Hi Guys,
I would like to take this opportunity to thank God and to all the members who shared their reviewers and tips in this forum. All the materials helped me a lot. And by the way, I also shared all the review materials with my colleague (we took the exam together, he got his desired scores as well 🙂 ).
I took IELTS once but failed. Fortunately, I did it with PTE. I took the exam last Monday and received the result yesterday (Tuesday) - in 24 hours. Below are my scores:
LRSW - 83/78/85/81 (1 point na lang ang reading, 20 points na sana hehe)
To be honest, I was not expecting those scores because I was not confident with my performance during the exam, not to mention my English skills, particularly speaking and reading. In speaking, I know I made many mistakes in describe image, retell lecture and some in repeat sentence and short answer question. And I ran out of time in reading.
I am going to share with you my whole experience para man lang makabawi.
<b class="Bold">Disclaimer:</b> This is not to boast but to inspire and to give more confidence 🙂.. Sabi nga nila, kung kinaya ko, kakayanin nyo rin. Kaya nating lahat.
<b class="Bold">Testing Location</b> - Pearsonvue, SG
<b class="Bold">Testing environment</b> - I consider myself lucky because nobody occupied the cubicle on my right and I did not even hear the voice of the examinee on my left (maybe he was taking a different exam or something).
<b class="Bold">Speaking </b>
- I honestly struggled on this. I was even worried because there was a breathing noise during the mic testing. I told the examiner but didn't even bother to check so I just went on with the test.
<b class="Bold">Read Aloud</b> - I just read the paragraph in relax tone and in average pace. I used phrasing in most of the long sentences to catch breath (this is important in my opinion) and emphasized the important information. I don't actually know how to read aloud the perfect way.
<b class="Bold">Describe Image</b> - Some of the graphs were rather complex like the comparison of two graphs. I got confused on how to describe these kinds of graph. Anyway, I just followed the template (I got from this forum) by giving the title, highest value, lowest value and conclusion (trend). I even stammered while speaking and mistakenly identified wrong values/numbers. I can rate my performance here 7 out of 10.
<b class="Bold">Retell Lecture</b> - Even more challenging for me especially on the second item. The narrator in the second item speaks too fast and the topic is complicated. I caught only few words in this item. Consequently, I did not manage to consume the entire 40 seconds. I just retold whatever I wrote in the notepad and finished in 30 seconds or less because I ran out of words to say. Another thing is I found it difficult to read my own handwriting using the pen provided. I can still remember that my last sentence was incomplete because there is one word I could not read on my notes (hehe). 6 out of 10 is my rate here.
<b class="Bold">Repeat Sentence</b> - The problem with this for me is that the dialog is quite fast. Aside from that, I could not understand one or two words in the sentence. Maybe, I only got 5 out of 10 sentences correctly. The other 5, I missed one or two words in each of them. Performance rating is 6 of 10.
<b class="Bold">Short Answer Question</b> - There were questions where I need to get the answer from a picture/image. I focused my eyes on the monitor all the time during this section. However, I made a mistake of speaking immediately after the recording and not realizing there is a 2 seconds delay before the recording opens. I just realized it after the second question. Also, I was not 100% sure of my answers in 1 or 2 questions. Performance rating is 8 of 10.
<b class="Bold">Writing </b>- I did ok in this I guess.
<b class="Bold">Summary Written Text</b> - To be honest, I had difficulty in paraphrasing and thinking of different vocab/synonyms to use. I just wrote whatever I think is the summary by understanding the context of the topic and reused most of the words in the paragraph.
<b class="Bold">Write Essay</b> - Writing is one of my weaknesses. I actually wished for an easy topic here. Fortunately, it was granted. My topic was "The means of communication has changed markedly, what do you think are the positive and negative impacts of this change in the society?”. I followed the essay format in writefix.com (visit this, very helpful). The format I used is introduction in the first paragraph, negative impacts in second, positive in third and fourth paragraph is conclusion. My technique here is I wrote minimum 200 words first. Then when I saw I still have time, I added more until it reached 260 words. I still had 3 mins to review my work. I finished the essay just on time.
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