Since young, I was signed up for tuition classes just like a typical Singaporean's kid. English language was one of my worst subjects and it still is, now. Despite my parents' effort to put me into tuition class, I still couldn't do well in English. Since Primary 1 through to my secondary school's days, I have been attending the same tuition class with the same tutor and the same method. Eventually I gave up and stopped the class before I was going to the fourth year. Back then I knew I was struggling with English but I managed to get borderline passes until my 'O' Levels. I failed my English and had a hard time trying to find schools for my tertiary education. Fortunately I managed to get into Republic Poly but was required to sit for the 'O' levels English examination again. The school was kind enough to recommend English tuition. I went to sign up for the class and from there, the feedback from the tutor were helpful and eventually improved my grade for English.
In my opinion, part of the reason for not doing well despite the extra classes was because of the teaching methodology. I guessed the repetitive writing and answering comprehensive questions did not help me a lot in improving my English. During the period of time when I was still in the tuition class, we were only told to answer past-year papers and write tons of essays. I personally feel that it could have been better if I do the questions myself than to spend extra cash on getting others to provide me the questions. Nonetheless, I have to admit one of the biggest problem for not performing well in English language is because of my laziness, I have spent very little time on reading books since I was young.
With this experience of mine, I believe feedback is one key factor to improvement. Reflective learning is the way to go!
