If you are a foreign student looking for admission in Australian or American universities, then you are probably aware of the requirement to produce a good English proficiency score. IELTS has been the most common test taken for this purpose. In the last few years Pearson’s PTE Academic has become very popular as well.
Internet and YouTube have a number of resources to help you prepare for this exam. We went through the Sure Way English PTE YouTube channel and their online PTE preparation website, to come up with this beginner’s tutorial for you.
1. The exam format
The PTE Academic exam measures your language across all four English skills – speaking, writing, reading and listening. So, you will have four different sections in the exam. These are generally administered in two parts, with a short break in between. In each section you will have a number of question types, each targeted at a specific language skill.
2. Repeat sentence and Read Aloud
These are the first two question types you will face. In one you will listen to a sentence and then record the answer in the microphone. In the second you will simply read a text and record it into the microphone. In either type you should aim to speak as flawlessly as possible. Don’t mispronounce the words. Don’t skip words. Don’t add words from your own.
3. Describe Image and Retell Lecture
These are the more descriptive type of speaking questions in PTE. You will see an image or hear a lecture and then have to speak about what you just saw or just heard. In essence, this is a measure of how well you translate visual or auditory information to spoken words.
4. Write Essay and Summarize Text
The writing section is made up of only essay writing and summary writing, in PTE Academic. There are no surprises or twists in these questions. Read a topic, write an essay or Read a text and write a summary. You will get 20 minutes to write an essay and 10 minutes to write a summary. Each question gets its own time allocation, so don’t be in a rush to finish early.
5. Multiple choice questions
Both reading and listening sections contain multiple choice questions of two types. You will either read a text or hear an audio, and then based upon that answer a question. For some questions you will only have one correct answer and for others there will be multiple correct answers. In the ones with multiple correct answers, if you pick a wrong option, you will get a negative score for that. Keep that in mind!
6. Fill in the blanks questions
There are 3 type of fill in the blanks questions in PTE. There are 2 types in reading section and 1 type in listening. In each you have to pick the right word for the right blank. In the reading section you will decide on the basis of the text and its grammatical structure and context, for listening you simply need to be able to read and write well.
There you go! All information to get your started on your PTE Academic journey. According to the experts at Sure Way English, you must keep aside a month or two for preparation. Slow and steady wins the race!