Many PTE aspirants are complaining these days of getting a low score and listening.
And many are asking me in the class, or through our chat, why this is happening?
Has there been any changes in PTE scoring criteria, and has the new score guide said anything about it.
These are the things we are going to discuss in this video.
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So let's talk about this problem.
Why is this happening? And what can we do about it?
Now, if we look at the questions in listening then what we can see is there are 8 different types of questions we get which have been divided into two parts.
Part one is summarize spoken text and part two, we have seven different types of questions.
The first thing you need to remember is in listening, not all of these questions are equally important.
Some questions have more weight, as well as the other questions are there just to test your different abilities,
but are not that important for your overall score, not just that you need to remember that you're listening score comes from speaking as well.
And some questions in speaking are specifically more important for your listening score.
So let's look into this one by one. Let's just start with the questions in listening which are important for your listening score.
If we look at all the questions in listening, then out of all these questions, only for question types are important for listening as such.
And the other four questions are not so important and you can simply ignore them even if you're looking for more than 79 in your test.
So which are these important questions in listening?
The four most important questions and listening in the order of their importance in the increasing order are,
fill in the blanks, highlight incorrect words, summarize spoken text and write from dictation, which means right from dictation is the most important question here.
And among these four questions, fill in the blanks will be the least important question.
This is based on the difficulty level as well as the score we get from these questions.
The other four question types such as multiple choice question, single right answer, multiple choice question multiple right answer, select missing word and highlight correct summary,
these questions are not important for listening.
Now, let's look at the questions from the speaking as well. In speaking we have three question types which can affect your overall score in listening.
And these questions are repeat sentence, Retell lecture, and so to answer question, and if we put them in the order of their importance towards listening, then repeat sentence will be the most important question
followed by Retell lecture and short answer question, which some people call answers short questions, would be the last one.
Now, we know which questions are important for listening. So let's put all of the important questions together.
The seven important questions to get high school and listening are repeat sentence, retell lecture, answer short questions
then summarize spoken text, fill in the blanks, highlight incorrect words, and write from dictation.
Out of all of these questions, 2 question types are extremely important for your listening and score.
And you should aim to get more than 90% score in these two question types.
These questions are right from dictation and repeat sentence. Now let's look at the factors
which can affect our scoring in these 2 question types, write from dictation and repeat sentence.
In repeat sentence, some people say that they can't get good score because of their memory, they can't remember the sentence.
And that's why they don't get the score they look for.
That's not entirely true.
Although memory can be important to some extent, it's not all about memory.
Think about this. If it had been about memory, then how can some people with limited memory be able to repeat the sentence
without much problem and others with really good memory who are doing really good in their studies struggle in this section.
For example, I can do repeat sentence without any problem, then if we accept that it's a test of memory then that means my memory is really good.
If it had been so then I would be able to repeat any kind of sentences in any language.
But if you say something in Chinese to me, most likely I will not be able to repeat more than one or two words.
Reason because I'm not familiar with the language.
So it's not about memory.
Yes, short term memory helps but it's not that important. It's actually about how familiar you are with the content you are with the language.
And what that means is you first need to know what kind of contents are used in repeat sentence so that you can improve your performance in this question type.
And if we analyze the sentences they ask in repeat sentence we can see that most of the sentences sound like the information or instructions given to new students in university
like where's the library where is a particular department how to submit assignment, how to extend the date of the assignment,
what happens if you don't submit in time and how to provide references, how to find housing and so on.
So basically, if you analyze the past questions in the right way, then you can see that certain types of information repeat in the exam certain types of phrases repeat in the exam,
now the characters might change but these phrases will remain the same.
And that means if you can get a list of the commonly used phrases in repeat sentence, make yourself familiar with these phrases and then practice the questions
by using these phrases then it will not be that difficult for you to to repeat sentence.
For listening in particular you also need to make sure that you are able to pronounce these commonly used phrases
without much problem because your pronunciation pretty much determines how much score you will get listening.
And that's why if you're struggling and listening, you need to make sure that you are doing well in repeat sentence
and in order to do that you have to learn the common phrases used in your exam,
as well as make sure that you can pronounce these phrases without much problem.
Now the next important question is write from dictation.
Again, you can see that most of the questions of write from dictation are quite similar to repeat sentence
The only difference you'll find is sometimes write from dictation.
Questions can be in sometimes in right from dictation sentences can be quite long,
and most often the words they use are more formal than the words they use in repeat sentence.
In other words, write from dictation is almost similar to repeat sentence, but it is more formal and more structured.
And that's why when you are preparing from write from dictation, you need to make yourself familiar with the commonly used Academy phrases.
Now another differences.
I told you that in repeat sentence, it's more about your pronunciation.
Or in other words, your pronunciation determines your listening scorein right from dictation
I would say it's your spelling or your grammar. And I would put more emphasis on spelling.
The criteria for scoring write from dictation is that you have to write each word correctly.
That means you need to identify the word and then write it with the correct spelling and incorrect grammatical form. Now grammatical form often depends on the context.
Or in other words, the context can help you to decide in which form to write,
even if you can't remember all the words, and the spelling depends on your ability to spell the word.
So what can be the common reasons people don't do well in this section.
A very common reason that I found is people misspell words.
And then after that, they forget a few words in the middle and don't try to write them.
And some other common problems like missing full stop at the end not starting the sentence with capital letter,
not using capital letter for names or the words which should be written in capital, and not being careful about the grammatical form of the words.
Remember, again, this is not a test of your memory, they are simply trying to find out how well you understand the language
especially the common used way, whether you are familiar with the syntax of the sentences or not.
That means if you are not familiar with how to structure the sentences are not able to make some guesses
when you can't remember all the words, then you will struggle in these question types.
So what would be my suggestions?
Now for both of these questions, first, make a list of the commonly asked phrases.
Second, make sure that you can pronounce these words, well, and you can spell these words without a problem.
Third, make sure that you have access to the commonly asked questions in the exam.
That means many questions in this test repeat.
So make sure that you have these questions even if you don't get the same sentence, most of the questions will be similar to what you will practice.
You'll find all of these things on our online courses.
So if you're wondering how to do this, you can find this list of phrases and how you can make sure that you do it in the right way?
You can trust us go to our online courses and do them.
And if you need any help you can get in touch with us.
If you liked this video, please hit the like button and share it with your friends.
And in my next video I'll try to pick up something important which might help you in your next exam.
Until that time, have a good time and all the best for your upcoming exam.