Pearson’s Test for English (PTE) is a skill. Like any other skill, you can prepare for PTE in a smart way to master it (read ace it by the time you appear for the exam). It can be deconstructed and learnt very quickly if you only focus on the essential elements. The good news is that there are smarter ways to prepare for PTE.
Should candidates take PTE Exam instead of IELTS?
The 2 essential things that you need to focus on are these:
1- All parts of any exam are not equal (prepare accordingly)
2- Smart Strategies to Solve Each Task in the Exam
The table below shows you relative importance of each task in your typical PTE exam.
As you can see in the last column of the table, I’ve highlighted them in 4 different colours:
Red
There are 4 tasks that are highlighted in red. These are the most important ones. If you are not good in these, you can’t get 79+. You will even struggle to stay above 65+.
Green
There are 4 tasks that are highlighted in green. I would say these are equally important to solidify your chances of securing 79+.
Yellow
Thirdly, you have 3 tasks that are highlighted in yellow. You can make mistakes in these. If you fumble in one or two of these, you can still score a borderline 79.
Grey
Rest of the tasks are highlighted in grey. These are the ones that you can afford to do as quickly as possible as they don’t carry much weightage. Even if you get these wrong, you can comfortably land a 79+.
Note: The actual score of each task might vary in each exam depending on how many tasks you get for each type, but the relative priority stays more or less the same.
Another thing you notice in the table above is that most of the tasks contribute marks towards more than just one component.
For example, let’s take the first task: Read Aloud.
If you are fluent and have a good pronunciation when doing this task, but you miss out 1-2 words in the sentence, you will still score very high in your Speaking score.
However, you will be surprised to see that your Reading score will drop tremendously even if you end up doing all the 5 tasks in the Reading section perfectly.
This is true for most of the tasks. They contribute scores to more than one component.
In summary, to prepare for PTE and managing time the smart way is to focus more on tasks that carry higher weightage and to prioritize them.