Are you taking the PTE test? If yes, there is a good enough chance that you will get lost in the ocean of PTE tips, tricks, and myths surrounding the exam. Sometimes, you tend to believe in them unknowingly, and this could affect your PTE score.
Here’s an example of such unwelcome myths put into practice by a PTE test taker who failed to achieve a good speaking score. Upon asking the reason for his failure, he informed the others that he read somewhere that it is advised to speak a variety of accents in the PTE speaking test to score better. The aspirant chose to ignore the facts and believe in myths.
You wouldn’t want to do that, would you? We know how all this could be overwhelming. This is why we are here with 5 PTE myths that can easily misguide you and impact your PTE score.
An aspirant once told his friends that using backspace negatively impacted his Summaries Written Text score. However, he failed to notice that his wrong spellings, grammatical errors, and other minute mistakes led him to get that score.
The simple use of ‘backspace’ is nowhere related to an aspirant scoring low marks. Thus, its usage does not affect your PTE score in any possible manner.
The PTE- A exam tests the candidates’ ability to speak naturally and maintain the pace at any average speed. However, the idea that the usage of different accents helps get an impressive score is a myth. PTE experts have also suggested that students should not try to fake their accents.
The myth that aspirants could skip some of the tasks if they run short of time is doing rounds, which is absolutely wrong. Skipping the tasks that carry low marks or any other task is not recommended.
Whenever you wish to implement or believe such myths, take a look at the PTE test format. The tasks are designed so that the score in one impacts the score achieved in another and so on.
For instance, upon completing the first 3 sections, an aspirant will be left with little time for the Listening section. In case you decide to skip the summaries spoken test, you lose marks for both the listening and the writing section.
Never even think of skipping a task because of the scarcity of time. Instead, we suggest you work on your speed and accuracy.
Another popular myth is to avoid indulging in speaking difficult-to-pronounce words while reading aloud as there is a chance of making a mistake.
If you choose to believe this, you are simply letting go of the fact that the read-aloud task is held to assess the candidate’s oral fluency. Thus, you are given a score for the content. If you are trying to skip the challenging-to-pronounce words, you may not be able to convey the right message and miss the essential keywords.
As per this myth, if a candidate is unsure about the right option to choose while answering the multiple-choice questions, it is prudent to select multiple answers and choose all the options given.
By choosing the wrong options, you are knowingly reducing your final score. The negative marking for all those wrong answers will pull your final score down. Thus, it is best to leave the questions unanswered if you do not know any.
Myths can be a dangerous thing to believe in, especially for a PTE aspirant. The first-time test takers often fall prey to these myths and should altogether avoid doing this. Their lack of experience and knowledge makes them vulnerable to these. You must make sure to never let them affect your performance.
