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OK, guys, I have tried so many attempts on PTE and IELTS exams and have finally achieved my desired score, I thought I would share with you my thoughts in the context of planning to immigrate to Australia. Don't worry, I am not selling any courses, this is just a small return of favour to the awesome helpful people here at migrationdesk.
You can find what score you need from this link: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/lega/lega/form/immi-faqs/how-can-i-prove-i-have-superior-english
IELTS General Training Module
1. You dont need to take the more difficult academic module, the home affairs department accepts the general training module.
2. Listening is relatively straightforward and easy. You just need to give it your 100% attention. Its very easy to lose focus while listening to some boring instructions.
3. Reading is also relatively straightforward because it is "general training", there arent many difficult words
4. Speaking is difficult in the sense that it is very subjective, you will need to speak to a real person and hence "subjective". The most difficult aspect of this is the fact that the types of questions are very abstract and you really need to prepare yourself for the most frequently asked topics, such as crime, environmental pollution, technology etc. Worst of all, in my experience, a lot of the speaking examiners are very very dull, they wont even smile at you when you crack a silly joke. To give you an example, i was once asked whether it is important to read storybooks to your kids at night, i answered yes because otherwise, my wife wouldn't talk to me the next day. The examiner didn't even smile and just said "moving on".
5. Writing - its very very difficult. Firstly, writing an essay in pencil is super hard. If your country has computerised IELTS exam, you should definitely do it. Its almost impossible to amend a sentence or a paragraph when you are writing in pencil in a very tight time constraint. You also need to spare sometime to count the number of words used because it is critical in their scoring system. You need to understand and know the structure in writing an essay, not a structure that you think is good, but a structure that IELTS thinks is good. As there are so many types of essays and questions, a template wouldnt help you much. Having said that, however, the first part of the writing test, i.e. write a formal/informal letter/email is pretty easy.
6. Its really a horrible and painful experience to take an IELTS exam. The invigilators treat you like a prisoner. Most of the time is wasted in waiting. You have to wait for them to distribute and collect the papers etc. In my country, an IELTS exam would take approximately 6 hours in total (i am not kidding!) and on top of that, the speaking test is done separately at a different time, date and venue.
7. IELTS exams are held much less frequent than PTE exams and in my country, they are always full and have to book at least two months in advance.
8. You need to wait for two weeks for the exam result and meanwhile, you cant really take another exam because you wouldn't know whether you have passed or not.
9. Overall, IELTS sucks. It really does. I absolutely hated it.
PTE Academic
1. Listening - I find this the hardest of all other components. I constantly score full marks in IELTS general training, but I can never get full mark (i.e. 90) for listening in PTE. One of the reasons is because the multiple choice questions will incur negative marks. In other words, in the multiple choice, multiple answer section, you are required to select two or more choices. If one of your answers is incorrect, your score for this question is zero because the wrong choice will offset the mark for the correct choice. Also, writing from dictation can also be quite difficult but it can be trained. you just need to practice a bit more.
2. Reading - reading can be quite intimidating because this is an "academic module", the words and vocabularies used are quite advance and difficult. For me, reading is never an issue but if you have difficulties in reading, then the reading section in PTE is definitely much harder than IELTS general training.
3. Writing - this is what i love about PTE. They only have 3 different types of essays. They are (1) advantages/disadvantages, (2) agree/disagree (3) problem/solution. The topics are more "common sense" type of topics and less abstract. Most importantly, you can use a template! There are many free templates online but i would recommend writing your own template after having studied other persons' templates. This would allow you to remember the template much more easily. I almost always score a mark of 90 by using two templates only. also, always use a lot of connectors like "furthermore, as well as, moreover etc".
