People looking to study abroad or settle to go through the English language skill tests and they majorly opt for IELTS & PTE exam.
And it is observed that most of them opt for the PTE-A exam. Let us understand the PTE Score and why do aspirants choose for this exam.
What is the PTE-A Exam?
PTE stands for the Pearson Test of English language. It assesses your communication skill via the academic exam. It is for both the English native speaker and non-native speaker of the English language.
The main two reasons why aspirants opt for this exam are:
- Easier to score: Compared to other exams, especially, IELTS exam; the PTE exam is easy to score.
- Less time for Result: In most of the cases, the result for the PTE-A exam is delivered within five working days through the email.
How is the PTE-A Test Environment?
The PTE-A exam is entirely computer-based exam that an aspirant has to take at a secure exam centre. It is a 3-hour long exam for which a test-taker will be provided with a computer along with a headset so that he can read, hear and answer all the questions.
You have to share the exam hall with other students as well, so choose an exam centre that is likely to be less occupied; this will help you concentrate on the exam well.
Make sure you reach at least 30 minutes before the exam time with your photo ID to get your identity verified and take the instruction for the exam.
PTE-A Exam Test Format:
The PTE-A exam covers a topic from real life that are used in academic English and apart from asking you to write an essay, find missing words, etc., it questions you through various tasks like lectures, graphs, and charts.
The exam is formatted in four different sections that assess your enabling and communicative skills like speaking, reading, writing and listening and skills like grammatical skills, Oral fluency, pronunciation skills, spellings, vocabulary skills and written discourse. The task from one section contributes to the score in that section and other sections as well.
The four different sections are:
Speaking Section:
This section consists of 5-7 task types, and the time for this task is 77 to 93 minutes. The Speaking section contributes to the score of both speaking and writing sections.
Writing Section:
This section has two types of tasks and the time allocated for the tasks ranges from 30 to 40 minutes, and the tasks in the section contribute to both reading and writing sections of the exam.
Reading Section:
This section consists of 5 tasks and the time for this task is from 32 to 41 minutes, and this section contributes to both the reading and writing section of the PTE-A Exam.
After you complete this section, you get an optional 10 minutes break. It is advised you to utilize this break to relax between the exam. Do utilize it.
Listening Section:
This section consists of 8 different tasks and the time allotted for this task ranges from 45 to 57 minutes, and the tasks from this section contributed to the scores of both listening and writing section.
After you have understood what a PTE Exam and its test format is; it’s the time for you to know how the PTE Test is scored.
How is PTE-A Exam Scored?
PTE-A Exam is entirely a computer-based exam, and hence the score for this exam is machines scored by an automated scoring system. The score for this exam is given in the form of points, where the minimum score is 10 points, and the maximum score is 90 points.
The score is declared after testing your tasks, where some tasks are given a score on correctness alone, and the others are scored based on the correctness, formal aspects and the quality of response.
(The formal aspect mainly concentrates on the word limit, and the quality of response is checked based on your enabling skills).
There are two types of scoring an aspirant can get, and they are correct/incorrect scoring and partial scoring.
Correct/incorrect Scoring: If an answer is correct, you get 1 point, and if it’s incorrect, you get no score or zero for it.
Partial Scoring: If any question that carries partial credits and is half correct and half incorrect, then partial credit is given to that question which is less than the maximum credit for that particular tasks.
Conclusion
Once, you have understood everything about the PTE Exam; it’s time for you to start preparing for the same. You can opt for a platform that not online provides you with online coaching but also provides you with expert’s guidance, sample questions, mock tests, highly informative and helpful practice materials. It is wise to choose if the same platform provides you with a mobile application and videos and blog to learn from. One such platform is PTE Tutorials that best fits in your bucket list.