2024 PSLE English Paper 2 Review: What You Need to Know

PSLE Paper 2 is often regard­ed as the most “stu­di­a­ble” of all the Eng­lish exam com­po­nents. With a struc­tured approach, con­sis­tent prac­tice, and famil­iar­i­ty with com­mon ques­tion types, stu­dents have a clear path to scor­ing well. Unlike oth­er com­po­nents, where sub­jec­tiv­i­ty may come into play, Paper 2 fol­lows a more pre­dictable pattern—giving stu­dents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to refine their skills and improve their accu­ra­cy.

In this review, we’ll take a clos­er look at how the 2024 PSLE Eng­lish Paper 2 fared, high­light­ing trends, chal­lenges, and key take­aways for stu­dents prepar­ing for the exam in the future.

1. Grammar MCQ: A Familiar Yet Slightly Evolved Challenge

For stu­dents with a strong grasp of gram­mar rules and suf­fi­cient prac­tice, the Gram­mar MCQ sec­tion should have felt famil­iar. The essen­tial gram­mar rules—tenses, sub­ject-verb agree­ment, ques­tion tags, and prepositions—remained unchanged.

How­ev­er, we noticed a shift towards longer phrase-based answers, sim­i­lar to the 2023 paper. This change isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly an increase in dif­fi­cul­ty but a styl­is­tic shift that requires stu­dents to be more metic­u­lous in iden­ti­fy­ing con­tex­tu­al clues.

To excel in this sec­tion, stu­dents need:

1. Suf­fi­cient practice—exposure to a vari­ety of ques­tion for­mats.

2. A strong grasp of gram­mar rules—ensuring con­fi­dence in appli­ca­tion.

3. Atten­tion to detail—marking out con­tex­tu­al clues care­ful­ly.

2. Vocabulary MCQ: A Slightly Tougher Paper with a Few Tricky Questions

Com­pared to 2023, Vocab­u­lary MCQ in 2024 was slight­ly more chal­leng­ing but still man­age­able. The ques­tions fea­tured a mix of com­mon­ly used and more advanced vocab­u­lary.

Some notable obser­va­tions:

Q11 would have been sim­ple for stu­dents famil­iar with the col­lo­ca­tion “state of health.” Col­lo­ca­tions are two or more words that are typ­i­cal­ly paired togeth­er, for instance, col­lo­ca­tions of “catch” are “catch a cold”, “catch a flight”.

Q12 could have been con­fus­ing because all four options con­vey sim­i­lar mean­ings relat­ed to “bor­ing” and “unin­ter­est­ing”. How­ev­er, the answer is straight­for­ward because only “monot­o­nous” can be used to describe tone. Tone refers to the qual­i­ty in the voice that express­es the speak­er’s feel­ings or thoughts, often towards the per­son being spo­ken to. Exam­ples of tone are sar­cas­tic and sym­pa­thet­ic. 

Q13: Like­ly the tough­est ques­tion. The options were less com­mon­ly test­ed, and stu­dents may have debat­ed between “com­prise” and “accom­mo­date.” How­ev­er, clues like “much big­ger” and “com­fort­ably” point­ed towards “accom­mo­date,” which refers to pro­vid­ing enough space.

One sur­pris­ing shift? No phrasal verbs were test­ed this year—something that hasn’t hap­pened in the past five years. How­ev­er, this doesn’t mean stu­dents should neglect them. Phrasal verbs con­tin­ue to appear in Gram­mar Cloze, Com­pre­hen­sion Cloze, and Edit­ing, mak­ing them essen­tial for strong lan­guage mas­tery.

3. Editing: A Test of Spelling Mastery

Edit­ing is where stu­dents often struggle—not due to unfa­mil­iar­i­ty with words, but because of com­mon­ly mis­spelled ones. In 2024, here were the com­mon­ly mis­spelled words that could have tripped stu­dents up:

Q41: weath­er → often con­fused with whether.

Q42: reser­voir → not dif­fi­cult but can be tricky with­out prac­tice.

