We've set up a new website here at www.kungfucatsacademy.sg!
Do visit it!
Seems like I'm only posting once a year now, haha :)
These are the results of my graduating students from 2010 batch:
1. M - L1R5 10, physics and chem A2. This is a smart boy. Interesting thing is that I've taught his sister a long time ago and they called me to 'boost' up M's score in the last few weeks leading to the O'lvls. Had a very enjoyable time teaching him because he just keeps bombarding me with questions.
2. K - L1R4 9, L1R5 16. This is a surprise. He isn't the most motivated nor the most hardworking student, so I'm glad that he got the score that is a little surprising on the upside. He's going poly, so the score of 9 points would do very well to get into most courses that he wanted to do. Please please please don't go JC...I don't think he is ready for the brutal and short 2 yrs of JC life.
3. M - L1R5 15, L1R4 10. Got an A2 for emaths. She isn't very motivated to do well in her studies too and wanted to go polytechnic, possibly following her two elder sisters to accountancy. Interesting fact - I've taught all three of the sisters. I always think that if she would just be mildly interested in her work, she can definitely do better. Alas, she got an attention span of a primary school kid.
4. C - B3 for emaths. He is in sec 4, NA steam but taking O'lvl emaths in 2010. He is the top 9 students in his school who got B3 and above, so he's very happy to get the results. I suppose he'll be taking it another time this year in 2011. Usually he gets around just passing marks, so naturally he's very elated. Very happy for him - this is a very hardworking boy.
5. R - L1R5 6 points. My best student for the batch of 2010. Sometimes I don't know why he needed tuition actually. I'm sure without my help, he would have gone on to get his 6 points anyhow. He is the ONLY guy who beat my O'lvl score of 7 points. It's always the girls who beat or equal me. Most happy for him.
6. A - L1R5 15 points. He had problem with retaining information and applying them on new problems. That's always his problem. I regret not being able to iron out his problem so that he can get a better score. Tried all sorts of ways but to no avail. I warned him not to go JC, but not sure if he'll heed my advice. Or perhaps his parents would over ride that advice. Seriously, not all students are meant for JC. Still, he did his best and get B3 for all his subjects, except for english (A1) and combined humanities (A2). That's a huge improvement from failure and getting passing marks...still, in Singapore's context, it's just not enough.
7. M - L1R5 8 pts, A1 for chemistry. She needed help in chemistry because she was getting B3 all along and needed the extra boost. But being very hardworking, she had finished all that I could have done for her in the buildup to the exams, so I told her not that I won't be coming anymore since there's nothing else to do for her. She should do very well should she go to JC.
8. M - L1R5 14 pts. B3 for chemistry. I was hoping she'll get an A for chemistry but things are not what I've hoped for. Well, 14 points for JC entry isn't exactly good. I feel that she can get a better score, perhaps closer to 10 points.
I've seen some of the O'lvl papers and I must say that the papers are much easier compared to the previous years. So, going by the cycle theory, perhaps 2011 would be tougher. Prepare yourself for it.
I've seen some of the O'lvl papers and I must say that the papers are much easier compared to the previous years. So, going by the cycle theory, perhaps 2011 would be tougher. Prepare yourself for it.
As usual, I will post the results of my students here for self reference. This is certainly not for parents who want to see if my tuition works or not.
B - From bayshore. He's a nice person, forgetful but very determined. I am very happy that he got 16 pts for L1R5, with B3 for all the maths and science. Great job.
B - Sigh..sometimes in life, you have one chance to do things right. Just one chance. If you missed the opportunity and it slips past your hands, nothing much you can do. What you can do is to pick yourself up and walk forward with renewed vigor. I know he can do better than 16 pts for L1R5. It's interesting to me that while the first B got 16 pts and is jumping for joy, this B got 16 pts and is not happy at all. A.maths, Phy, Chem are all B3. Emaths A1.
