My PTE Journey — Part 2

Let’s start from where we left off in My PTE journey — Part 1.

I decided I needed to be more organized with my studies. So I made a plan.

In the morning before going to work or on the way to work I practiced simple things like fill in the blanks and MCQs as they can be practiced easily even in a train. I prepared the materials on the day before. (Repeat questions from an app or YouTube video mostly). After coming from work I would practice questions which needed sitting down and more concentration. On weekends I practiced questions that needed even more focus like essays and summaries. And also learnt more techniques and improved vocabulary during the weekend. With time I didn’t have to write more essays as I was confident with it.

Initially I feared Speaking. I couldn’t organize my thought in time for describe Image and I couldn’t take good notes in Summarize Spoken Text. But I practiced them even more to boost confidence and identified patterns and templates. I will tell you more about that when I publish my next blog post on Speaking Tips. Till then my advice for you is, ‘Face your biggest fear first’. (This will get through most parts of your life as well)

When I have practiced questions from all 20 tasks I decided to take a mock exam to see where I’m standing and thought it will help me to figure out the areas that needed improvement. I didn’t want to spend much money and for less than $5 I bought a mock test from realpte.com and sat down for 3 hours on the Independence Day (4th of February). I received L59 R71 S90 and W76. Based on this outcomes it was clear that my weak points were Listening and Reading and Speaking was my strong point. I must tell you, I wouldn’t recommend the realpte mock tests to anyone as a reliable source. My test stopped somewhere in the middle of the listening test and there was no way to recover it but somehow I got this results. Don’t worry this won’t happen in the official mock exams.

The results convinced me that I was in the right track in Speaking. And I found this score breakdown which taught me that section scoring is interconnected.

For example, Reading and Writing Fill in the blanks will give you marks for Reading as well as Writing which gave me a clue that if I practice more I can easily get that missing 3 marks in my Writing.

There are lot more you can learn from this chart.

• RS, WFD, RW FIB and RD carries half of your total marks. So that should be your first priority.
• RS carry nearly 1/6 th of your total results and it will contribute for your Listening score too.
• To earn that Reading marks from RA, read fast and try to finish in like 15 seconds.
• If you get couple of wrong answers for MCQs, it won’t do much harm. So move to the next task without wasting much time there
• Well Essays are not that important as long as you can compile 200+ words within 20 minutes with the relevant key words and format. It only carry marks for Writing section and that to 1/9 th of it.
• Most of the Writing marks comes from RW FIB and WFD. So again they are very important

So in the second phase I kept practicing FIB questions and WFD. Increased my speed in RA and long sentences in RS. I always used repeated questions and firefly pdf for reference. I marked the questions done in the PDF to keep track. At this stage I hardly wrote essays. RO was also my weak point. So I learnt some tricks about the general structure of paragraphs to get this right. While I focused more on these topics, I ensured I didn’t loose practice on other tasks.

Then I did a PTE official mock exam — Test A on 16th Feb and score a total of 73 (L71 R68 S90 W65). My writing score dropped and still reading and listening was not upto the mark. I started practicing techniques for summaries as my written disclosure was 47 and grammar was at 67. I realized that I had to use some complex grammar correctly. Meanwhile, I continued following my conclusions from the second phase. I didn’t got discouraged as I learnt that Test A was the hardest and it had 2 essays. So I got exhausted and didn’t finish my second essay which lead to this low score.

I did the Mock Test B on after 2 weeks and scored L85 R81 S90 W76. I was happy yet scored as I was in the margin in Reading and still my Writing score was below the standard. Yet I knew I was ready for the exam as people claim that you’ll get more marks in the real exams.

However I kept practicing improved my confidence and my focus was more on FIB.

I took the last mock exam on 8th March, 2 days before the real exam and scored a total of 86 (L80 R90 S90 W87). I was relived and was confident that I will get my desired score. I kept practicing leisurely and even watched a Hindi movie on the day before. (I literally took a leave to do that.)

I scored 86 in my real exam (L82 R90 S85 W90) and Finally achieved my target.

(Click here to learn why I couldn’t get 90)

You too can reach your tar get score and make your migration or higher studies dream come true. So it’s all in your hands to learn the techniques and practice as much as possible . As the famous proverb says ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’. No PTE Guru can magically pass the exam for you. So study hard!

Dream Big!