4. Speaking - if you do this test without any preparation, i guarantee you, even a native speaker would not get a good score. You need to practice and practice. Again, there are loads of templates in youtubes. You will initially find describe image and re-tell lectures are the most difficult but given enough practice and using templates, you will find them quite easy. I got 90 for speaking by using templates. Short questions are frequently repeated, again, check out youtube. Repeat sentence - the key is to speak fluently, even if you dont remember the words, you keep speaking. Also, dont try to memorise the sentence, you need to "understand" it, once you understand the sentence, it will come naturally to you.
5. there are unlimited amount of resources available in youtube. You can practice a lot using the free resources.
6. You get your result the next day or even sometimes on the same day! This will allow you to take the exam far more frequent than IELTS. A PTE test centre very often offers 3 sessions in a single day. If you want to go hardcore like i did, it is possible to take 3-4 exams in a month! This is simply not achievable for ielts. One of the added benefits of frequent exams is that sometimes the questions are repeated and your mindset are very equipped to do the exam again. The stuff will still be fresh in your memory.
7. Your test is marked by a computer. This is a good thing because you can trick the computer. For example, in re-tell lecture in the speaking section, there are certain sentences you can always say no matter what the topic is, e.g. "the speaker has given valuable information on the topic of ______", "the speaker is very knowledgeable in this area and has shared his insights on the topic of _______". Another example is that sometimes you will get two essays, but the computer wouldnt know if you are using the same template, it wont compare the differences or similarities between your essays. Also, in describe image, you can say "the chart provides an excellent visual illustration of ______" in almost all kind of scenarios.
8. Compare to taking an IELTS exam, taking PTE is so much more relaxed because you just need to sit in front of the computer. Nobody will disturb you. The exam is fixed for three hours but i can normally finish it in around 2.5 hours and with registration etc, the total time requires would be around 3h to 3h15m.
9. One downside though is that it could get really noisy when there are many takers doing the speaking test at the same time. My method is to turn the volume of my headset to the maximum.
10. PTE scores are more predictable and take out the human factors, all scores are marked objectively. Whereas in IELTS, I get very inconsistent results which i think is due to the fact that the answers are marked by a human (except for listening and reading, as there can only be one right answer).
11. One final piece of advice, always check your spelling! I got an overall score of 90 but got 78 for one of the components TWICE because of spelling!
Just my 2 cents, feel free to ask me anything!
You can find what score you need from this link: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/lega/lega/form/immi-faqs/how-can-i-prove-i-have-superior-english
IELTS General Training Module
1. You dont need to take the more difficult academic module, the home affairs department accepts the general training module.
2. Listening is relatively straightforward and easy. You just need to give it your 100% attention. Its very easy to lose focus while listening to some boring instructions.
3. Reading is also relatively straightforward because it is "general training", there arent many difficult words
4. Speaking is difficult in the sense that it is very subjective, you will need to speak to a real person and hence "subjective". The most difficult aspect of this is the fact that the types of questions are very abstract and you really need to prepare yourself for the most frequently asked topics, such as crime, environmental pollution, technology etc. Worst of all, in my experience, a lot of the speaking examiners are very very dull, they wont even smile at you when you crack a silly joke. To give you an example, i was once asked whether it is important to read storybooks to your kids at night, i answered yes because otherwise, my wife wouldn't talk to me the next day. The examiner didn't even smile and just said "moving on".
5. Writing - its very very difficult. Firstly, writing an essay in pencil is super hard. If your country has computerised IELTS exam, you should definitely do it. Its almost impossible to amend a sentence or a paragraph when you are writing in pencil in a very tight time constraint. You also need to spare sometime to count the number of words used because it is critical in their scoring system. You need to understand and know the structure in writing an essay, not a structure that you think is good, but a structure that IELTS thinks is good. As there are so many types of essays and questions, a template wouldnt help you much. Having said that, however, the first part of the writing test, i.e. write a formal/informal letter/email is pretty easy.
6. Its really a horrible and painful experience to take an IELTS exam. The invigilators treat you like a prisoner. Most of the time is wasted in waiting. You have to wait for them to distribute and collect the papers etc. In my country, an IELTS exam would take approximately 6 hours in total (i am not kidding!) and on top of that, the speaking test is done separately at a different time, date and venue.
