Crack PTE Academic in style! Part 4— Listening
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
— Stephen Covey
In first 3 part of of this series, we looked at the Speaking, Reading and Writing section in detail, if you want to check those you can find them here; speaking blog, reading blog and writing blog.
In this part, I will be sharing various tips and strategies to conquer the Listening section of the PTE-Academic Exam.
When I took the exam in Mar 2022, I got 88 and 87 respectively in Listening section in two variants of PTE-Academic (Regular and UKVI).
Why I took both variants of exams, well that’s for fulfil visa/immigration requirements for two different countries.
Useful pointers and tips for Listening:
There are 8 question types that contribute to Writing but as mentioned in the first blog that each section might also derive it’s score from other sections. Writing section also derives its scoring from other sections.
Basically the tasks that contribute to Writing section are listed below:
1. Write from Diction — This is considered as king of tasks in Listening and Writing section.
Strategy:
✤ Visualisation helped me in remembering the context of the sentence.
✤ Practicing common sentences especially from university, college, office settings appears frequently in this task.
✤ Practice medium to complex spoken sentences, in different english accents and sometimes with backgrounds sounds, to train your ears and mind to understand the sentences during the exam. It is easy to write the sentence if you have understood it in the first place.
✤ If you don’t remember a word or not sure of singular or plural subject, you can write both variants, seems the software only accepts the correct version in marking. This happened with me and saw this has happened with others as well as I read from other exam-takers reviews.
2. Summarise Spoken Text — This is an important task for listening section.In this you will hear an academic recording of up to 40–90 seconds. You will have 10 mins to write a summary of the lecture between 50–70 words. Any time saved on this task will not be rolled over to other tasks.
Strategy:
✤ Please utilise complete 10mins allotted for this task.
✤ Please make sure you spend at least 2 mins towards the end to review your response for any spelling, grammar or vocabulary errors.
✤ Please proof-read before submitting it.
3. Highlight incorrect words — In this task, you would listen to a recording while you read a transcription of that recording. The transcription contains from 5–7 deliberate errors. You highlight the words in the transcription which do not match the recording. You typically get 2–3 of these task during the exam.
Strategy:
✤ Keep your eyes on the screen, and your hand moving along the paragraph while listening to the audio and you need to click on the wrong word at same time as hear it. Making note of incorrect words can also help but this risks you loosing tracks of the passage itself.
✤ Before the audio starts, you can have a quick cursory look at the para and create a mental map, at least that helped me to spot incorrect words while I hear them.
✤ Negative marking for each incorrect highlight — if you are not sure, please do not highlight the word.
4. Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers — This is not a high pririty task and you typically get around 1-2 of these in your exam. Here you hear a recording and you would need to choose one or more correct options based on the question given.
Strategy:
✤ As there is negative marking for each incorrect choice, hence a optimal strategy is to select only one option unless you are 100% confident of other options.
✤ You get 5–6 secs before the recording starts playing, please maintain focus to make sure that you carefully understand what the question is about.
5. Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer — You will get around 1-2 of these in your exam. In this task, you will hear a recording and you need to choose one correct answer according to what the question is asking.
Strategy:
- Correct answer most of the time will be paraphrased, so make sure you understand the meaning of the lecture.
6. Listening Fill in the Blanks — This is important for both listening and writing section. You get around 2-3 of these in your exam where each question will have around 4-5 blanks. Essentially, you listen to a recording while its transcript is displayed on the screen. However, several words in the transcript are missing, represented by blanks. Your task is to fill in these blanks based on what you hear in the recording.
Strategy:
✤ Make sure that you skim through the transcript in front of you before the recording plays in your prep time — 3–5 seconds typically.
✤ Your eyes should be on screen and moving through the passage, while you make note in yoiur notepad without looking ta it, one startegy is write vertically. Please do not type the answers while the recording is playing, as there is a risk of you missing out on other blanks.
✤ Listen carefully for ‘s’ and ‘ed’ — if not sure please read the sentence to check if it is grammatically correct.
✤ If there is any proper noun or any blank after the full stop, make sure you start with the capital alphabet. Though this is normal usuage but can get missed due to the exam nerves.
✤ It again goes without saying that please proofread your responses before moving ahead.
7. Select Missing Word — In this task, you would listen to a recording in which the final word or group of words has been replaced by a beep. You are given 3-5 options. You would need to choose the correct answer option to complete the recording.
Strategy:
✤ Prep time is again important to read the topic of lecture as well as skim through the passage and options.
✤ Write down the last sentence before the recording stops , this can help you to match each option to the sentence, and can also be helpful to eliminate the wrong ones.
8. Highlight correct summary — Now this is task from your Listening section carrying around 1%-2% of reading scores.
Strategy:
✤ When you read the sentence and it seems like a fact statement, then most often than not, it is not the correct response.
✤ Anything you can find in the paragraph as-is, is also not the correct option at most times.
✤ A sentence which looks like the gist of the entire paragraph is usually the correct option.
Frequently asked questions
Q: I get really good scores in three sections but Listening scores are not improving?
A: Focus on Write from Diction task from Listening section and tasks from speaking section can improve Listening scores dramatically.
If this blogs helps you, I will appreciate if you can pass this information along so that someone else can benefit. If you have a specific question, you can comment and I will try my best to answer that.
You can read my other blogs here or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Useful resources
- Sample templates
- Official PTE preparation test
- My PTE Speaking, Reading and Writing blogs
Disclaimer: Above information is based on my personal experiences so please use discretion to see what works for you.
