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Read. Speak.
No, this is just not what you should do in the PTE read-aloud task. Do not just read out loud and record your answer.
It is the 1st task that you will be facing in the speaking section and you cannot begin it by making mistakes.
There is a lot to it.
You must begin by understanding everything about the task, how it is scored, and what are the skills that are analysed in this section.
Read this blog to understand the best ways to answer this task:
- What is there in the read-aloud task?
- What are the skills that are assessed?
- What are PTE read aloud tips that can help prepare better?
Knowing the answer to these 3 questions can certainly help you score better.
What is there in the read-aloud task?
IN the PTE exam, you get around 6-7 questions in the read-aloud task type. This task contributes to your speaking and reading scores out of the four communicative skills in the PTE Exam.
You get around 30-35 minutes to answer the entire speaking section. So, you must know how to manage your time effectively.
What are the skills that are assessed?
The enabling skills that are assessed in the read-aloud PTE task are Content, Pronunciation, and Oral Fluency. You need to understand all of these in detail.
Content:
The accuracy of your content will help you score better. You must read aloud exactly what’s there on the screen.
Remember, that replacement, omission, or insertion of any information is counted as an error. You cannot make any of these changes to the content.
Pronunciation:
Most of the PTE test takers try to fake accents, shiver while speaking or pronounce the words wrongly.
You need to avoid this at any cost. You cannot fake the accent, your pronunciation should be loud and clear.
But that’s not it. You also need to understand how you need to pronounce the consonants, vowels, and syllables.
The other thing that you cannot miss out on is the rhythm while you speak. You need to understand phonology and make the correct use of it.
You should know the consonants (alphabets other than the vowels) are to be spoken with a close or partially closed vocal tract. Whereas a syllable is a particular part of a word that has got vowel in it, it can be more than two. You need to pronounce the vowels clearly and know which words need you to keep one out of two vowels silent.
Oral Fluency:
PTE read-aloud doesn’t only need you to read the passage loud and clear. The fluency of it does matter. And you should learn about the elements that can help improve your Oral Fluency.
Right pauses, repetition, and Word & sentence stress are something that you need to practice for good oral fluency. Take appropriate pauses on full stops, commas, & semicolons.
You also need to focus on the right use of word stress and sentence stress. You must know which are the words you need to emphasize while speaking a complete sentence. Learning about the phonic sounds can help you improvise further.
What are PTE read-aloud tips that can help prepare better?
Here are the experts’ tips that have helped the PTE Test takers score well in the read-aloud PTE task:
- You get 35-40 seconds to read the question, read it out loud and do not read it in your head. It will make it easy when you answer it.
- Practice skimming & scanning as much as you can; it will help you identify the keywords and understand the context quicker.
- If you make a mistake while answering, do not stop to rectify it. Keep speaking.
- Do not try to speak out the word that you face difficulty in pronouncing.
- Read out a passage, and record it. And then listen to it to analyse your pronunciation & oral fluency.
- The best way of practising reading aloud is watching a Tv show/ a movie with subtitles. And when you do this make sure you listen to the audio and repeat it accurately.
- Learning new words will also help you improve your vocab and get familiar with the words. This will help you during the PTE Exam.
- Make sure to practice speaking in a natural tone and at a normal pace.
- Do not skip reading an article every day.
- While practising speaking focus on the rise and fall of your voice.
- Practice reading the text in chunks. Do not try speaking the entire sentence in one go.
- Make sure to focus on the connecting words to remember them better.
- Do not pause for more than three seconds after the beep.
- Practice with the previous exam and repeated questions. You might get lucky, if not at least you will be familiar with the type of questions.
Conclusion – What if all of these don’t work?
After reading the entire article and following every strategy if you are not speaking confidently and without any mistakes, then the only thing where you are going wrong is in identifying the minor mistakes. Be it word stress, emphasis, pause, intonation error; everything needs your attention.
If you are unable to identify or find a way to stop making these mistakes, you should reach out to the experts. The experts might not only help you identify and improve on all of these, but also will guide you and provide you with overall preparation.
Try these tips, these will work. But remember practice as much as you can.
Author Bio:
Krina Patel and team have developed PTE Tutorials as a one stop solution for PTE Practice. It is an online portal that presents the PTE Test taker with several features that boost their individual as well as Overall Score. Some of the many capabilities include test evaluation, test analytics, useful videos, practice resources like essay essentials, describe image booklet and more.
