Click on each question to see the answer (and Miss Loi’s head) magically slide into view.
Regarding the Golden Question
For the benefit of some readers who might not yet be aware, according to Wikipedia, joss sticks are “a type of incense, traditionally most often burned before a Chinese religious image, idol, or shrine.”
There is also a traditional Chinese saying which goes like this:
平时不烧香，临时抱佛脚
Using an online translator, this can be loosely translated as “Never burn joss sticks when all is well, but hug Buddha’s foot when in distress”.
How on earth is this related to students studying for O-Level Mathematics in Singapore is something Miss Loi shall leave you to ponder yourself.
Regarding Miss Loi’s Jφss Sticks Sessions
Following the Chinese saying in the previous question, one must always burn joss sticks regularly to avoid contracting the terrifying LMBFH Syndrome.
Going beyond the rhetoric, Joss Sticks refers to Miss Loi’s challenging set of exam paper questions and a Jφss Sticks Session is then, quite simply, an intensive Maths group tuition class conducted by the Venerable Miss Loi.
I. AM. MISS. LOI. ‘Nuff said! 😈While we cannot speak for other tuition centres, each group session at The Temple is limited to a +maximum of five to eighteen (depending on room size) students only, so as to ensure that each and every single one receives the maximum amount of Miss Loi’s tender loving care and benefit from her legendary teachings.
Besides, this is most certainly NOT one of those “come-here-and-do-worksheet-while-tutor-relax-and-polish-nail” kind of tuition class. It’s really a hive of activities i.e. teaching, discussions, knowledge imparting, tips sharing, mock tests,
scolding, devouring foodetc. behind that serene facade of joss sticks smoke!Ah … the mother of all FAQs.
Strictly speaking Miss Loi has taught them all.
Given her unfortunately-packed schedule, class size constraints, and a severe manpower crisis (i.e. there’s only one Miss Loi around), Miss Loi will ONLY be teaching Secondary School Mathematics in the foreseeable future, with priority given to students taking their O-Levels in the current year (especially those with C5 to F9 grades), since they are the ones in most dire need of Miss Loi’s salvation.
Apologies to all PSLE and University Maths enquirers and thanks for your kind understanding.
Yes. But Miss Loi’s limited private home tuition slots are usually booked-out quickly by her existing long-term students.So unless you have a very flexible schedule (i.e. free from the usual school commitments, CCAs etc.) that allows you to be available at odd timings, you are strongly encouraged to attend her group sessions at Miss Loi’s Temple, where the schedule is better-tailored to fit Singapore’s typical school-going students.Scratch that. Miss Loi is not accepting any more students for private home tuition now, as she uses the time freed up through not getting stuck in Singapore’s incessant traffic jams to focus on her group tuition at The Temple.
Thank you all for your support and referrals!
It does vary from time to time but in general,
- Normal group tuition classes are held regularly throughout the week with timings typically planned around the school timetables of students in Singapore. Things get pretty busy over the weekends from Friday afternoons to Sundays.
- During school holidays and just before major exams like the O-Levels, intensive Mega Jφss Sticks Sessions are usually held daily during the course of the holidays.
- To avoid clashing with the classes, private one-to-one tuition are normally scheduled on weekdays.
For more updates, Miss Loi’s latest class schedule can always be found here. Alternately, you may also click on the pretty Class Schedule Link at the top of this website!
Each session is 2 hours, give and take. Normally one chapter from the syllabus will be covered in a session.
The number of students in our typically cozy joss sticks session hovers between 6-15 students (depending on tutor). This number may be increased for Mega Jφss Sticks Sessions during intensive exam periods.
Normally Miss Loi will assess and gauge your current standard when you first contact her as well as during your first lesson with her.
If you are unable to come for a session, please inform Miss Loi in advance (“in advance” ≠ an hour before the lesson!) so that arrangements can be made for you to attend another time slot, and to prevent a worried Miss Loi from waiting for you in vain. 🙁
WARNING TO ALL POTENTIAL ‘PILOTS’ ON ‘FREQUENT FLIER PROGRAMS’:As Miss Loi & The Temple is kind enough not to count the lessons you’ve missed as part of the fees, persistent abuse of this benevolent policy may result in your permanent exile from The Temple with no hope of redemption!
*shows stern face*
Apart from Miss Loi’s legendary all-out teaching, text books, 10-year series, worksheets, formula sheets, graph papers and selected
killerquestions from Miss Loi’s exam papers are all available to make your stay a pleasant one.As an added bonus, mini-tests and homework are usually thrown in at the end of each session. 😉
Apart from yourself (duh), please bring along your calculator, mathematical instrument (e.g. compass), and your personal multi-coloured kawaii stationery to jot down important tips and notes.
But most importantly, you must bring along your finished homework from the previous session!
Registration fee? Deposit? What’s that har?
