Supervising my son’s learning of his Chinese spelling bores me to tears. But I make the best out of it by reading an idiom book while he’s clowning around at work.

Today, I came across 吓得大惊失色 (terrified to the extent that all colour was drained from one’s face). Decided then that it was a great phrase worth committing to heart. Flipped open the PSLE 2023 paper and realised that I had good instincts. One helping phrase was, in fact, 吓了一跳 (jumped with fright).

Of course, I would subsequently train my son to use all helping phrases for the exam. This meant that he would be trained to write 她吓了一跳. Decided to pair it with 她大惊失色，顿时愣了一下. (Her face turned ashen, she was momentarily stumped.)

I think it would be many years down the road before I could flex the second half of my ingeniously crafted sentence, but I did teach the boy 她大惊失色. Yes, I’m locking this in for the high-stakes exam five years from now.

Someday, I might just run a flourishing tuition centre that teaches compo writing in English and Chinese.