The PSLE Chinese oral exams ended last week, and I’ve been reflecting on what went down this year. As someone who tracks question patterns obsessively, I wanted to share some insights that might help your child (who’s presumably P4/P5 this year) prepare better when they do the PSLE.
This year’s topics were 互相帮助/学习 on Day 1 and 旅游/景点/家庭 on Day 2. Thankfully, we managed to spot both topics. Day 1 was in our regular list sent to subscribers, while Day 2 made it into our “emergency” email on Wednesday afternoon.
Our “Extra Topics for All-Round Preparation” list helped students stay ready for Day 1’s theme: 互相帮助 / 学习.
Our “emergency” email before Day 2 introduced fresh practice topics such as 家庭 / 假期生活 (Family / Holiday Life), which helped students handle the actual question confidently.
One parent even messaged us specifically to thank us for our materials, saying that she managed to practice with her son during breakfast just hours before the actual exam.
A parent shared how VocabKing’s practice topic on 爱惜动物 (Protecting Animals) boosted her son’s confidence just hours before his oral exam.
Before we move on to the trends, here are the questions from both days, collated from different web sources for your reference.
The official 2025 PSLE Chinese Oral exam themes were Helping Each Other / Learning on Day 1, and Family / Travel on Day 2.
Difficulty Gap Between the Two Days
The difficulty gap between Day 1 and Day 2 was massive. 互相学习 is an extremely easy topic – even if you didn’t prep for 学习 specifically, 助人为乐 is the bread-and-butter topic that every school, every teacher preps their students for.
After Day 1, I was telling parents that I suspect Day 2 would be harder, and thus sent out an email with four extra topics to practice. Unfortunately, I later learned that not all our subscribers saw that email or hard time practising, and some struggled with the significantly more challenging Day 2 topic of 旅游/景点/家庭. In hindsight, I should have also WhatsApped instead of relying only on email.
In particular, students who took Day 1 English (Queueing) followed by Day 2 Chinese basically got hit with a double whammy of harder topics. Meanwhile, their peers who did Day 2 English (Hawker centres) had a significantly easier time for both subjects.
This isn’t just this year. After tracking PSLE oral topics for years, I’ve noticed this pattern consistently – one day is usually noticeably easier than the other. It’s not that Day 1 is always harder (it can be Day 2 that is easy), but the difficulty imbalance is real.
Other Patterns that Keep Repeating
After analysing this year’s topics alongside historical data, some clear trends emerged.
The socio-moralistic theme lives on. Eight out of the last nine years featured at least one socio-moralistic topic. 2024 was the odd one out, but 2025 brought us right back to form with “互相帮助/学习”. These topics require students to discuss values, social responsibility, and moral perspectives, and feels like a Civics and Moral class. Not exactly casual conversation material for 12-year-olds, but this makes it easier to spot.
The dreaded “你同意吗？” question. SEAB is smart, and they know that students are just memorising templates for the traditional “政府/学校/父母应该如何…” questions. And thus they are increasing testing students by giving a statement (e.g. “阅读很有趣” or “帮助别人，自己也能学到新知识”) and asking students if they agree or disagree.
This question format isn’t easy to handle. Why? Because it requires students to take a stance, justify their position with three well-elaborated points, all while maintaining proper Chinese expression. This is hard even for an adult, much less a 12-year-old.
Topic recycling for Prelims. This is more for prelims rather than the actual PSLE. We compiled a list of Prelim Oral topics from parents across 60 schools, and noticed that over 30% of prelims simply tested last year’s PSLE topics (which is extremely unlikely to come out).
Distribution of 2025 prelim Chinese Oral topics across schools — household chores was the most common theme (25%), followed by racial harmony and cleanliness (15.4% each).
So if you are P5 this year, make sure to practice this year’s topics before your prelims next year, though you can probably deprioritise it for the actual exam.
Preparation Beats Prediction
Yes, we correctly predicted this year’s topics. But what if next year throws us a curveball? And even if you successfully predict the topic, what if your child gets a tough question? Like on Day 1, “帮助别人，自己也能学到新知识。 你同意吗？” Even if you have predicted “学习” correctly, this question is a bit different.
That’s why I keep telling parents: you shouldn’t be thinking about prediction until one month before the exam. Before that, focus on foundational skills like how to structure an answer, how to deal with an unknown question. Preparation beats prediction every time.
The 5-Minute Daily Habit That Actually Works
You know what’s been working for our students? Consistency over cramming. One mother recently told me about her son, who got 45/50 for prelims (full marks for reading!). Her secret? “The daily fishing game in VocabKing really helps,” she said. “He doesn’t even realise he’s practising.”
A P6 boy scored 45/50 for his Chinese Prelim Oral (full marks for reading) after practising daily with VocabKing’s fishing game and voicebot.
And this mother whose child went from 41/50 earlier this year to 48/50 during prelims. A seven mark improvement in just a few months thanks to regular usage of VocabKing’s Mock Oral practice.
One student improved from 41/50 earlier this year to 48/50 at prelims after regular practice with VocabKing’s Mock Oral exercises.
That’s exactly the approach I recommend: spend just 5 minutes daily on mock oral practice. And this is crucial: vary your topics. Don’t keep doing the same question types. Practising a wider range of questions build up your muscle to deal with unknown topics and questions, so you don’t panic during the exam when given a curveball.
Don’t wait until P6 to start. The students who do best are the ones who practise early, little by little. Give your P4–5 child a head start — try VocabKing today. Sign up for a FREE 7-day trial now: https://learn.vocabking.com.sg/login or contact us at +65 8064 8461 for more information!
Read our analysis of the [2026 PSLE Chinese Oral topics].
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