M - L1R5 is 10 pts. A2 for phy/chem, A1 for e and a maths, Bio A1, humans and Eng A2. The points is within my expectation, though I'm quite sure he thought his english can get an A1 to push down his total score further. Well done...no guys have broken my record yet, haha
D - I actually forgot to write it down. If my memory serves me well, he got 12 for L1R5. Oh well, he did very well in his own standard and mine too. I remembered we did a behind-the-envelope calculation to get around the same score. Hardwork makes all the difference.
E - Didn't do too well. Not all that unexpected isn't it? C5 for most subjects, except B3 for D&T and science. How to do well when one is so indifferent to one's success?
Posting of the various JC/Poly will be out this coming Wed. What I need to say about JC/Poly I've already mentioned to them individually, so there's not point to keep harping on the same points again and again. Whatever paths they choose, I wish them success and smooth journey.
Old levels results are coming out next monday, on 11th Jan 2010 at 2pm. Here are some stuff you might want to bring along to school:
1. Do have a proper haircut. Dye it black if you know your school is fussy about this. I've heard of students being rejected from getting their results due to their haircut.
2. Wear proper school uniforms with school shoes. Please, strictly no sandals. Again, I've heard of students being rejected and asked to go back home to change to proper attire.
3. Bring tissue paper. Some people are made of water - cry when happy and cry when sad.
4. Bring a file or some sort of holding equipment. The result slip or certificate (i'm not sure if they give that out on the same day, can't remember) you'll need it for future use, so do keep it properly. If it rains, byebye.
5. Lastly, bring a handphone and text me your results! I'll gladly share your joys and sorrows. Just text me, I'll definitely reply. I might not be able to pick up calls if I'm in lessons.
Good luck!
Ok, this is the last I'm sharing for today. This one is quite an important bit for physics. It's the pesky last chapter for the current physics syllabus - electromagnetic induction. I did this years ago, and thought that it's still very useful for present usage. Damn, should have issued this instead of having to write ALL of them out during my class. What a splendid time saver...zzz...
Here it is - electromagnetic induction notes.
Since i'm at the mood of sharing my worksheets / notes, here's another one I did years ago, when I was more free to do such things.
This one is the physics checklist for O'lvls. I included all the things that you need to know about physics pure syllabus. This is a bit old, so parts of 23 (those logic gates) and the entire chapters for 24 and 25 are out of syllabus.
How to use this checklist?1. First, read the checklist
2. Read the textbooks/notes, paying close attention to those that are listed in the checklist
3. After finishing one chapter, read the checklist and ask yourself if you can answer those checklist. You really need to know those stuff in the checklist.
4. If there are some knowledge gaps, go and read up those specific parts again.
5. Repeat 2 to 4 until you know all the stuff then move on to the next chapter and repeat.
I typed out some worksheets on quadratic equation problem sums from an old assessment book that I bought years ago. It's those problems sums where you have to form your own equation, and then solve the equation in terms of x. My student had some problems forming the equations (which is basically the hardest part of the problem - solving them is easily done), hence I set this up to help her.
Here's the link for those interested.
Yesterday, my students got their mother tongue (MT) results. Most didn't do very well, and I wonder why. Are we no longer focused on MT? I guess I'm slightly different, as I speak MT at home, rather than English, hence English is more acquired for me than my second language.
I pity those who had to retake again, it's just a bloody waste of time. I can imagine how painful it is. Though last time in my O'lvls, I managed to do it in one trial (A2 - dun play a fool with me), I did tried two times in my A'lvl. That took up a lot of time and I could have spent it on better things.
Come to think of it, not a lot of my students can make it in MT. I can only vaguely remember a handful (less than 10) whose MT is as good as their English. Most are just passing standard only. So much to say about Singapore's bilingual system - it seems that it made that effectively single language only.
The recent outbreak of H1N1 is causing a lot of problems in Singapore. Me, especially. When the last pandemic of such scale happened, it was during the SARS period while I was in NUS. I wasn't acutely aware of the implications, just that I must not go around crowded places and so on. Basically, I couldn't care less.
But for this current pandemic, my job was affected. As Singapore nears the peak of cases reported with H1N1 (coupled with 5 deaths so far), there are many many students reporting fever and even 1 confirmed case of H1N1. Quite a few cancelled because of flu-like symptons coupled with fever. What can I say? Of course they had to rest and cancel the tuition.
