PTE – Speaking and writing – Part 1

PTE Introduction – Introduction.This section will help you with PTE Speaking and writing information.

To assess speaking your skills will be tested by your ability to produce spoken English in an academic environment and writing section will require you to write response in academic English using correct Grammar and spelling.

Speaking 1.1 – Personal Introduction

The personal introduction is an opportunity for you to give some information about yourself. You will get 25 second to read the prompt and prepare your response, and 30 second to give response. This section will not be scored. You can give introduction in below format

  • Your name, where are you working currently
  • Your hobbies, what is importance of English in your life
  • Why did you choose PTE

Speaking 1.2  – Read a loud

You have 30-40 seconds to prepare, depending on the length of the passage. You hear a short tone. After the tone, start speaking immediately. Do not start speaking before the microphone opens because your voice will not be recorded. You should speak clearly. There is no need to rush.

Finish speaking before the progress bar reaches the end. The word “Recording” changes to “Completed”.

Tip -You can record only once and if you pause for 3 second then recording will be stopped.

Scoring –  You will be scored based on Content, Pronunciation and oral fluency

Content:  5 ---- 0 points
Pronunciation:  5 --- 0 points
Oral Fluency:  5 --- 0 points.

Content is not about what you do, it is about what you should not do.

You should not  – 

1. Misread a word - you say a different word then mentioned in paragraph / text. e.g. When someone ---- and you say when somebody
2. Skip a word - means you leave / don't mention a word  e.g. when someone offers afree sample.   here you missed "a"
3. Add means - you add a word that does not belong their.  e.g. when "a" someone offer. You added "a"

Be careful with

  • Articles –   a / an / the
  • Preposition –  in / on / at / to / for / with
  • Plural – Nouns –> Its very IMP to correctly pronounce plural forms, don’t skip “s”

Top Score

5  Native like - Means native English speaker can easily understand you
4. Advanced - There were mistakes but i (native speaker) get you
3. Good - Interference with first language
2. Intermediate - What is that, i (native speaker) could not understand.
1. Low - Sorry ?
0. Non-English - What?

Top score “5” means – all “44” sounds of English are made correctly. Accent is fine but PTE focus on if you are capable of making all 44 sounds.

Understand what you are reading, if you understand what you are reading then you will read it naturally like pause at right place, correct pronunciation.

Read a loud means – Express the meaning as much as you can, as if you are giving speech or conveying a message.

Do’s (Read) –

  1. Loud a possible and with confidently
  2. Moderate pace, not quietly
  3. Meaning
  4. If you don’t know word, you can pretend.

Don’t –

  1. skip, misread or add a word
  2. Hesitate, repeat word
  3. Restart sentence
  4. “um” and “ahh”

For practice you can refer   E2Language  or  Tutorials  

Speaking 1.3 – Repeat Sentence

In this section,you need to repeat the sentence you hear.The audio begins to plays automatically. When the audio finishes, the microphone opens and the recording status box shows “Recording”. Speak into the microphone immediately (there is no short tone) and repeat exactly what you heard. You should speak clearly. There is no need to rush.

Finish speaking before the progress bar reaches the end. The word “Recording” changes to “Completed”. You are not able to replay the audio and only able to record your response once.

You will get 3 sec to prepare to listen, please take a deep breath. Question will have single sentence and repeated one time only so you must listen carefully. There are chances you might get 10-12 repeat a sentence question.

Scoring

Content – It has max 3 points per sentence. If you repeat every word in correct sequence, you will get 3 points. You get 2 points if you can repeat more than 50% of words in the correct sequence and 1 point if you repeat less than 50 % word in correct sequence.You should repeat the sentence with correct grammar.

Pronunciation and oral fluency –  You get 5 points for native like pronunciation and oral fluency.

Tip  –

  • Try to copy the rhythm and speed from the audio.
  • Sentence will generally have 10-15 words.
  • Take care of pronouncing “s” at correct place.
  • Sentence will last for 3-4 sec, you should be able to finish in same time with no errors.

Speaking 1.4 :  Describe image

You will get one graph / diagram or image in this question. 25 seconds will be provided to prepare and 40 seconds for answer.

Types of images –

  1.  Bar chart
  2. Double Bar chart
  3. Two bar chart
  4. Pie chart
  5. Double pie chart
  6. Diagram or process
  7. Table
  8. Map
  9. Multiple graph

You might get 5-6 images on test day. You will be judges or marked based on below 3 main points

  1.  Content  – You should describe the image and not label it.
  2. Pronunciation – How clearly describe image
  3. Oral Fluency – How smoothly you describe image

Use below method to describe the image –

 a. Introductory sentence ( in 5 Sec ) –

You should start like   ” This —– represents “the title” + x-axis.”

lets take above bar chart example –

“This bar chart represents the top oil reserves in various countries like Venezuela, Saudi, Canda,Iran, Russia, UAE, US and China in Million barrels.

We have to arrange the title, so it makes grammatical sense. First we have to identify the type of graph, then looks at the title and X and Y axis.

 b. Image Description (in 25 Sec)-

You should describe image in such a way that it cover all aspects of image.  We can describe above image in following way

“Venezuela has the most amount of oil at close to 300,000. This is followed closely bySaudi Arabia, Canada and then Iran. The US and China have the least amount ofoil – well below 1 million barrels each”

c. Conclusion (in 10 sec) –  

Actually you will get 10 Sec, but i would suggest to do it in 5 sec. You can start like  “Overall we can say that ……..” to show it as we are concluding the image description

We can conclude above image like  “Overall, this graph shows a steep and gradual decline in the amount of oil that each country has and Venezuela has far more oil than the US and China.”