But kindly note that The Temple’s usual practice is to collect regular tuition fees for 4 × sessions on the first of every four lessons.
Unfortunately due to Miss Loi’s hectic schedule and small class size, it would be difficult to plan her timetable to accommodate trial sessions for individual students.
As such, she is sorry that she is unable to accede to any request for trial lessons.
Regarding Miss Loi’s Temple
Typically, the Chinese burn joss sticks in a temple. So naturally Miss Loi needs a Temple for her joss sticks sessions!
Ah … the mother-in-law of all FAQs.
Sorry, to prevent the massed ranks of stalkers from pouncing on Miss Loi when she least expects, the exact location of Miss Loi’s Temple shall be known only to her students.
Those with too much time on their hands may wish to check out this post for some clues and sign postings.
All Miss Loi would say is that The Temple can be seen somewhere on this map:
Stalkers have remarked that Waldo may be easier to find than the elusive TempleTHE TEMPLE PLEDGE
We, the tutors of Miss Loi’s Temple,
pledge ourselves to save all students in need (subject to vacancy),
regardless of their grades, streams, or schools
as long as they have the desire and attitude
to build themselves a path to their subject Nirvana,
so as to achieve happiness, enlightenment and
progress for their grades!In short, ATTITUDE pwns aptitude at The Temple.
Having said this, please note that especially in crunch times, priority shall be given to students taking their O-Levels in the current year (especially those with C5 to F9 grades), since they are the ones in most dire need of salvation.
Lastly, do understand that every student is different. While hundreds have come and reveled in The Temple’s joss sticks group tuition sessions through the years, there will be others who, under certain circumstances, may benefit more from individual one-to-one private tuition.
Kindly refer to the tuition class schedule page for the latest subject offerings and timetables of the classes.
For a tour of the Temple’s modern state-of-the-art facilities, please step inside for a virtual walkthrough 😉
If you happen to be feeling hungry during the tour, do check out the gastronomical delights on offer at The Temple too!
Regarding Miss Loi’s Exam Papers
The questions are mostly taken from actual tests and exams of Singapore’s top schools that Miss Loi has encountered throughout her many years of teaching.
In addition, a large number of them have been tweaked by Miss Loi to emphasize certain concepts and/or make them a little more challenging.
The exam papers are tailored mainly towards enhancing the mathematical foundation of students from the mainstream Express Course in Singapore’s Secondary Education system, since most questions are taken from tests and exams in the Express Stream.
Students from other Secondary curriculum are encouraged to try out the preview papers to assess their suitability for their desired level of practice – especially for IP students where the format and topics taught differ according to the programs developed by individual schools.
As mentioned here, Miss Loi’s exam papers are generally considered to be a little more challenging than the standard Ten-Year Series of (TYS) questions.
In fact they’ve been a source of endless joy to many who find the TYS too routine and need something a little more advanced (with extra OOOMPH!) to satisfy their insatiable appetite of mathematical questions for regular practice!
Sorry to break this to you, but the answer is a big resounding NO! On the contrary, you might even end up getting demoralized by the relatively-advanced questions!
If your math foundation is honestly weak, please seek your friendly teacher/tutor/mentor/friend for help and in all likelihood you’ll probably have to go through the basic textbook questions and standard Ten-Year Series questions first.
Good luck!
You will get to access our challenging series of mid-year and preliminary exam papers for that subject, which are structured to closely simulate actual prevailing exam conditions. In addition, for the O-Level packages, you’ll also able to access comprehensive topical exercises that are designed to strengthen a student’s understanding of particular subject topics.
Please see our Packages for more details.
Of course! Miss Loi doesn’t want you to grope around in the dark!
All question papers come with answer keys at the end of every paper. And starting from 2009, FULL STEP-BY-STEP WORKED SOLUTIONS to all questions are now available as an option!
N.B. Please don’t peek at the answers before you’ve tried the questions!
At this point in time, Miss Loi offers only Sec One/Two Mathematics and Sec Three/O-Level A/E-Maths as these are her specialties. However do check back offer as she does not rule out expanding her range of subject offerings in the future.
To synchronize with the yearly release of exam papers, package subscription validity is for the duration of the prevailing year (i.e. 1 January to 31 December) of your subscription activation. Of course Miss Loi will make special concession (on case-by-case basis) for those signing up late in the year.
To access our full range of exam papers for each subject, you’ll need to be subscribed to the relevant Packages.
First, please make sure that you are able to preview and print the free trial papers.
Next, simply select and checkout the package(s) of your choice.
- If you’ve opted to pay via PayNow, credit card, Shopee Pay or GrabPay, your subscription will be activated immediately upon receipt of your payment.
- If you’ve opted to pay via traditional bank transfer, you’ll next be shown the payment instructions and your subscription will be activated upon receipt of your payment after you’ve notified us.
In either case, an email will also be sent to you with the relevant link(s) to your subscribed exam papers, which you will be able to access after you have logged in.