It's been pretty disruptive to my job and schedule. Hopefully all these will clear up soon and things will get back to normal.
Going to meet my H1N1 student this afternoon. Wish me luck!
This is such a nice picture, I have to share this! There is this website where you can create wordle. Don't know what a wordle is? You just have to try it to see it, amazing!
Here's the update for my new book. I've began writing since last week and making some good progress. Already, I've had 160 questions under my wings, and it's only 50% done. Looks like I should be able to finish a chapter at long last!
I plan to finish a chapter every week, so I should be able to finish in around 6 months or so, provided I keep to my schedule. It's a bit hard to think of questions but the worst is actually having to type it out as it takes up a lot of time. No choice lah, have to do it anyway.
For the sake of my students, I must persevere!!
I'm trying to write a book for my students here. I've gathered all my stuff in front of my desk already and I'm ready to begin doing. It's been a long time project since a few years ago but I've been dilly-dallying till now. Can't really reveal much on the details because firstly, it's quite confidential and secondly, I don't have much details to sketch out anyway.
I figured that if I don't do this in bits and pieces, I'll probably do not have enough time to sit down and write it in one shot. Divide and conquer, don't they say?
Will keep you posted once I've had significant progress.
Irritating student (I shall call that person from now on) slept in my class again. I've been asking him time and time again to get some form of Ten Year Series (TYS) so that he can do some practice, but he'd been delaying for months. I think at least for 3 months. I'm not sure what he's so busy with.
Irritating student is more alert today, at least he is not openly yawning. He just sleeps while I look through his working. Sometimes it feels like a chore teaching people like that. It's very very draining on my energy level teaching someone who is an energy sucker - it feels like I've finished a 4 hours class at the end of the 2 hours lesson.
If I'm financially free, I will NEVER teach such students. It's a waste of their parent's tuition money and my time. I wonder what good will come out of it in the end.
Enough whining....I noticed that the market do not sell TYS anymore. That's a bit troubling. I thought that perhaps the publishers are a bit late to consolidate the papers for publishing, but in this time period and there's still no signs of TYS - there must be something seriously wrong. Perhaps with the change of the new syllabus for O'lvls, there are not enough years to publish a TYS, hence they stopped publication. But, even if the older syllabus are not entirely relevant, a good part of it (80-90%) are still very useful as extra practice for students sitting for the O'lvls.
With this new move, there are really only two ways to get such practices:
1) From bras brasah complex, look for 2nd hand bookstores. If I'm you, I'll hurry and get a copy before it runs out
2) From 'old-fashioned' tutors like me, who had the foresight to store up before the whole supply runs out. I had 20-30 yrs series even, for certain subjects. I shall take good care of those books, since they are a rare commodity now.
I was bored and tried searching my own name. Hey, guess what - my tutor profile starts to show up. Besides that, I found a website with my name on it from NUS alumini. It was from my batch of Civil engineering class 2003.
Not bad eh, my name is quite prominent, occupying the number 10 slot!
I've know of some independent schools who had very bad teachers. The teachers are plain irresponsible from the stories told to me by my students.
Some of them do teach their students, because the quality of their students intake into the school is high, so they are deemed as 'smart'. Hence, the teachers basically just browse through the contents of the slides and considered their lessons as taught. If teachers just had to read out the slides, we don't even need a human face there - students can just use a software to read out the notes to them. Teaching someone involves a lot more than just reading out the materials.
Another bunch of them assumed that the students have tutors, so they take it that the tutors will share their workload to teach the students. When students have problems and asked their teachers to clarify some points, the teachers blatantly replied, "Go ask your tutors".
What's the point of paying higher premiums to secure a place in such schools when the teacher's quality are so deplorable? I will have some serious thinking to do when next time I have a kid and have to select which schools he/she wants to go to.
But somehow, I have to thank these bad teachers. Without them, my services will not be in such high demands. Sometimes, people have to know what is bad teaching before they appreciate what is good teaching. Ironic isn't it?
