Want to study abroad? 5 PTE tips for Coaching and preparation to get you started

1) Check your general command

Of the English language first and foremost! If you don’t have a good score on TOEIC or IELTS test , then your study abroad plans will be on hold as no college or university will accept you if they think that your command of English is not ‘good enough’. Plan to improve before applying for scholarships, otherwise; it’s goodbye to studying abroad for a year or two. 

2) Keep practicing!

PTE General and Academic are not a true reflection of your English ability. Checkout PTE Coaching for more information. It is critical because you will have to take this exam in certain circumstances during the scholarship application process but at the same time it does NOT reflect your English fluency and eventual performance on academic courses. You should focus on TOEIC, IELTS or equivalent initial screening tests for college admission (don’t worry too much about professional schools like business schools which usually have higher test requirements). [Note: ELS has an online practice test available]

3) Use the correct technique 

do not use rote learning techniques such as ‘parrot’ pronunciation. The best study method for PTE is reduction or deletion of the target language – i.e “Use your English to eliminate the words” and that is what you will have to do on exam day too. In simple terms, try to replace all those ‘difficult’ sentence structures with familiar ones (do not worry about grammar!)

4) Work on your Reading Speed!

Practicing reading speeds are critical because when you face a word limit it forces you read faster and makes you less sensitive to difficult vocabulary or complicated sentences/paragraphs. Try using material with fewer ideas but more text per page (i.e children’s books). It is NOT important for PTE General because you can take extra time if needed but it is very important for PTE Academic as reading speed is a major component of your overall score. [Note: Strategies available here]

5) Practice answering questions

Which are longer than the PTE Academic format (4 or 5 points). As your goal it to answer 4 or 5 point questions within 70 minutes, you need to build up stamina to do this more comfortably and not panic about running out of time in the exam. The best way is to take practice tests where there are 6 point and 8 point questions mixed so you can get used to answering these during mock practice test conditions.

6) Never forget to practice answering

The PTE Academic format with a timer! One of the biggest mistakes people make is to always use a clock to mock test their speeds. This is crazy because you will never be under exam conditions (where you do not have access to your watch). Instead, work on building stamina and speed by practicing, i.e doing questions at timed intervals but not using a watch/clock.

7) Do lots of practice tests

I suggest doing around 7-10 full length tests if possible. If it means missing one or two days’ worth of academic studies, then that’s what you should do. Make sure these include 6 point and 8 point questions so that you get used to longer answers under timed conditions.“

8) Take as much time as you need on reading and writing (the ‘easy’ sections).

9) Use the PTE Academic format book (you can get it free from ELS [link]).  This is important because instead of working through all 4 parts each set, just focus on Part 3 which contains the Reading and Writing questions. This way, you will ensure that you are not spending too much time on difficult vocabulary or overly complicated grammatical constructions.

10) Read all your essays aloud before submitting them to check for mistakes in grammar, punctuation etc. You can do this by recording yourself or using a text-to-speech app if possible.

11) Do not look up every word you do not know in the reading/writing sections. For example, if there are 6 words – out of which 1 is unknown and 5 are familiar, just guess from context and move on. Even if your answer is wrong, at least it will take less time to try all the answers than if you had looked everything up.

12) In any section that requires an essay response (Writing or Speaking), try covering one paragraph in an entire answer.]  Do NOT write full sentences for each paragraph as recommended by ELS because this takes too much time and is unnecessary since even in a particular topic area, different questions will ask for very different things. Instead divide into paragraphs and cover only what is needed for each question.

13) Use the PTE Academic format book to understand what kind of information you need to write for the reading/writing sections. For example, it will tell you if an answer should be short and simple (1-2 sentences) or more in depth (3-4 paragraphs). The best thing is that this guide is free so there’s no excuse not to use it!

PTE Coaching is one of the premier online PTE coaching in Ahmedabad and PTE coaching in Kochi having produced more than 20000 success stories worldwide for our PTE students. They are offering their PTE online courses. Contact them for more details on PTE online coaching 

You might be wondering how to get a good score in PTE in real-time. Have a look at these latest PTE questions: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvpwzTe6WsVLuvlA-Gebq-A