Q49: guar­an­tee → a clas­sic spelling chal­lenge fre­quent­ly warned about by teach­ers.

The best way to ace Edit­ing? Rep­e­ti­tion and mus­cle mem­o­ry. Just like learn­ing how to ride a bicy­cle, cor­rect spelling should become sec­ond nature through con­sis­tent track­ing and cor­rec­tion of errors.

4. Comprehension Cloze: Why It’s One of the Most Feared Sections

Com­pre­hen­sion Cloze is noto­ri­ous for test­ing vocab­u­lary depth, infer­ence skills, and atten­tion to detail. While this year’s pas­sage was slight­ly more straight­for­ward than 2023’s, a few ques­tions stood out as par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing.

Q54: Reclaimed land—Students need­ed to link “reclaimed” with land recov­ery, which required pri­or knowl­edge of the term.

Q65: Bet­ter still—An uncom­mon phrase that caught stu­dents off guard. Know­ing the phrase (a more prefer­able option) would have helped.

The take­away? Read­ing wide­ly is key. Expo­sure to dif­fer­ent writ­ing styles—especially news arti­cles and fac­tu­al pieces—helps stu­dents recog­nise word pair­ings and devel­op strong con­tex­tu­al infer­ence skills.

5. Comprehension Open-Ended: High Stakes, High Rewards

As the high­est-weight­ed sec­tion of Paper 2 (20 marks), Com­pre­hen­sion Open-End­ed plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in deter­min­ing a student’s final score.

Gen­er­al­ly, PSLE ques­tions remain direct, allow­ing stu­dents to lift answers from the pas­sage. How­ev­er, infer­ence questions—where answers are scat­tered across dif­fer­ent parts of the text—continue to be the trick­i­est.

Some chal­leng­ing ques­tions this year:

Q72a:

Ques­tion: Explain what Li Mei’s moth­er had in mind when she scold­ed her daugh­ter then. [1m]

Ques­tion type: Infer­ence 

Clues from the pas­sage: “What hap­pened then was that her mind had drift­ed off, and her moth­er had scold­ed her for hav­ing but­terfin­gers.” 

How to get to the infer­ence: The key words to get to the infer­ence are “hav­ing but­terfin­gers”, which sug­gest that her moth­er thought that Li Mei was clum­sy as the term “but­terfin­gers” points to the idea of being clum­sy. 

Answer: She thought Li Mei was clum­sy. 

Q72b:

Ques­tion: Explain ful­ly the actu­al rea­son why Li Mei had bro­ken some­thing then. [2m] 

Ques­tion type: Direct + Infer­ence

• Typ­i­cal­ly, the phrase “explain ful­ly” indi­cates that it is a D+I ques­tion, which requires a two-part answer. The first mark is award­ed for cor­rect­ly quot­ing a rel­e­vant clue from the pas­sage. The sec­ond mark is giv­en for mak­ing a log­i­cal infer­ence based on the quot­ed clue. 

Clues from the pas­sage: “In real­i­ty, Li Mei was think­ing about a new bak­ing method. This time, she was plan­ning some­thing. She want­ed to com­plete her chore quick­ly so that she could start look­ing for new recipes. She was going to sur­prise her old­er broth­er, Wei Kai, on his birth­day the fol­low­ing week.” 

How to get to the infer­ence: First­ly, the direct clue as to why she broke some­thing can be found in the pas­sage — she was focused on a new bak­ing method as she want­ed to give her old­er broth­er a sur­prise. Using this infor­ma­tion, stu­dents can make a log­i­cal guess that Li Mei’s mind was pre­oc­cu­pied. As a result, she was not pay­ing atten­tion to wash­ing the dish­es, which led to her break­ing them. 

Answer: Li Mei was dis­tract­ed [infer­ence — 1m] as she was think­ing about a new bak­ing method, which she would utilise to sur­prise her old­er broth­er for his upcom­ing birth­day. [direct — 1m] 

Q77:

Ques­tion: What caused “a pang” (line 27) in Li Mei’s heart? [1m]

Ques­tion Type: Infer­ence 

Clues from the pas­sage: She felt a pang in her heart as her eyes dart­ed from her bruis­es to the bicy­cle. The frame was dent­ed.

