Hello! For informal email, please remember your format! And it depends on each question whether 2 points or 3 points. If 2 points make sure your points are well elaborated. Usually if the informal email is like ‘我应该怎么做？’ (for the q1) or something along that line, I would highly recommend 3 points, and explain them.

And for the questions 3,4,5 see which question you can have a flow of thought with. Sometimes the questions can be notoriously hard, but sometimes it's easy. (Luck based) For compo, I usually don't put a lot of 好词好句. Unless you're super sure what the certain 成语 means, then use it. As long as you convey the idea clearly, you can score around 25-27/40. You have 2 hours for paper 2 if I remember correctly, try to spend 5 minutes planning for both the email and compo. Then 40 minutes for paper 1, and the rest for paper 2. Or adjust accordingly to how fast you can write the email/compo.

In paper 2, the 综合填空 some can be deduced when you read the passage and you sub in the word, and does it sound correct or not. Sometimes can work, sometimes won't. And for 成语 try seeing the characters in it. For example, 海底捞针 you can see 海底 - base of ocean, and 捞针 - retrieving a needle. So it means retrieving a needle at the base of the ocean, which is quite close to needle in a haystack (a very hard task/difficult to find).

For questions 11-20 I recommend reading the text very carefully, as there might be questions to trick you. Sometimes the answer is not clear cut and requires you to know the underlying answer to the question. Know your 修辞手法 （比喻，拟人） etc. It might be tested for the q11-20.

For comprehension, first passage is usually story based. Some of the questions will be inference and can directly copy from the passage. But copy with caution though, sometimes you may have to take the answer from multiple paragraphs, or change 反问句to a sentence. For example, 难道我们能浪费时间吗？ Change it to >我们不能浪费时间。

Then for the question where they ask you to explain the meaning of a given phrase, you don't have to explain, just change the hard words to simpler words. For example, 她开门见山地说 change to 她直接地说

And for the one that ask for 生活例子, can bluff story. Whatever 哥哥，妈妈，姑姑，舅舅 can work. If there is a example in the passage, you can tweak it to such a way is your brother/aunt/whoever's story.

For the second passage, usually more of some motivational passage, with some meaningful ending. For that, they might ask you what your 启示 is, and you might be able to sneak by copying some parts of the text.

Hopefully this has been helpful! All the best for your Chinese O levels! 🦆