Following the shocking revelation that Transport Minister Mr Lui Tuck Yew will not be running for office in the coming elections, the media has focused on transport infrastructure in Singapore. In a commentary, journalist Sue-Ann Chia is of the opinion that public transport companies should share the blame for lapses in public transport. Some questions for discussion:

• Which party should be held more accountable for lapses in public transport, if at all? 

• Should the transport companies heed the writer’s call and share the blame, how should they then take responsibility?

• In most companies, CEOs resign as a way of taking responsibility for their oversight. Is this a useful gesture? Why or why not?

• What can be done to better manage/minimise transport lapses in Singapore?

Some of our students have recently sat for the preliminary examinations. With less than a month to the PSLE, here are some of the common words that students may use during the examinations, but which are frequently misspelt.

“Disappoint” contains only one ‘s’. Students frequently misspell this as “dissapoint” or “dissappoint".

Although the words may rhyme, they are spelt slightly differently in writing. 

The noun form of the words contain an ‘e’, but this is dropped when the words are in its adverbial form.

One of the problems in spelling and writing is that students tend to “hear” the sound of the words, se-puh-ret and d-air-fi-nate, and end up misspelling the words as “seperate” and “definate". Remember to look out for “a rat” in “separate” and that there are no a’s in “definite”!

Strictly speaking, this is more of a grammatical issue. With the apostrophe, the word is a contraction of “it is”. You use it in dialogue such as, “It’s a lovely day out there!”

Without the apostrophe, the word becomes the possessive form of the pronoun, “it”. You use it to refer to an object or animal earlier in the sentence. For example, “The shark is a fearsome creature. Its teeth are really sharp.”

We wish all students the best for the milestone examinations!