Welcome to the fifth video of the Super PTE Learning System.
In this video we will learn what you need to get a high score in PTE Listening section.
The PTE Software wants to know if you are good at Smart Listening!
That is our fifth scoring parameter.
When you listen, are you able to understand what the theme is?
Are you able to connect first paragraph to the second?
In other words, are you able to find relationships between different parts of the audio.
Most people struggle in this section because one they just don’t know what is important.
Second, because they are not able to make links between the parts.
And the last reason is because they can’t listen and understand at the pace at which the speaker is talking.
They miss words, they can’t follow along.
I will tell you how you can smartly listen and identify the important information.
Then, I will also tell you how you can understand relationships between different parts of the audio and remember them.
And finally, what you shall do to make sure you can listen and follow along.
First, when you are listening – you should listen for what I call the signpost words.
These are words which are:
names,
things,
places,
dates,
events,
concepts, etc.
Usually any topic will be about a person, place, thing, event, etc.
So as soon as you hear one of these words, you know it is important and relevant.
After that, understanding the overall audio is just about forming relationships between different such words.
If you hear an audio and the words you hear are about say – democracy, people, government, then you can safely guess the audio is about people and democratic government.
It is important to understand this because what you get from an audio, you will use that to answer various questions.
This is applicable to the multiple-choice questions, summarize spoken text, select correct summary and select missing word.
Listen to the important words and understand how they are connected to each other.
If you do this one thing, you will be in a very good position.
Merely, listening and understanding is not sufficient.
Because, often you will not remember everything that you are hearing.
That is where note taking becomes important.
You have to take notes for most of the questions in listening.
That is why you need to learn a method for taking notes.
First of all – what do you note down?
Never ever try to note down everything.
You are not taking dictation here.
Just note down the signpost words as I discussed earlier.
And, you usually don’t have to write the complete words.
An abbreviation is good enough.
For example, to write pollution, you can just write:
P
O
L
.
To show relationships between different words, you can use lines and arrows.
To show which words are more important or which words represent the main idea in the audio, you can underline those words or put a circle around them.
Note taking is like a habit that you need to develop.
When you are practicing, follow the same system that you are going to follow in the exam.
As I have said a few times before, if you don’t follow a system, you will not score well.
Follow the system that you are learning and make it a habit.
So, now you know, how to identify key information in the audio and you have tools to remember it.
The last thing which we need to learn is how to follow along an audio.
My first suggestion is that a couple of weeks before your exam, spend half an hour listening to English audio, every day.
Speak after it.
Take notes.
And, in the end try to summarize what you have listened to and understood from it.
This will improve your listening, speaking and writing skills.
But especially, will help you in understanding fast audios.
Now, I will give you a few rules to follow:
The first couple of rules are for highlight incorrect words.
For this type of questions:
keep your cursor in the beginning of the text
and, be ready to move your head along with the audio
and, click on any word you find is wrong.
If you feel the speaker has moved ahead and you are behind, quickly jump to where the speaker is.
Never ever fall behind!
And, the other rule – once you click on a word, do not change it later.
Unless you think you clicked on a word accidently.
Never second guess yourself.
Next couple of rules are for write for dictation questions.
Most important thing you need to figure out is:
Will you type directly?
or, will you first write down the words in your rough pad and then type at the end?
Our recommendation is:
type directly.
Spend some time listening to audios and typing while you listen. Practice this.
Typing on a keyboard is not a very difficult skill to improve.
And, when you look at it – writing by hand is rarely faster.
But keep this in mind:
When you are typing directly, don’t get stuck in any one place.
If you are not able to type in a word completely and the speaker is moving ahead, just leave that word and go on to the next blank…
Even if you fill in half words in the blanks, it is fine.
You can come back to the blanks in the end and complete the question.
So, that is what you need to remember!
These are the rules which will guide you towards Smart Listening.
Put in lot of practice using all these rules, and you will do very well in the exam.
All the best!
See you in the next Learning System video.
- When listening look out for signpost words.
- Relationship between the words help us understand the theme of the audio.
- Practice take notes.
- Don’t note down everything. Use abbreviations and symbols.
- Practice listening every day. Listen to a mix of audios – some in which the speakers are slow and in others which they are fast. After you have finished listening, try to summarize in a few sentences what the audio was about.
- In highlight incorrect words, do not change answers after the audio has finished, unless you have clicked on a word by mistake.
- For write from dictation questions we recommend that you type directly on the computer.
- Practice typing directly in the computer. It is easy to develop the skill even if you are not used to. Once you do, you will find it faster than writing by hand.
