stepo707:


Ielts messed me up in my reading and writing I wanna try pte and aim 20pts. Pls this links you shared is it for only speaking?
Wanna get materials and Links for reading,listening and writing

The wenbo link provides resources on all the sections (you can translate through google if you desire) while coursera does for speaking, and englishlistening has lots of materials to help speaking, reading and listening. There are many more materials on YouTube and the net in general.

In my opinion, PTE's main advantage over ielts is the objectivity in scoring (especially the speaking and writing). If you're sure of your English and ielts isn't giving you the desired result, better turn to PTE, since you've an alternative.

Misoke:



nobody talks about the reading section oh...there are no tips for that part I suppose?

@Misoke, there are several materials online.

The following tips for the reading section might also be of help:

Multiple choice single answer - understand the question, then look for d part in d passage that talks about the question. Once you find it, disregard every other part of d passage, except you really need to make reference to them for understanding sake (in most cases, you really don't need to). Then you can re-read the question and focus on that part to choose the right answer.

Multiple choice multiple answer - same strategy as above, but as you already know, there's negative marking, so if you are not 100% certain of an answer don't bother choosing it, so you can save the one you're sure of. It can really be disturbing at times, especially if you're taking 5mins and you're still on one question. A part of you wants to move on to the next question, and another tells you to see it through after spending that much time. Even if it's one you're 100%sure of, stick to your 1point and move on. There's really no time to waste.

Re-order paragraph - there’s a video on YouTube by e2language, it's a really good resource for this section. Once you grab the logic, go to wenbo.tv for practice materials. You'll get several questions to try so you can perfect the act. There are also more practise materials on YouTube. This part was my weak point in the reading section; but I knew I needed to scale it to do well, especially after my second attempt, so i did a lot of practise till I was sure I could nail it.

Fill in the blanks (dragging and drop-down) - for this section, you need to develop your collocation and grammar skills. If you've been reading wide for a long time: novels, newspapers, magazines etc across various fields, you would’ve become familiar with a lot of word combinations and inflections and you would most likely find it easier. If you're not sure how to tackle this section, practise lots of questions online. Start with the option that doesn't sound right and eliminate them till you're left with a few; you can then look at grammar to select the final choice. The trick is as you practise more and more questions you'll get a feel of what is required of you in the exam. And remember, this two categories give you the most marks in the reading section, so please save enough time for them, if they don't come first.

Misoke:




nice one..congrats...is wenbo.tv not a Chinese website?

It is Chinese, but some part of it is in English too. So you can still navigate. With time you'll get used to it. Am not sure of any other, but it's the one site I've come across with loads of materials in one place. You can also translate the page using Google.

spyroxy1:


A big round of applause for another 90 bander... Common, you broke its back! I am giving you a singular standing ovation of 30seconds.

Well done brother! You are exceptional, did you take mock test(s). If you did, how may please? That speaking is so on point!

I came so close recently too SLRW - 76,81,84,88 (3rd attempt. That's after several mock tests, since its our work)

Azy123; Alphadoor see my guy

Thanks alot bro. Unfortunately I didn't take mock tests, cause after the first attempt I thought I had it. Wish I did though. I had to learn from my first and second attempt. You're almost there with this score. Please don't relent.

Hi All, I have been a regular follower of this thread since I came across it through google. I have learnt quite a lot here from the myriad of questions and answers. I would also like to acknowledge lots of beautiful minds here – belong, mctowel, bnimz, spiroxy, mamajaz, zany to name but a few.
Though am still waiting patiently for my ITA, I thought of sharing my experience with English exams.

I started my journey early this year, and have written 3 IELTS exams. I was able to achieve at least 7 across all bands on the second attempt after which i evaluated my credentials with CPAA. But then I needed more points to stand a chance for ITA under ANZCO 221111, so I did the third IELTS on 9Sep17, but it didn't turn out as expected. I had L=8, R=7.5, W=7, S=7.5 so 20points seemed elusive.

However, before the outcome of my third IELTS i was skimming through previous posts on this thread when I came across the part where @bnimz mentioned getting 90 on all bands in PTE. It inspired me to be frank. At this point i had known about this thread for around a month, but I wasn't following with keen interest. I wish I was, perhaps I would've had the 20points much earlier.
So I did a little research online and finally decided to go for PTE on 19Sep17 as a backup plan, since it proffers a more objective alternative to attaining the 20points from language. As it turned out above, IELTS wasn't good. Though PTE wasn't either, but the result gave me hope. My first PTE on 19Sept17 came out as L=90, R=81, S=78, w=90. You can imagine how heart-rending this result was, just one point to hitting superior points. Infact, at a time I thought Pearson did it on purpose. But then I gave it another try on 27Sep17, score was L=90, R=72, S=70, W=90. Worse than the previous, you’d say, but I learnt an invaluable lesson from this. So, I put in for another one on 03Oct17 and result was L=90, R=89, S=90, W=90. Now I will tell you what I discovered in the speaking.

In my first attempt, I had just a few hesitations or pauses here and there during describe image and retell lecture. And I spoke continuously with some speed all through the test, cause of another candidate’s loud voice behind me. However, on the second attempt there was no hesitation, false start or any other form of error, but then the result was bad. Reason, I was trying to game the system. I spoke slowly in the read aloud, so my pronunciation was better, but then I spoke at a faster pace in other sections. Apparently, the system monitors your pace all through the speaking exam, and any change is taken for speech at an uneven pace which lowers your fluency scores. To achieve a high score in PTE speaking, aside from avoiding hesitations, repetitions, and false starts, you need to speak continuously and maintain the same pace across all the speaking sections. Another thing I did was, for describe image and retell lecture, I included at least a sentence as conclusion.

Do not be carried away by the read aloud speaking section of the PTE exam, you would get about 30secs to prepare, this should tell you something. The preparation time is to familiarize yourself with the text, so when it’s time to start reading, you have to be fast, not rushing through anyway, but then you have to be continuous so you can achieve that “assimilation and deletions appropriate to continuous speech” of PTE that is ascribed to native-like score under the pronunciation rubric. This can be clearly observed when you listen to newscasters on BBC or CNN. You would notice how fast they speak as they read from the teleprompter before them.

As for the retell lecture, my strategy was to listen attentively to the lecture (I did not write anything – my style). Focus was on the lecture. I was writing down keywords in my first and second attempt as advised by several blogs and videos I saw, but when I sat down to understand myself before the third attempt, I realized putting my focus on listening works best for me. After listening, I then spoke with the understanding of the topic. This enhanced my fluency as i was able to relate the talk as though I was telling a friend about a movie I saw.

For describe image, I employed e2language’s style of title, x-axis, a few points from the graph, chart or diagram and conclusion. Please see e2language videos on YouTube for this. Remember, always add a conclusion or implication to your response.

Repeat sentence is quite straight forward. Just try to develop your short term memory. In my opinion, please do not write down the sentence. Just focus on listening and repeat as you heard; same stress patterns and rhythm.

For answer short questions, please look up wenbo.tv, the site has a lot of practice questions. This part requires familiarity with the mode of responding. I guess most people do well in this section because they are probably things you come across every day.

I’ll stop here for now; this is already getting too long.
Here are a few sites that helped me during my preparation:

www.wenbo.tv/Practice-V3/home.html (has lots of practice materials)
www.coursera.org/learn/interview-preparation/lecture/fB5fE/using-phrasing
www.englishlistening.com