How to get to the infer­ence: A “pang” refers to a sud­den, sharp feel­ing, espe­cial­ly of emo­tion­al pain. Li Mei felt the pang in her heart when her atten­tion shift­ed to the dam­aged bicy­cle, as indi­cat­ed by the clue “the frame was dent­ed.” Stu­dents had to make the con­nec­tion that Li Mei was upset not because she was phys­i­cal­ly hurt, but because she had dam­aged her old­er brother’s bicy­cle.
Answer: The dam­aged bicy­cle caused a pang in Li Mei’s heart.

Q78:

Based on infor­ma­tion from lines 29–35, com­plete the fol­low­ing table. [4m]

Q79:

Ques­tion: Why did Li Mei “feel worse” (line 35) after hear­ing what Wei Kai said? [1m]

Ques­tion Type: Infer­ence 

Clues from the pas­sage: When he saw Li Mei’s apolo­getic look, he quick­ly said with a smile, “It’ll still work after some repair. I’m just glad you’re fine!” Li Mei was already feel­ing guilty. Hear­ing what he said actu­al­ly made her feel worse.

How to get to the infer­ence: As Li Mei was already feel­ing guilty about dam­ag­ing the bicy­cle. Wei Kai’s com­fort­ing words and him being wor­ried about her well-being, instead of scold­ing her, inten­si­fied her guilt, mak­ing her feel worse. 

Answer: Wei Kai’s words added to the guilt that she was already feel­ing because he was more con­cerned about her con­di­tion than the sor­ry state of his bicy­cle. 

Our thoughts on this ques­tion: For a 1‑mark ques­tion, the sug­gest­ed answer key indi­cates that this ques­tion is quite demand­ing, as it con­tains two parts. First­ly, it requires stu­dents to explain how Wei Kai’s words made her feel worse. Stu­dents who only men­tioned “made her feel worse” would like­ly not receive the full mark. They would need to spec­i­fy how his words inten­si­fied or added to her guilt. Sec­ond­ly, stu­dents must infer the rea­son for the added guilt — that he was more con­cerned about Li Mei than the dam­aged bicy­cle, based on what he said in the pas­sage. The sec­ond part of the answer should not have been too chal­leng­ing for stu­dents to deduce.

Doing well for com­pre­hen­sion open-end­ed is no rock­et sci­ence, as long as stu­dents are will­ing and able to: 

1. Read care­ful­ly and annotate—highlight key infor­ma­tion.
2. Under­stand ques­tion requirements—spot if it’s a direct or infer­ence ques­tion.
3. Apply clue-sourc­ing techniques—connect dif­fer­ent parts of the pas­sage.
4. Check for gram­mar, spelling, and clarity—ensure answers are com­plete.

Final Thoughts: What This Means for Future PSLE Students

PSLE Eng­lish Paper 2 remains the most struc­tured and pre­dictable com­po­nent of the exam. With con­sis­tent prac­tice and expo­sure to past ques­tion types, stu­dents can aim for 80+ marks.

How­ev­er, while occa­sion­al curve­ball ques­tions may appear, the key is not to fix­ate on them. Instead, stu­dents should focus on:

• Mas­ter­ing com­mon ques­tion types

• Strength­en­ing their foun­da­tion in gram­mar and vocab­u­lary

• Improv­ing com­pre­hen­sion and infer­ence skills through wide read­ing

At Think Teach, we help stu­dents suc­ceed by analysing pat­terns, break­ing down ques­tion types, and pro­vid­ing strate­gic tech­niques that give them con­fi­dence in the exam hall. Our stu­dents enter the exam know­ing they’ve encoun­tered at least 90% of the ques­tion types cov­ered in class.

Ulti­mate­ly, suc­cess in PSLE Eng­lish isn’t about luck—it’s about smart prepa­ra­tion and mas­ter­ing the skills that tru­ly mat­ter.