Speaking Test - PTE (Part 1)

Dear Readers

I welcome you all again to my PTE / IELTS. In this blog, I'll discuss the Speaking Section of the PTE test.

So lets get into it

First, the format

Personal Introduction
Read aloud
Repeat sentence
Describe image
Re-tell lecture

Answer short questions

I'll be covering first 3 of the above in this post. I'll start with the General Tips first on how to approach Speaking Test (Whether it is IELTS, PTE or TOEFL)

General Strategies

Readers, Its important to remember that you can ace this section by developing a few traits like

• Practice talking slow with friends, family or colleagues. If you talk at a fast pace like myself, remind yourself to slow down.
• Learn to pronounce the words you don't know or haven't heard them before.
• Start practicing speaking on voice recorder. Record your voice, time yourself and listen the recording to see if your speech was clear, no pronunciation error, tone etc.
• Pace yourself - Learn to vary the pitch of your voice. Exhibit mood changes. Learn where to pause and where to stress a particular word.
• Take pauses and don't rush.
• Plan your answer (See the strategy below)

Remember, this is the speaking test and they will test your delivery skills. Refer to the below

The below link from you tube demonstrates perfect way you should speak. Listen and learn (Remember the above strategies)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aY9Se-J2ww

Now, lets move to the PTE Speaking Test in detail

Personal Introduction

What to expect
In this section, you are given a prompt and are asked to introduce yourself orally. You speak about yourself for up to 30 seconds. This is not assessed but is sent to institutions along with your score report.
This is a non-scored part of the examination. If you are applying for a university this is a good chance to give a short introduction about yourself and make a good first impression. The institutions that receive you scores may also use it to verify your identity.

Strategy
Be prepared for what you are going to say. This is the first part and delivering a good introduction can boost your confidence for the rest of the section. You can use the below template as a guideline.
Personal Introduction template:

My name is (your name). I am (enter age) years old and I live in (enter location). I have completed my (enter education) from (enter college name). I am currently working at (Company name) as a (job title). In my free time I like to (enter hobby or something unique about you). I am giving this exam as part of the (visa requirement/university requirement) to assess my English language. 

Read aloud

What to expect
In this section, you are given a text on screen. You get 40 seconds to read through the text and understand the content before the time starts. You then have another 40 seconds to read aloud as naturally and clearly as possible.
You can expect around 7 texts for this section. Each text will usually be a single paragraph between 50-65 words.

How you are scored
Content: Each replacement, omission or insertion of a word counts as one error
Maximum score depends on the length of the item prompt
Pronunciation: 5 Native-like 4 Advanced 3 Good 2 Intermediate 1 Intrusive 0 Non-English Oral fluency: 5 Native-like 4 Advanced 3 Good 2 Intermediate 1 Limited, 0 Disfluent

Strategy
The official PTE sample test recordings of answers were completed between 23-28 seconds. As a guideline, this is a good time-frame to keep in mind. Anything out of this range will usually mean you are speaking too fast or too slow.
Although this is a fairly straightforward section, special attention needs to be placed on pronunciation and oral fluency. You may say something and understand what you say, but it’s important that the software interprets what you say correctly as well.
Many people have questions on what the tone of voice should be. The tone should be appropriate to the message conveyed in the text. You have time to go through the text before you speak. Use this time wisely. Make sure you read the text and understand what it says. This way when you repeat it you will have a better chance of speaking in a tone that conveys meaning. While reading the text in the initial time given also pay special attention to words that you may find difficult to pronounce. Repeat in your head or speak aloud how you are going to pronounce any such words during this time.
Another important aspect of the section is to use appropriate pauses during punctuations (full stops, commas, etc.). Full stops generally will have a longer pause and commas a bit shorter. For example, if there is a comma in the sentence, the spacing between the comma and next word is usually longer than when there is no comma. Similarly, the spacing for a full stop should be longer than what you use after a comma. This is fairly basic, but something you want to keep in mind when you practice.

In case you come across instances where quotation marks like “xxx” or ‘xxx’ are used to encapsulate a word, make sure you stress this word higher than the ones around it. 

Repeat sentence

What to expect
In this section, you will be played an audio recording of a short sentence. You have to listen to the phrasing of a short sentence as it is and read aloud
You can expect around 12 item sets or sentences in this section. Each recording will be fairly short and between 4 to 10 seconds long. There can be between 8 to15 words in each sentence.

How you are scored
Content: Errors = replacements, omissions and insertions only
Hesitations, filled or unfilled pauses, leading or trailing material are ignored in the scoring of content
3 - All words in the response from the prompt in the correct sequence
2 - At least 50% of words in the response from the prompt in the correct sequence 1 - Less than 50% of words in the response from the prompt in the correct sequence 0 - Almost nothing from the prompt in the response
Pronunciation: 5 Native-like 4 Advanced 3 Good 2 Intermediate 1 Intrusive 0 Non-English Oral fluency: 5 Native-like 4 Advanced 3 Good 2 Intermediate 1 Limited, 0 Disfluent

Strategy
You hear a short sentence ranging from 8-15 words. Don’t get overwhelmed by this. Focus on understanding the sentence instead of remembering word by word. A strategy that can be used is to break the sentences given to meaningful phrases. This way you have a better chance of reproducing it. You are scored on the correct word sequences that you can correctly speak for this item type.
Copy the stress and intonation of the speaker. If you hear the audio and the speaker stressing on a particular word or set of words make sure you do the same. You do not need to copy the accent but it will help your score if you can reproduce the tone of the speaker.
To illustrate the above two points, let’s take the below sentence as an example. This has 13 words. If I ask you to remember 13 words after listening to it once, it sounds like a scary task. Notice how this can be easily broken down into 3 simple phrases (separated by |). These 3 phrases can be easily replicated and you are more likely to reproduce them if you understand the meaning of the sentence. Words in a phrase will be spoken together in relatively quick succession.

The professor recommends | arriving in the classroom |5 minutes↑ prior to the lecture↓.

In this particular sentence; you can see that the speaker had stressed on “5 minutes” while speaking, so you would want to do the same. The speaker also had a falling intonation towards the end of the sentence at “to the lecture” which you would replicate.
To summarize, listen carefully to the meaning of the sentence, remembering it by breaking the sentence into phrases. Also, pay attention to the tone of the speaker and on any words spoken in high or low tone and copy when speaking.

An important point to note regarding the scoring is that you get 2 out of 3 for content even if you speak more than 50% of the words from the recording. So if the recording is 10 words long and if you speak even 6 words correctly you still get 2 out of 3 for content. The rest of the scoring is for pronunciation (5) and oral fluency (5). The reason I mention this is to stress the importance of speaking what you have understood without compromising on pronunciation and oral fluency. You will score better if you speak a sentence with 60% accuracy and you are fluent than if you speak with 100% accuracy and have breaks in between. The key message is not to worry too much if you miss out on a few words. Just speak what you have understood as fluently and confidently as you can without breaks and hesitations in speech. 

This completes the first part of the speaking section of the PTE exam.

Happy Reading Guys !

If you have any questions for me please don't hesitate to email me at shristiarya42@gmail.com and if you like my work please share with your friends and follow my blogs.

All the best (Keep an eye out for Part 2 of my Speaking post for PTE)

Cheers!