YES! After all these years, we’re finally accepting online payment via VISA, Mastercard, PayNow, Shopee Pay, and GrabPay! And your subscription will be activated immediately upon your payment!
If you find an error please contact Miss Loi immediately so that she can make the necessary changes and upload a new version for everyone to download again!
And thanks for reminding Miss Loi that she’s basically human after all 🙂
Regarding Technical Issues
The main (and normally the only) software thingy you’ll need is a web browser with built-in pdf viewer, which is par for most modern browsers these days. In fact if this website looks fine to you right now, you’d probably be OK!
Where it exists, do ensure any “open/display PDF in browser” (or similar) option is enabled under your browser’s Settings or Preferences.
Last but not least, you’ll need a printer to print your exam papers!
The following is a list of all possible scenarios that have been brought to Miss Loi’s attention so far:
- First of all, the exam papers require a web browser with built-in pdf viewer in order for them to be viewed properly.
- Secondly, if it exists, do ensure the “open/display PDF in browser” (or similar) option is enabled under your browser’s Settings or Preferences.
- Thirdly, your session might have timed-out (did you left your computer and came back after a period of time?). Simply re-login and things should be fine.
If everything is fine and dandy on your end and you are still staring at a blank screen of death, please email Miss Loi’s trusty Webmaster.
We have encountered isolated cases of corporate IT policies restricting the access of the exam papers (along with popular sites like Youtube, Facebook etc.) from within the company’s network.
Should such an unfortunate scenario apply to you, kindly try to print using a computer/printer that’s not part of your office network and see if it works. If you are able to access and print at a computer/printer that’s outside your office network, it’s time for a good chat with the folks at your company’s IT department.
Ensure page orientation in your Printer Properties is set to Landscape. You may skip this step if you have the Auto-Rotate and Center option checked (for supported printers).
Don’t worry! Click here to reset yourself a brand new one!
Please make sure you’ve entered your correct email address during checkout. Common typo scenarios involving yahoo.com vs yahoo.com.sg, hotmail.com vs outlook.com, gmail.com vs google.com have occured repeatedly in the past.
If you’re sure your email is correct, please look in the spam, trash, junk, bulk or the relevant anti-spam folder of your email software to see if our email have been mistakenly filtered there.
Else, please email Miss Loi’s trusty Webmaster.
- I have a technical problem that is not described here! / I still can’t view your exam papers dammit!
You’ve guessed it! For all technical-related issues, please email Miss Loi’s trusty Webmaster!
To facilitate the troubleshooting effort, it would be really, really helpful if you could furnish the following information in your email:
- The operating system of your computer or mobile device (i.e. Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android etc.)
- The web browser you were using and its version (i.e. Edge, Safari etc.)
- Error messages (if any)
- An attached screenshot of the error page, if possible
Last but not least, when all seems lost, sometimes a simple reboot can work wonders!
Regarding Contacting Miss Loi
First of all, please accept Miss Loi’s sincere apology for missing your call.
In the name of accountability and transparency, here’s an (inexhaustive) list of what might have happened when you tried but failed to reach Miss Loi in that fateful moment:
- She was teaching. (Highest probability!)
- She was on the line with another caller.
- She was driving and had forgotten to connect her handsfree kit (she hates Bluetooth BTW).
- Her phone’s battery was flat.
- She was out of network range (especially when she’s overseas).
- She was sleeping (there were ever missed calls at 3am).
- Her phone got lost in her bottomless bag and all that frantic rummaging failed to recover it before it went silent.
- Her intricate nail art was still wet from her manicure which made handling her phone EXTREMELY dangerous.
In this case, please SMS Miss Loi your contact number (if yours is a private/unreachable office number) and she’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Don’t worry, the ever affable Miss Loi most certainly didn’t forget you.
As her backlog of calls and requests for help can build up pretty quickly especially during the peak seasons, she seeks your kind patience that she might sometimes take a while to get back to you.
N.B. Please leave your contact number if you’re enquiring via email should you wish to minimize the time it takes to hear Miss Loi’s lovely voice for the very first time.Provided you have no hidden dark motive and are not trying to sell her something, Miss Loi will definitely respond within a couple of days.
There’s a slight possibility, however, that your SMS had failed to reach her or that your email might have inadvertently ended up in her heavily-populated Junk Mail folder or, heaven forbids, her email might have ended in YOUR Junk Mail folder!
In any case, please try calling again.
Ooh … *tidies hair*
To pre-empt the possibility of Miss Loi sprouting nonsense after a tiring day of tuition, it’s best if you could first send her in advance a rough list of the questions that you might be asking.
While Miss Loi is extremely flattered by your proposal, she would really appreciate if you could first email her a brief outline of your proposition for her digestion, for grave matters like conquering the Universe do take a bit of time to sink into her innocent mind.
- Umm … Sorry, Miss Loi is already taken … by her students.
