When you are a PSLE teacher, every day brings about new revelations.

Before the holidays, I advised a student to KISS. She tended to choose more difficult words than necessary to fill in the blanks for Compre Cloze. Case in point: she wrote ‘coexisted’ instead of ‘lived’. For another passage, she used ‘obligated’ instead of ‘necessary’.

The use of big words, ironically, cost her to lose marks.

I learnt that it’s sometimes difficult to follow my own advice. Yesterday, I was tackling a Compre Cloze on the Mooncake festival and felt sure that it was [synonymous] with the moon. I had to write it several times before I was confident about the spelling.

Guess what the answer was? ‘Associated’. Would PSLE examiners accept ‘synonymous’? Your guess is as good as mine.