How To Improve Your Enabling Skills For PTE Test

Paying attention to your enabling skills and working hard to improve them will help you score good in the PTE test.

Let’s take a look at what the PTE test expects from test takers to score good marks and some really useful tips to enhance your enabling skills.

PTE describes the following enabling skills which are assessed and reported as follows:

Grammar:

Correct use of language with respect to word form and word order at the sentence level.

Grammar Tips

• Start reading newspapers, ebooks, magazines or blogs/articles on your favorite topics or subject areas. Reading on your favorite subject(s) on a regular basis will gradually make you acquainted to the rules of sentence formation and word order.
• Become a grammar nazi for yourself. Although, they are disliked and trolled across all social media platforms and the very term has infamously gained popularity over the years; however, if you want to clear the PTE test, do not go take grammatical errors for granted. You will need to get into a habit of writing grammatically correct English in your routine life as well. So, whether you are writing personal emails or posting a social media status on Facebook, checking the content for grammatical errors will do you a world of good. Watch out for punctuation mark errors, apostrophes, commas and semi-colons as well.
• Start talking in English with your friends, family members and colleagues who are good at the language. Ask them to correct you whenever you make a grammatical error.

Oral Fluency:

Smooth, effortless and natural-paced delivery of speech

Tips for Oral Fluency

• Always remember fluency doesn’t mean speaking fast. Speak slow, so that you can collect your thoughts, words do not get eaten up and your speech is comprehensible.
• You can record your voice while speaking on a topic for a minute and listen to it to find out grammatical errors you make, fillers and other reasons that affect your oral fluency.

You can also checkout this useful post we wrote on the Importance of Oral Fluency in PTE Test

Pronunciation:

Production of speech sounds in a way that’s comprehensible to most regular speakers of the language. Pronunciations varying according to various regions and countries are deemed correct to the degree that they are understandable to most regular speakers of English.

Pronunciation Tips

• For improved pronunciation you must listen to related podcasts. You can take tips from good videos tutorials available on youtube as well.
• Notice how your lips and tongue move.
• Focus on word stress, syllable stress and intonation.
• Start practising by recording your own voice and listening to it to correct yourself.
• Join a reputed PTE preparation institute.

Spelling:

Writing of words according to the defined rules of English language. All national variations are deemed correct, but one spelling convention should be used consistently in a given response.

Spelling Tips

• Stop relying on spell-checkers whether you are typing an email or simply typing a text message. Most of us who make spelling mistakes are unaware of the difference between ‘advice’ & ‘advise’, ‘except’ & ‘accept’, ‘practice’ & ‘practise’ and so on.
• Observe the spelling mistakes you make often. You can either make a note of those spellings or use sticky notes on your mirror, so that correct spellings can be memorized.

Vocabulary:

Appropriate choice of words to express meaning, as well as the lexical range.

Vocabulary Tips

• Read as much as you can. Reading magazines, newspapers, blogs and books will introduce you to new words.
• Make a note of new words you learn everyday. You can start with one word per day, but if you can go for more than one, nothing like it.
• Always keep a dictionary handy. Nowadays, plethora of dictionary apps are available for smart-phones. Merriam Webster is one such nice website which I have been using for over a decade now. You can subscribe for ‘Word of the day’ and you will get a new word delivered to your inbox every day.

Written Discourse:

Correct and communicatively efficient production of written language at the textual level.

Writing Tips

• Acquaint yourself of English written in academic environment.
• Writing discourse skills enhancement call for the development of a coherent and logical structure, so that you can convey the meaning of your written piece effectively and in the way you intended.
• The most vital elements of writing a discourse are: Introduction & Presentation of Argument, Analysis of the text, Personal Response, Conclusion.
• Avoid using first person pronouns such as “I” and “Me” while writing. Eliminating these will make your discourse read more mature and effective.
• Be concise! Always follow “Don’t waste the reader’s time” as a thumb rule.

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