Pan Asia Publications, RM30.90, ISBN 978-967-466-720-7
Education, 2023

Normally, Pan Asia Publications tend to be the bridesmaid, never the bride when it comes to competing with other publishers in the SPM educational materials market.

Spotlight A+1: English, however, is a pleasant surprise as it is actually very solid!

The Author

Not sure who JC Lim is. The name itself may as well be a pseudonym, and there is no mention of their qualifications or experience in the field.

It doesn’t matter, however, in this case.

Design

• Similar to Spotlight A+1: Bahasa Melayu, the pages are not very colorful, but the layout of the pages is very clean and neat.
• There is enough white space to make the pages feel less cluttered and overwhelming.
• Good use of tables to keep everything look organized, and on most pages, the text is organized into a single wide column, making everything easy to read.
• Depending on one’s point of view, this can be a plus or minus: there are no QR codes to videos or audio peppered everywhere, with QR codes limited to audio related to the listening test chapters.

In other words, candidates preferring a somewhat monochromatic, uncluttered, neat, straight to the point approach to content presentation would have a lot to love about the overall appearance and design of this book.

Content

Firstly, this book is written for a standard of English that is far higher than that of the actual SPM English paper. It’s hard.

JC Lim is pulling no punches here, as while the SPM English exam format is not as tough as that of the SPM Bahasa Melayu paper, the content here throws some pretty advanced vocabulary at the candidate.

What this means is that this reference book may be a challenge for those with weaker English proficiency, while those with middle to higher levels of proficiency may find this one useful to improve their vocabulary and grammar.

Some great things here that are not present in other “big” SPM English reference books out there:

• Excellent grammar and vocabulary section that actually goes beyond just throwing the rules at the candidates’ faces. Common usage mistakes are highlighted, along with useful lists of phrasal verbs, idioms, and more.
• While there is no step-by-step handholding in the composition section, there are useful points to consider when doing the composition as well as suggested phrases and words, along with their meanings, to help candidates take their compositions to a higher level.
• Plenty, and I do mean plenty of practice exercises. Because the author is pulling no punches, these challenges can boggle the brain juice of candidates that are confident that their English is already all that, so this is certainly a fun and definitely not boring reference book to get into!

The oral section content is pretty standard, but those that can handle the rest of the content in this book are not likely to have an issue with that part of SPM English. The only issues that could be problematic are the usual stuttering problem and lack of confidence to open up in public, but these are things that require a little help that can’t be found in any book. Practicing in front of a mirror or with other people could help, for example.

How About the Multiple-Choice Questions?

There is only one that is truly a howler, but that is because there is a typo in the stimulus material. Oops.

Pan Asia Publications really need to tighten up their proofreading.

Aside from that, I am impressed by how well-done the MCQ questions are. No confusing “Hey, there are more than one possible answer!” rigmarole here.

If a candidate thinks that there is more than one correct answer, take it from me: the author is just being sneaky; look again at the stimulus and reread a few times to get why a certain answer is the correct one and the rest are wrong. Yes, the questions in this book can be that challenging!

Conclusion

• This book would be a challenge for candidates that are weak in English.
• If candidates with middling to higher English proficiency wish to have one SPM English reference book, however, this book beats all the others currently available in the market.
• As a bonus, it could also be a nice preparation steppingstone for those wishing to apply for an ASEAN scholarship to Singapore after their SPM or fly elsewhere abroad, because seriously, the English level here leans more towards the Singapore GCE-A Level General Paper than SPM English!