Taking Pearson Test of English (PTE) is not all beer and skittles for many. What makes the test strange is its tricky questions in most of the items of the modules especially ‘Reading’. Now, where does it come from? How does it happen? And, what’s the trick? Whoa… hold your horses! Read on as we spill the beans.
PTE is a computer based test; but the questions, of course, are set by humans. In fact, intelligent humans! The hanging sword of ‘time’ is enough to bother a test-taker who is always on the verge of anxiety attack. That said, we will not exaggerate if we call PTE not just the test of English but also of memory and presence of mind.
Where is the googly?
While almost all the modules can go tricky, among the students, the ‘Reading’ module is infamous to drill a hole in your brain. What drives test-takers crazy is that the questions in many items of the Reading module look like a piece of cake but the answers, when revealed later, are partially correct, if not all wrong. In other modules as well, the questions are foxy. So, how is the game played? Let’s take the curtains off…
- While choosing a single answer from multiple options for the given passage could be easy for you, multiple answers in the next item is a googly! It may happen that one of the options may have some ‘quote’ which is exactly the same as in the passage. Without further ado, you select it! But, there is a catch. It may not be the option as they might have simply put the ‘quotes’ but have changed the rest of the sentence in the option. So, be careful!
- Describe an image may have too much information to speak in 40 seconds. For instance, the graph may show more than 10 countries, 10 years’ span, and several other data for the lines or bars. Now, even if you start ‘naming’ each one of them, in those 40 quick seconds, you’ll simply ‘label’ the image and will not be able to describe it properly.
- Fill in the blanks may have very close words. Don’t depend totally on your grammar skills thinking that only a ‘gerund’ can go here and not a noun. This could be a trap! Reordering paragraphs serve like a Yorker in cricket! Trust us; no tips can be applied in some (though rare) cases. If you think that a paragraph cannot start with a pronoun ‘it’, you are mistaken!
- In the item of highlighting the correct summary, all may look the same, and that’s why they say ‘choose the best which is relevant’! The essay topic in writing could be so neutral that you don’t know whether to agree or disagree!
- Re-tell lecture could be on the topic that you have never come across! Say, the lecture or ‘osteoporosis’ to a non-medical student…adding an insult to injury could be that an art/commerce student listening to it!
All in all, PTE is tricky and the questions are set by the experts who know the ins and outs of human psychology especially of non-native speakers! These are just a few things that we had in our mind. There are many…and they are even weird! But, for any issue, there is a solution.
Do you want to know more about these secluded tricks? Come, join Aussizz and we will help you out!
