G'day mate, how you going? Today, I am going to talk about the key to success in boosting four skills in English via PTE study. I've just started the series of the PTE exam on my YouTube channel. And, I reckon it might be useful for those who are planning to study PTE or even the English language itself from scratch. Let's begin!
Ameliorating oral fluency and pronunciation are critical to boosting your overall speaking test score even any English exam
When it comes to PTE exam, or even IELTS and TOEFL, your performance and accuracy on oral fluency and pronunciation can be the key to success in attaining desired scores. But, in particular, PTE exam requires the highest accuracy if you desire to score high like 65+ or 79+. Oral fluency means that how smooth you speak, how natural you speak, and so on and so forth. And pronunciation score is not just pronunciation per se, but also the number of mispronouncing, omitting and replacing key verbs, especially the ending of them. Please try to stop this sort of habit, otherwise you will probably have to re-attempt at multiple times, and the worst-case scenario is you won't notice what went wrong until you realise this kind of problem. To avoid this consequence, you've got to practise in a proper way and using a proper website. Improve oral fluency and pronunciation normally takes a long time, but if you don't choose a wrong method, then it won't take a long time, nor will it take a heavy toll on your English learning.
Grammar and vocabulary are the key to boosting LRW questions, but they don't affect severely the overall score of each band
Usually I have to say both grammar and vocabulary are the most important aspects of the English language. But, in the realm of PTE exam, they are not crucial, to be honest. When you sit in the exam and receive the score report, you know the details of the report, right? The report consists of two things, which are Communicative score (LRSW overall) and Enabling skills score (Grammar, Oral Fluency, Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Spelling and Written Discourse). Needless to say, the former score is more important than the latter, because the overall score will be used for university entrance requirement or migration points, for instance. So, your enabling skills score being perfect 90s doesn't mean your PTE score is perfect unless your Communicative score were all 90s in LRSW. And also, grammar and vocabulary scores are percentage-based, so they are not low score, which means that no body can really know how influential they are when it comes to Communicative score.
Written discourse or logical structure score is the key to boosting your writing score
PTE's writing scoring system is a bit complicated or unique compared to other English exams. Writing section itself doesn't give you a full mark even if you scored perfect. Having said that before, PTE exam has adopted an integrating scoring system, which means that you've got to be relatively good at everything, because you just being adept at reading won't give you a perfect mark, unfortunately. First and foremost, you've got to comprehend the scoring system perfectly before starting practising. Otherwise it's going to be a waste of time for you.
By the way, Written discourse is how you write English sentences in a logical and coherent way. If the question given is like 'Do you agree? one', then your structure should have an introduction, body 1 (disagree: one example and evidence), body 2 (agree: two examples and evidences) and conclusion. Something like that. If these structures are wonky, then your written discourse score will be low.
Your Spelling score is affected by how good your spelling are in Listening and Writing sections
PTE Official guidebook says that more than 2 typo gives your Zero mark in spelling. But, it doesn't mean your final spelling mark will be Zero. It's just Zero within the question you answered. Spelling is also percentage-based, not raw mark. So, no one can know how and to what extent your spelling mistakes and scores affect your overall writing and listening scores. Maybe heavily? Or may be a bit? No matter how, I reckon spelling is critical to boosting even small portion of enabling skills score if you want to score high in the PTE exam. Not just for the exam, but for every day normal life like writing a letter, emailing, and even speaking. Why speaking? Because, if you are not sure about the spell, then you're most likely to mispronounce or be incapable of using such words.
In conclusion, if you are planning to study PTE exam, then these enabling skills have to be taken into consideration. I have professionally done a great number of experimentation with a score analysis and offering tips and constructive feedback for my students. And they were mostly successful in obtaining their desired scores within the duration of my English lesson program. Should you have any further information or query, please feel free to contact me!
That's all for today! Thanks for reading.
Have a good one, cheers.