How to Master PTE Highlight Correct Summary and Summarizing Written Test?

Presently, a plethora of school-passed students, plans of studying out of their country zone as it gives them a fresh exposure and experience. However, attaining that hill is not that easy as we dream. One has to go through many significant steps that he or she has to clear, and the first step toward their journey is to pass any English Proficiency test. May it be IELTS, PTE, or TOEFL. 

Laying our main emphasis on the Pearson Test of English, PTE is a multi-level test that evaluates and approves the English abilities and capabilities aimed at non-native English speaker, by assessing real-life scholastic content, hearing extracts from the lectures, and viewing graphs and charts. Four modules or skills are used to measure them: Reading, Listening, Writing, and Speaking in this test. All the four sections provide us a batch of twenty tasks, which a student has to attempt in a single sitting of 180 minutes or 3-hour. Among all of them, there are special tasks from which most of the aspirants fear. These tasks include the two most prominent questions: Highlight Correct summary and Summarize the written text, coming from the Listening & Writing section, respectively. Although both of these tasks are based on the synopsis of a topic, yet both are very different from each other. Thus, one needs to understand and practice both of them individually.

Highlight Correct Summary

As mentioned earlier, it is a listening activity, in which a student has to listen to audio and concerning that excerpt, one has to choose the most desirable and suitable summary, from the given options, that describe the spoken text, best. One gets two-three questions of this type that has an equal proportion of score and time. Apart from being the listening activity, it is also considered an integrated task, tied-up with the reading section because one has to read the summary as well. Notably, the most crucial thing to note is that your ability to analyze, making a decision, and combining the correct pieces of information are the skills, that are assessed and appraised by the examiner in this test.

One should practice accordingly so that their preparation covers the stated abilities also. Further comes, how to achieve success in this task and for that, a student needs to follow some basic rules & principals, mentioned in the impending paragraphs.

Being a listening task, one should listen to the audio attentively and must focus on each and every spoken word cautiously. Also, without losing the concentration, one can take notes as well like, any significant detail or keyword. It helps a candidate to pick up an option wisely by comparing these notes with the provided choices. Moreover, also skim and go through the options also before the audio. It will allow you to keep the options in the mind while listening, and walk upon the right track. Furthermore, as the test moves quickly and steadily because of the timing, thus it is necessary to be very swift while attempting this question. Another thing one can do is make a little synopsis of his or her own, and then match & compare this outline with the options. As a result, it may help you to pick up the accurate choice. 

Conversely, the elimination strategy also works best in this type of question. Under this regime, one eliminates the incorrect or impossible answers first, rather than finding the correct one. This reduces the number the options to be compared and assists a student to survey and examine only the remaining answers. However, one should also take care of the fact that the wrong or unlikely options may also bear some words or information from the excerpt (audio) to confuse the candidate. Hence, one should always read and re-read the paragraphs carefully. On the other hand, some students with a creative mind can also visualize the audio they listen to. It helps them to draw a mental picture of the spoken text and further assist them to make a wise decision of selecting up the accurate answer. Likewise, a candidate can practice for this test using a radio/ TV by listening to the conversations from them and memorizing some crucial key points. Along with that, this technique may also help you to adapt to various distractions and noise, that you might face on the test-day while doing this question. 

Summarize Written Text

This tricky question from the writing section makes most of the students scrambled and more than half a percentage of these students struggle at this platform. In this particular question, an applicant gets to read a text of approximately 200-250 words long. After skimming the text, one has to write a summary of that writing in one sentence. Like Highlighting the correct summary, this is also an integrated task, where your reading and writing skills are assessed. Moreover, one is given only ten minutes to write the synopsis and must include the main idea of that text is not more than 75 words. Notably, this topic is introduced to test your sentence formation & tenses, and how well you gather and react to the imperative information. To fetch high scores in this task, you must use a wise and wide range of complex & compound sentences to retrieve most of the information. Moreover, linkers and transition words are also very essential as they help in joining two or more separate sentences together. Along with that, also apply punctuation marks and capitalization appropriately. As it is a one-sentence summary, one may initiate the statement with a capital letter and end with a full-stop. If the general and overall message of the text is in a sentence mentioned in the write-up, even then, don't copy the whole sentence in your response. Instead you can use a mixture of synonyms and metonyms to insert some variations and diversity in your synopsis. Although it is a tedious task, yet read the passage twice and keep both eyes open. In addition to it, don't add your own ideas and perceptions, even if you are familiar with the text as this test does not evaluate your knowledge. Instead, it is made to verify your proficiency and skills. Likewise, you are not even allowed to include any reference from the given passage. for instance, " The passage says..." or " It is stated in the paragraph...". On the contrary, explain the central concept first and keep the other details short and brief, as the supporting ideas. Also, keep your sentence simple and not too complicated, which may make it hard for the examiner to check. Moreover, to make it mild and manageable, give your sentence a proper grammatical and spelling structure. Include a proper utility of tenses and vocabulary also. The ideal method to practice for this test is to write a short summary after reading any story, article, or book. This exercise is very beneficial to achieve all the requirements for this question.

Also, for your convenience, there are certain PTE Practice Tests and Mock Tests available on the internet and one can acquire them by paying a very affordable fee to loyal and trustworthy teachers.

Oppositely, although both the tasks are a little complicated to understand and solve, still by following the aforementioned tips and practice can help you to master in both these tasks.