I've not been blogging here for a long time. I guess one of the main reasons is that I realised that students who need help in tuition might not be the most motivated to actually want to post questions here to learn more, despite it being free.
Oh well, that is something that is totally unexpected. I thought that if I had an online portal for students to connect with me when I'm not there physically to teach them, it'll be good for them. Never really expected that they won't be come online to post anything, haha! If life is so predictable, we'll are be millionaires, won't we?
I'm also not blogging because I'm not so sure about the direction of this blog. Who am I writing to? What am I writing for? What is my aim of having this blog? All these questions are not so clear to me at this moment, and hence my lack of purposeful marketing and therefore the lack of motivation to carry 'talking' to myself here.
Anyway, I wanted to come here to lament about certain students I've encountered. It really pisses me off because of their attitude towards their own future. In the next few months, they will be sitting for a major milestone exam in their life, but I seem to be more worried than them regarding the lack of preparation. It's not as if I didn't warn them what will happen, since I've basically saw hundreds of students going through the same route as them (not discounting my own personal experience too). Do they think they can handle it without so much as lifting a finger? Do they think they can even pass without putting in even meagre efforts?
WAKE UP! Get real!! The real situation outside is worse than they can imagine, especially those who take A'lvls. The A'lvl is such a brutal examination that I dare say a big majority of those sitting for it (esp in the 2nd/3rd tier JCs) are NOT going to pass well enough to enter university. Good for you if you have your own parents' sponsorship to send you overseas to study, but for those who are not, where are you going after jc? Have you ever seriously thought about it?
I've students telling me they all sorts of excuse for skipping tuition. Some student even gave me this very lame excuse of being sick every other week. Bacteria or viruses love attacking you in a clockwork manner, so precisely making you sick every fortnightly? What are they trying to tell me? I hate students are who not forthcoming. Especially LIARS. I've dealt with enough of them.
Another one is supposed to have tuition twice per week. But that had been reduced to just once per week since last month. Why? Here are the reasons - birthday (need to go party), sick and not feeling well, remedial in school, after exams already etc etc etc. Hey, if you want to have just one tuition per week, don't waste my time slot by giving me lame excuses. You know what, I just fired you - from now on, you'll have your time slot taken by someone else. The most frustrating thing is that I wanted to tell the parents about this sudden turn of events by that student, so I asked for the parent's email. But guess what, they didn't seem to want to give me and ignored my request. GOOD, save me my efforts. I'm not exactly dying to tell you about your child's impending doom in O'lvls anyway.
When had I started to become so short tempered? Ever since I realised that my time on Earth is limited and I will try my best to help those who help themselves. With irritating students who didn't want to help themselves taking up my precious time, I'll have less time to help others. It's just plain irresponsible. I'll do the necessary cut-loss to my students, as I've done in my equity investment.
Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
This Fri, 8am, will be the release of the posting results for the Joint Admission Exercise (JAE). This means that after the posting, you'll be allocated a place in one of the 12 choices that you had chosen since a few weeks ago.
Good luck for those who participate in the JAE! Hope you get where you wish to go :)
That being said, sometimes, one do not really know where one wishes to go. You know, after choosing a place, you might think about what happens if you had chosen another place. There are some people I knew whom wishes to go to top 5 JC, but after going there, things are not going as smoothly as planned. The future is always uncertain...
The O'lvls results are out yesterday at 2 pm. A stream of sms flowed a few hours after that. I never had the habit of making a record of my students' grades because while I can tutor them, I cannot take the exams for them. So what if they get A1 or F9, I can't really control that, can I? I also do not know how much of their grades are attributed to me, so really, what's the point of keeping a record?
Some tutors guarantee A for their students, haha, but I will never do that, unless I can take the papers for them. That being said, there is a point to record - and that is purely for sentimental reasons. It's like when I'm old and dying, I can look back at all the students I've taught and say, hey, so and so got this grades. Haha! Ok, enough grousing, here's what they got:
1. MY - Pure Chem B3, Pure Phy B4. L1R3 11 pts, L1R5 16 pts - Taught MY chemistry mainly plus a bit of physics towards the end. One of the students that I worried the most for, but very happy for him in the end.