7. IELTS exams are held much less frequent than PTE exams and in my country, they are always full and have to book at least two months in advance.
8. You need to wait for two weeks for the exam result and meanwhile, you cant really take another exam because you wouldn't know whether you have passed or not.
9. Overall, IELTS sucks. It really does. I absolutely hated it.
PTE Academic
1. Listening - I find this the hardest of all other components. I constantly score full marks in IELTS general training, but I can never get full mark (i.e. 90) for listening in PTE. One of the reasons is because the multiple choice questions will incur negative marks. In other words, in the multiple choice, multiple answer section, you are required to select two or more choices. If one of your answers is incorrect, your score for this question is zero because the wrong choice will offset the mark for the correct choice. Also, writing from dictation can also be quite difficult but it can be trained. you just need to practice a bit more.
2. Reading - reading can be quite intimidating because this is an "academic module", the words and vocabularies used are quite advance and difficult. For me, reading is never an issue but if you have difficulties in reading, then the reading section in PTE is definitely much harder than IELTS general training.
3. Writing - this is what i love about PTE. They only have 3 different types of essays. They are (1) advantages/disadvantages, (2) agree/disagree (3) problem/solution. The topics are more "common sense" type of topics and less abstract. Most importantly, you can use a template! There are many free templates online but i would recommend writing your own template after having studied other persons' templates. This would allow you to remember the template much more easily. I almost always score a mark of 90 by using two templates only. also, always use a lot of connectors like "furthermore, as well as, moreover etc".
4. Speaking - if you do this test without any preparation, i guarantee you, even a native speaker would not get a good score. You need to practice and practice. Again, there are loads of templates in youtubes. You will initially find describe image and re-tell lectures are the most difficult but given enough practice and using templates, you will find them quite easy. I got 90 for speaking by using templates. Short questions are frequently repeated, again, check out youtube. Repeat sentence - the key is to speak fluently, even if you dont remember the words, you keep speaking. Also, dont try to memorise the sentence, you need to "understand" it, once you understand the sentence, it will come naturally to you.
5. there are unlimited amount of resources available in youtube. You can practice a lot using the free resources.
6. You get your result the next day or even sometimes on the same day! This will allow you to take the exam far more frequent than IELTS. A PTE test centre very often offers 3 sessions in a single day. If you want to go hardcore like i did, it is possible to take 3-4 exams in a month! This is simply not achievable for ielts. One of the added benefits of frequent exams is that sometimes the questions are repeated and your mindset are very equipped to do the exam again. The stuff will still be fresh in your memory.
7. Your test is marked by a computer. This is a good thing because you can trick the computer. For example, in re-tell lecture in the speaking section, there are certain sentences you can always say no matter what the topic is, e.g. "the speaker has given valuable information on the topic of ______", "the speaker is very knowledgeable in this area and has shared his insights on the topic of _______". Another example is that sometimes you will get two essays, but the computer wouldnt know if you are using the same template, it wont compare the differences or similarities between your essays. Also, in describe image, you can say "the chart provides an excellent visual illustration of ______" in almost all kind of scenarios.
8. Compare to taking an IELTS exam, taking PTE is so much more relaxed because you just need to sit in front of the computer. Nobody will disturb you. The exam is fixed for three hours but i can normally finish it in around 2.5 hours and with registration etc, the total time requires would be around 3h to 3h15m.
9. One downside though is that it could get really noisy when there are many takers doing the speaking test at the same time. My method is to turn the volume of my headset to the maximum.
10. PTE scores are more predictable and take out the human factors, all scores are marked objectively. Whereas in IELTS, I get very inconsistent results which i think is due to the fact that the answers are marked by a human (except for listening and reading, as there can only be one right answer).
11. One final piece of advice, always check your spelling! I got an overall score of 90 but got 78 for one of the components TWICE because of spelling!
Just my 2 cents, feel free to ask me anything!
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