A composite figure is just simple shapes joined together, so there is never a new formula to learn — only a decision to make. You can SPLIT the figure into rectangles and add their areas, or take the whole rectangle that boxes it in and SUBTRACT the piece that is missing. Both always work; pick whichever the given lengths suit. The real work in a PSLE composite question is the lengths that are not written on the figure: opposite sides of the bounding rectangle must add up to the same total, so a missing edge is always a subtraction away. And one result surprises everybody — cutting a corner out of a rectangle changes its area but not its perimeter.
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