2. BL -Combi Sci C5, L1R4 17 pts - Taught BL science, esp the chem part. My most worrisome student! Considering that he always fail his science and I took him in like 2 months before O'lvl, I think he did very well! I hope I gave him some hope to carry on striving for the best in his life, academic or otherwise.
3. ML - E.maths A2, Pure phys B3, L1R4 12 pts - taught E.maths and pure physics for ML. My third most worrisome student, in the end he got it good. Very good, I'll say - so pleased for him
4. WYT - Pure chem A2, L1R5 8 - taught her chem. She's the 3rd of all her siblings whom I've taught. Don't expect any worse from her, so it's kind of expected.
5. TLC - Pure chem A1, L1R5 7 - together with WYT. One of my best students. Enough said.
6. DY - L1R5 6 pts - another of my best student. Don't understand why she need to take tuition at all. Taught her bro in A lvls in the past too. All did exceedingly well.
7. MC - A.maths A2, E.maths A2, Chem A2, Phy B3, L1R5 13 pts - taught her a variety of subjects because she's weak in application, not in theory. Not so confidence too. She's not happy with what she got, but seriously, not such a bad score.
8. JP - Combi sci A1 - L1R5 16 pts, L1R4 12 pts - taught him combi sci. Was pleasantly surprised he got this grade. A little lazy but must say that he put in effort towards the end. Happy for him
9. R - C6 English, B3 Amaths, A2 Emaths, B3 Geo, B3 Phy, A2 Accounting, C5 chem - L1R5 16 - I'll say that to finish 2 years worth of work in 1 year, plus to cope with a new language - it's amazing that he got this kind of results. Well done!
10. D - B3 E.maths, A2 A.maths, L1R5 12 - Too quiet to interact with him much. Still, am happy that his A.maths did well. In fact, I think his mum will be very happy with his results.
11. ET - B4 Chemistry, L1R5 16, L1R4 12 - Quite disappointed with her chemistry results. Should be able to get higher than this, I expect.
12. BQ - C5 Chem, L1R5 19, L1R4 14 - This is the ultimate disappointment. Really expected her to get much much better than this. Chem C5? Shocking to me.
First post of the new year, 2009.
Not exactly in a happy mood. Nah, nothing particularly bad happened to me. I've got a bad debt to chase after, but 2008 is a pretty good year for me in both my investment (not profits though) and my career. Good health too, really nothing to complain about.
It's just that I do not understand what's so happy about the new year. I personally detested countdown, with all the crowd and people finding a reason to party. For me, 31st Dec is a good time to find a quiet time to reflect upon what had happened in the past year and what challenges we can expect to face in the coming year. As far as I can tell, I always hated the January. Perhaps it's the drill of waking up early in the wee hours of the morning from my secondary school days that make me find January repulsive.
So many things to do...what will the coming year be like for me?
Question: Is a worthless life worth living at all?
The more astute would ask what is deemed worthless. Who deemed it worthless? Well, if one believes that a person should have full rights over his own body, then that alone should answer the 'what' and 'who' part. Each individual have no control over the circumstances that he is born into the world - you can't choose your parents, your country, your financial background, your skin colour too. However, if there is just one shred of thing that is important to us and that we can control, that must be the way we choose to end our lives.
This is not a morbid article, in fact it is a liberating one. To stare at death with your middle finger is perhaps the bravest thing that a mortal man can do. When the very thing that remind us of our mortality is no longer feared, life takes on a very different tack. The man, having entered the world with no choice of his own, will have the freedom to end it the way he chooses it. Is it so hard to empower an individual the decision of when and how to leave this place?
Euthanasia - mercy killing - had been in the newspaper for some time. Different religious heads came forward to condemn it. Well, I beg to differ. I believe no person will choose to end their lives willingly if they see any value in it. But whose value are we talking about here? It must and should always be the value perceived by the person who is contemplating thoughts of suicide. No government or religion should step in to interfere, in my honest opinion.
But would I ever take my own life? I think not, I'm very much pro-life. However, I would rather let the individual take the choice rather than be forced to take it by parties who have an interest in prolonging your life.
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