The PTE-A Exam Guide: It Contains All the Information

The majority of people who want to move or study abroad choose the IELTS or PTE test for their English language proficiency tests.

Once you've decided the test you want to take, it's time to adopt a preparation strategy.  

Would you choose:

1. Random assembly using any materials

2. The information that you find online

3. A well-thought-out preparation guide

Your selection, which should undoubtedly be the one, is number 3. Let's start by grasping the fundamentals first.

What is the PTE-A Exam and why aspirants opt for it?

PTE stands for the Pearson Test of English language. It is an entirely computer-based exam that assesses your English academic skills. Anyone from the English native speaker and non-native speaker of the English language can take this test. The two factors that make it popular are:

1. Scoring is easy: The PTE-A exam is easy to score in comparison with the other English skill assessing tests.

2. Result: The PTE-A exam results are out within five working days in most of the cases; thus, making it convenient to the test-takers.

PTE-A Format:

The PTE-A exam examines your enabling and communicative skills of the English language through speaking, reading, writing and listening sections in the exam. There are tasks where you might need to write an essay, describe an image, find the right or wrong answers, summarise a given text etc. As your one skill is a mixture of two skills; like you could hear and write only when both your listening and writing skills are good. This is the reason that a task from one section will also contribute to the marks of the other section in the PTE-A Exam.

Speaking Section:

• Tasks: 5-7 task types
• Time: 77-93 minutes
• Contribution: Speaking & Writing Section

Writing Section:

• Tasks: 2 types
• Time: 30-40 Minutes
• Contribution: Reading & Writing Section

Reading Section:

• Tasks: 5 types
• Time: 32-41 minutes
• Contribution: Reading & Writing Section

At this moment in the exam, you get a 10 minutes break which is optional. You can make use of it to relax your mind.

Listening Section:

• Tasks: 8 types of tasks
• Time: 45-57 minutes
• Contribution: listening and writing section

So, this is all about the PTE-A exam and its different sections. Now let us talk about the exam centre where you are going to take your test.

The PTE-A exam center:

The PTE-A exam center is a secure place that is monitored. For the 3 hours exam, aspirants are provided with equipment like a computer with a headset (with a mic), a notepad to take down the notes if required.

Tips you can follow:

1. As you share the exam centre with other test-takers; choose less occupied test centre

2. Try and reach 30 minutes before the exam

3. Get your photo ID proof mandatorily

Know how the exam is scored

An automated scoring system scores the PTE-A exam, as it is a computer-based exam entirely. All the different sections are scored out of 90 points at maximum. The minimum score that an individual can attain is 10 points. The test is scored based on the correctness of your answers, formal aspects (whether within the word limit or not), quality of response (your grammatical skills, sentence formation skills, use of punctuation, conjunction everything is assessed), and your spellings. As the tasks contribute to each other; you will be getting score for correct/incorrect answers or the partially correct answers.

For a correct answer, you get 1 point, and for incorrect you get a zero; whereas, the partial score is always less than the maximum score for that question.

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