The short answer
- The two halves of the paper are not the same question — Reading Aloud and the conversation ask for different things.
- SEAB's published objective for Reading Aloud is about how the passage sounds: fluent, expressive, clearly pronounced, suited to purpose, audience and context. Looking up is not among the things it names.
- SEAB's published objective for the conversation does name the listener — answers must engage them. In a conversation, looking at the person you are talking to is part of that.
- Nobody outside SEAB has the examiner's band sheet, so treat anyone who tells you eye contact is worth marks — or costs them — as giving an opinion.
- Memorising the passage so as to look up is a bad trade: it buys eye contact with accuracy.
This is one of the few PSLE English Oral questions where parents are told opposite things by people they have every reason to trust. Some school teachers tell children to look up at the examiner while reading the passage. Some tuition centres say the opposite, firmly. Children come home having been told both in the same week.
The disagreement is easier to settle than it looks, because the two halves of the oral paper are asking for different things — and because SEAB publishes, in plain English, what each half is assessing.
What SEAB actually publishes about the oral paper
Two things, and no more: the marks each part carries, and the Assessment Objectives — the statements of what is being assessed. Reading Aloud is worth 15 marks and the Stimulus-Based Conversation 25, making the oral paper 40 marks in total, or 20% of the English Language grade. The objectives are these, in the syllabus's own words:
PSLE English Language syllabus, Paper 4
For Reading Aloud — “read aloud fluently and expressively with clear and accurate pronunciation to suit purpose, audience and context”.
For the conversation — “express personal opinions, ideas and experiences clearly and appropriately to engage the listener”, and “speak fluently, with clear pronunciation and grammatical accuracy, using a range of appropriate vocabulary and structures”.
PSLE English Language (0001), implemented from the 2025 examination.
Read those two side by side and the difference is immediate. The reading objective is entirely about how the passage sounds. The conversation objective names a second person — the listener — and asks the child to engage them.
So does a child need eye contact for Reading Aloud?
Nothing in the published objective for Reading Aloud asks for it. Everything the objective names — fluency, expression, clear and accurate pronunciation, and suiting the purpose, audience and context the preamble sets out — is something a listener can judge with their eyes closed.
That is as far as the evidence goes, and it is worth being precise about the gap. SEAB does not publish the examiner's band sheet, so nobody can tell you for certain that eye contact is scored, or that it is not. What can be said is that it is not among the things the published objective asks for, and that the guidance being given both ways in Singapore is guidance rather than fact. Anyone who states it flatly in either direction — including a very confident tutor — is telling you what they believe.
The practical version, which holds whichever way the uncertainty falls: a child reading a passage they have in front of them should be reading it. Glancing up naturally at a full stop costs nothing and is what a comfortable reader does anyway. Reading the passage to the examiner, as a performance, is a different and much riskier thing.
The trap: memorising the passage so as to look up
The advice to make eye contact while reading leads somewhere worse than itself. A child who believes they must look up, and who cannot both look up and read, will try to memorise the passage during the preparation minutes so that they can. We have heard of children being coached to do exactly this.
It is a poor trade in every direction. A memorised passage is a recited passage, so expression flattens. Recall under pressure produces word slips — a word swapped, a plural dropped, a small word invented — and reading the printed words accurately is unambiguously part of what Reading Aloud asks for. And the preparation minutes get spent on memorising instead of on the two things they are genuinely useful for, which is a subject of its own.
If your child has been told to memorise it
Say plainly that they don't have to, and that the passage stays in front of them for the whole reading. Children who have been told otherwise often arrive at the exam carrying a job nobody asked them to do, and the anxiety does more damage than the eye contact was ever going to earn.
The conversation is the opposite case
Here the published objective does point at the other person: answers must be expressed “clearly and appropriately to engage the listener”. Engaging someone is a two-way activity, and in an ordinary conversation between two people in a room, looking at each other is simply part of how it is done. A child who delivers three good answers to the photograph, or to the table, has made the conversation harder to have.
This does not need to be drilled as a technique, and it should not be. Children who are talking about something they actually have something to say about look up by themselves; children who are reciting look away. If your child is avoiding the examiner's eyes in the conversation, the thing to work on is usually the answer rather than the eyes — start with the most common conversation mistakes.
| Reading Aloud | The conversation | |
|---|---|---|
| What SEAB's objective names | How the passage sounds: fluency, expression, clear and accurate pronunciation, suited to purpose, audience and context. | Expressing opinions, ideas and experiences clearly and appropriately to engage the listener; speaking fluently and accurately. |
| Is another person named? | No. | Yes — the listener. |
| Where the child's eyes should be | On the passage. Glancing up at a full stop is natural and costs nothing. | On the examiner, most of the time, the way they would be in any conversation. |
| What to practise | Reading it well. Nothing about the eyes. | Having something to say. The eyes follow. |
What SEAB's objective names
Reading Aloud
How the passage sounds: fluency, expression, clear and accurate pronunciation, suited to purpose, audience and context.
The conversation
Expressing opinions, ideas and experiences clearly and appropriately to engage the listener; speaking fluently and accurately.
Is another person named?
Reading Aloud
No.
The conversation
Yes — the listener.
Where the child's eyes should be
Reading Aloud
On the passage. Glancing up at a full stop is natural and costs nothing.
The conversation
On the examiner, most of the time, the way they would be in any conversation.
What to practise
Reading Aloud
Reading it well. Nothing about the eyes.
The conversation
Having something to say. The eyes follow.
The same question, two different answers — because the two halves of the paper assess different things
If the school has said something different
It is worth being relaxed about this rather than treating it as a contradiction to resolve. A teacher telling a class to look up during Reading Aloud is usually reaching for something real — children who read with their chin on their chest sound muffled and unconfident, and lifting the head fixes that. The instruction is about posture and voice, and it works. It just isn't about the examiner's eyes.
So take the useful half: head up, voice out, passage in front of them. What a child does not need is to feel they are failing an instruction every time they look at the page they are reading from.
Hear what the reading actually sounds like. PSLEPrep records a full PSLE-format passage and scores the things the objective names — pronunciation, fluency, expression and accuracy against the printed words — so you can tell a delivery problem from a reading problem without guessing.
Try 10 free practice sessions →Where to go next
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my child need to make eye contact during PSLE Reading Aloud?
Nothing in SEAB's published Assessment Objective for Reading Aloud asks for it. The objective is about how the passage sounds — fluent, expressive, clearly and accurately pronounced, suited to purpose, audience and context. SEAB does not publish the examiner's band sheet, so nobody can say with certainty that eye contact is scored or unscored; what is certain is that it is not among the things the objective names. A child reading a passage should be reading it, glancing up naturally at a full stop.
Should my child look at the examiner during the conversation?
Here the objective does name the other person: answers must engage “the listener”. Looking at someone is part of how a conversation is held, so yes — but it does not need drilling as a technique. Children with something to say look up by themselves. If your child is avoiding the examiner's eyes, work on the answer first.
Should my child memorise the passage so they can look up while reading it?
No. It trades something the objective clearly asks for — reading the printed words accurately and expressively — for something it does not mention. Recital flattens expression, recall under pressure produces word slips, and the preparation minutes get spent memorising instead of on what they are for. The passage stays in front of the child for the whole reading.
My child's school teacher said eye contact is required. Who is right?
Take the useful half of the advice. A teacher telling a class to look up is usually fixing something real — a child reading with their chin down sounds muffled and unconfident. Head up and voice out is good coaching. It just isn't what the published objective for Reading Aloud is about, and no child should feel they are failing an instruction by looking at the page they are reading from.