short functional piece such as a letter, email or report.
Paper 3 is 20 multiple choice questions over about 35 minutes, on audio texts that recount, instruct, describe, inform, explain, argue or persuade, with graphic representations used for the first seven items and every text read twice.
The format allocates about 10 minutes per candidate: 5 minutes of preparation and about 5 minutes of examination, covering the reading passage and the photo stimulus for the conversation, so the preparation habit to train is fast, structured noticing rather than long planning.