5 Crucial Tips to Maximize Your Score in PTE-A Read Aloud Questions

Read Aloud is a task in the Speaking Module of the PTE Academic Exam. The skills assessed in the task are Reading and Speaking. The test-taker is required to read out a written text. In this blog, we will discuss tips, and strategies to score high in Read Aloud. But before we get there, let us first understand how Read Aloud is scored.

Your score in PTE-A Read Aloud is based on three things: Content, Oral Fluency and Pronunciation.

The number of correct words will measure the Content score in your response. You will lose scoring for leaving out words, replacing words in the text with new ones, or inserting new ones. In short, your answer should only have words from the given text.

Oral Fluency is a measure of how smooth and naturally delivered your response is. The Oral Fluency scoring depends on the rhythm, stress, and phrasing of your speech. For best results, try to speak at a natural speed—neither too fast, nor too slow—with proper phrasing.

If you hesitate, fumble with your words, or even make a false start, only to start all over again, it will affect your score negatively. Repetitions will also adversely affect the score.

You should shoot for native-like articulation, proper usage of stress words, and phrasing. Please note that this does not mean that you should try to imitate a native English accent. Pearson acknowledges both regional and national varieties of pronunciation. The only catch here is that the words spoken by you should be understandable to maximum regular speakers of the English language.

 

Use the 40 seconds of preparation time like a trial run, where you survey the text, the places where there are punctuation marks. Make mental notes of where you need to pause, the words you need to stress upon, etc.

 

 

Use punctuation as a guide to remember where to pause and change your pitch. Let's try to understand this with the help of an example (pauses are indicated with the help of '/' symbol):

 

Take advantage of adequate voice modulation to apply stress on words that give crucial information or add meaning to the text. You can do this by reading those words in a slightly louder voice. Also, add stress to the critical syllables.

Here, you can also cleverly use your rising/falling intonation patterns to exhibit how many ideas are linked to each other or to indicate that a particular idea is coming to an end.

Let us understand this better with the help of an example:

 

 

In the example above, words that need to be stressed or emphasised are shown with underlines. Further, rising and falling pitch is conveyed with 'up' and 'down' arrows respectively.

Implement this in your PTE Read Aloud practice so that this gets ingrained in your mindset.

Read Aloud is a crucial task in the PTE Academic Exam, and in the Speaking Module, to be specific. So make sure that you can get tons of practice. For high-quality PTE Speaking practice on the go, you can download the PTE Tutorials Mobile Application on your Android/iOS device.

The app has 500+ Read Aloud questions for free practice. To further improve the quality of your preparation, you can also download the Exam Memories Materials, that keep you abreast with Read Aloud questions recently asked in the test.