The PTE-A Exam Guide: It Explains Everything About It

PTE Academic

April 15,2020

Those who look to study or settle abroad have to take the English language skill tests and most of them opt for either IELTS or the PTE test.

Once you choose the test you would like to take; its time for you to adopt the method of preparation.

Would you opt for:

Random preparation from any materials
The Material that you find over the internet. Or,
Properly planned preparation guide.

Number 3 is your choice; of course, it should be the one. Before that, let's start from understanding the basics.

What is the PTE-A Exam and why aspirants opt for it?

PTE stands for the Pearson Test of English language. It is an entirely computer-based exam that assesses your English academic skills. Anyone from the English native speaker and non-native speaker of the English language can take this test. The two factors that make it popular are:

Scoring is easy: The PTE-A exam is easy to score in comparison with the other English skill assessing tests.
Result: The PTE-A exam results are out within five working days in most of the cases; thus making it convenient to the test-takers.

PTE-A Format:

The PTE-A exam examines your enabling and communicative skills of the English language through speaking, reading, writing and listening sections in the exam. There are tasks where you might need to write an essay, describe an image, find the right or wrong answers, summarise a given text etc. As your one skill is a mixture of two skills; like you could hear and write only when both your listening and writing skills are good. This is the reason that a task from one section will also contribute to the marks of the other section in the PTE-A Exam.

Speaking Section:

Tasks: 5-7 task types
Time: 77-93 minutes
Contribution: Speaking & Writing Section

Writing Section:

Tasks: 2 types
Time: 30-40 Minutes
Contribution: Reading & Writing Section

Reading Section:

Tasks: 5 types
Time: 32-41 minutes
Contribution: Reading & Writing Section

At this moment in the exam, you get a 10 minutes break which is optional. You can make use of it to relax your mind.

Listening Section:

Tasks: 8 types of tasks
Time: 45-57 minutes
Contribution: listening and writing section

So, this is all about the PTE-A exam and its different sections. Now let us talk about the exam centre where you are going to take your test.

The PTE-A exam centre:

The PTE-A exam centre is a secure place that is monitored. For the 3 hours exam, aspirants are provided with equipment like a computer with a headset (with a mic), a notepad to take down the notes if required.

Tips you can follow:

As you share the exam centre with other test-takers; choose less occupied test centre
Try and reach 30 minutes before the exam
Get your photo ID proof mandatorily

Know how the exam is scored

An automated scoring system scores the PTE-A exam, as it is a computer-based exam entirely. All the different sections are scored out of 90 points at maximum. The minimum score that an individual can attain is 10 points. The test is scored based on the correctness of your answers, formal aspects (whether within the word limit or not), quality of response (your grammatical skills, sentence formation skills, use of punctuation, conjunction everything is assessed), and your spellings. As the tasks contribute to each other; you will be getting score for correct/incorrect answers or the partially correct answers.

For a correct answer, you get 1 point, and for incorrect you get a zero; whereas, the partial score is always less than the maximum score for that question.

CONCLUSION:

By now, you have understood all about the PTE-A exam. But how are you planning to proceed with the PTE academic preparations?

Yes, with the properly planned preparation guide.

To plan your preparation, you will need proper guidance from the experts. And you can find the best PTE Trainers at PTE Tutorials. They will not only guide to prepare for each task with the practice materials, but you will also get FREE samples to practice. With PTE tutorials, you can also get the exam memories materials that have all the previously asked and repeated questions with the tips & strategies to crack the exam. Apart from availing their online coaching, you can also download their highly effective PTE Tutorials mobile app which has different tasks to practice for the listening and the speaking section. You can also read their informative blogs and subscribe to their YouTube channel.