Who knew talking could be so complicated?

Last week, Andre had his oral exam. For oral, the kids have to read aloud a passage and talk about a picture. You may remember his garbled account last year.

I dislike oral revision because it's so iffy - there are no outright answers (unlike math!) and I don't have a clear idea how to help Andre improve. So as usual, procrastination set in and we scrambled to revise only a few days before the exam.

Surprisingly, his passage reading has improved. I think it helps that he's very animated so his narration comes across as lively. Except he sometimes swallows his words, which he explained away as, "I have a lot of saliva in my mouth!" Eww...

He's less adept at the picture talk. For one, his grammar is atrocious. Past tense and present tense all jumbled together with a generous helping of Singlish. Plus his tendency to start a sentence without thinking about it first, leading to lots of "And, and, and...", "Ummm...", "Errr..." and starts and stops.

The other problem is that just like in composition, his imagination sometimes runs away with him and he is unable to apply the picture in a realistic context. This is a picture I used to revise his picture talk.

Looks quite straightforward, right? Andre was quite enthusiastic about it as it looked like an exciting scene. He said very dramatically, "A robber on the left side was carrying a SWORD." And then, you see the bar stool that had toppled behind the robber? Andre said, "Somebody left on the floor one of those... those weights, you know? The thing you carry in the gym."

Aiyoh!

The night before the exam, to give him some assurance, we prayed with him. I prayed something along the lines of "God, please give Andre confidence for his oral exam tomorrow and help him think clearly and know what to say."

When he came home from school, I asked how his exam went. He declared, "VERY CONFIDENT!"

Doomed. We're dooooomed.