Thursday 20 August 2015

PTE Academic Essay Topics

1.  Do you think consumer should avoid over packed products or it is responsibility of producer to avoid extra packaging of products?" Give your views or any relevant example with your own experience.
2.  Many people think regions affect successful persons. What is your opinion about native regions and accomplished person influence on the regions they belong to
3.  The environment we are living in is in danger due to various problems...so who do u think should be responsible to solve it? Is it the governments, organisation or each individuals?
4.  Nowadays TV has become an essential part of life. Medium to spread news & awareness and for some it acts like a companion. What is your opinion about this?
5.  Company Top level Authorities should or should not take employees suggestions or ideas to take any decisions. Discuss
6.  Successful sports stars and glamorous film stars are a role model for youngsters. Do u support it or not? (Agree/Disagree)
7.  In education system, assessment through written formal examinations is valid or not.
8.  Large shopping malls are replacing small shops. What is your opinion about this? Discuss with appropriate examples.
9.  Talk about the pros/ cons of this era as is full of daily inventions
10.  Any New Technological Development In The Recent Years Is A Boon Or Curse For The Society In General
11.  In the past 100 years, there are many inventions such as antibiotics, airplanes and computers. What do you think is the most important invent for the past 100 years? Why?
12.  It is argue that getting married before finishing school or getting a job is not a good choice. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
13.  Parents should be held legally responsible for their children’s acts. What is your opinion? Support it with personal examples....
14.  Marketing strategy for big companies should be placed on offer and discounts, and in what ways this can impact on their reputation.
15.  Dangerous activities like extreme skiing, bungee jumping etc. and whether u support them or not
16.  In a war of ideas, it is people who get killed”. Does a common man suffer from a group’s ideology? Express your opinion, and support the same with reasons and examples.
17.  Some people believe laws change human behaviour. Do you agree with it?
18.  Illiterate of the future would not be one who does not know to read, but people who does not know how to learn, unlearn and relearn
19.  Communication has changed significantly in the last 10 years. Discuss the positive and negative impacts of this change.
20.  Learning a new language at an early age is helpful for children. Is it more positive for their future aspect or have some adverse effects. Do u agree or disagree? Give examples from your experience.
21.  In under developed countries, tourism has disadvantages and can be said the opposite as well.
22.  Positive and negative effects of the information revolution through mass media.
23.  Education is the biggest barrier in my learning - Einstein. What do you mean by this? And do you think Einstein was correct in saying that.
24.  Discuss both sides of Space travel vs. current crucial problems faced by human?
25.  Do you think English will remain to be a global language despite globalisation?
26.  Some people think placing advertisements in schools is a great resource for public schools that need additional funding, but others think it exploits children by treating them as a captive audience for corporate sponsors. Choose which position you most agree with and discuss why you chose that position. Support your point of view with details from your own experiences, observations or reading.
27.  You are given climate as the field of study. Which area will you prefer? Explain why you picked up the particular area for your study?
28.  Value added by travel in Education Is travel a necessary component of education or not ? Will scholar sitting at home have more knowledge than one who travels ?
"29.  In some countries around the world, voting is compulsory.
Do you agree with the notion of compulsory voting?
If Voting is compulsory in democratic society, what conclusions can we draw about ‘Nature of democracy?"
30.  Nowadays, people spend too much time at work to the extent that they hardly have time for their personal life. Discuss.
31. Is it true that conformity almost always leads to a deadening of individual creativity and energy? Is non-conformity almost always to be welcomed?
32. It is as important for school children to study music, art and sport as it is for them to become literate and numerate.' How far do you agree with this statement? Support your point of view with reasons and / or examples from your own experience

Thursday 13 August 2015

How to Score Well in Speaking - PTE Academic

Speaking section consists of :

1. Read Aloud - In this, you need to follow proper intonation, pronunciation, oral fluency.

Scores impacted : Reading and speaking, oral fluency, pronunciation, content

Useful Links : http://www.manythings.org/listen/

You can use 'Windows Speech Recognition' in your system to convert speech to text.

Set up Speech Recognition - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows/set-speech-recognition#1TC=windows-7

You can also use google translator or web speech API
https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html

2. Repeat sentence : Try to write the initial letter of all the words in the sentence and try to follow same pronunciation while repeating it.

Useful Links :
http://www.manythings.org/lar/
http://englishteststore.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13634&Itemid=40

3. Re-tell lecture : Listen to the lecture and write keywords in between. Don't try to write full sentences otherwise you will lose concentration. Try to hear conclusion at the end as well.


4. Describe Image : If you see a picture, try to describe it using foreground, background, left, right, centre or middle, top, bottom words.


If you see trends in Bar graph, Line graph, Pie chart, etc., use variety of verbs, adjectives, adverbs to explain them. It can be build watching youtube videos.

Useful link: http://www.dcielts.com/task-1-2/compare-and-contrast

List with phrases to describe charts
The pie chart is about ...
The bar chart deals with ...
The line graph (clearly) shows ...
The slices of the pie chart compare the ...
The chart is divided into ... parts.
It highlights ...
... has the largest (number of) ...
... has the second largest (number of) ...
... is as big as ...
... is twice as big as ...
... is bigger than ...
more than ... per cent ...
only one third ...
less than half ...
The number ... increases/goes up/grows by ...
The number ... decreases/goes down/sinks by ...
The number ... does not change/remains stable
I was really surprised/shocked by the ...
So we can say ...

Pie Chart description
60% nearly a third
50% Over a half of all respondents
2% a small fraction
exact 30% of students
24% roughly a quarter of respondents
73% around three quarters of sales
Comparison
twice as many people prefer 
nearly four times as many people
whereas sales for X were just 10 %
Summarising
Overall amonst the six regions, ___make up  the largest expenses, followed by ___representing the lowest
To summarise the most marked change is  
Overall it is clear the amount of 

Useful link to improve pronunciation:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/3974305/British-Accent-Module

http://www.elementalenglish.com/category/2b-pronunciation/

http://reallifeglobal.com/intonation-the-secret-ingredient-to-great-pronunciation-with-audio/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzkzA77RMzg&list=PLD6t6ckHsrubLp8Ia8duzu5fN4riM2-Bl

Please leave comments if you like it. This will encourage me to publish more information which I collect from my preparation :-)

Wednesday 12 August 2015

PTE Basic Preparation

PTE Basic Preparation

As we all know that PTE academic exam is an online exam with almost instant results in 5 business days. This test consists of Speaking, Writing, Reading and Listening.

A good thing about this test is that you can easily get to know the weak area in which you need to focus to get better results.

Once you give exam for the first time, you get to know about your oral fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, grammar, etc. This helps in preparing for the exam second time, if you are not a native speaker.

Spend time preparing on items which are more in number.

Total items which come under each category:
Speaking items
Read aloud- 7
Repeat sentence- 12
Describe image- 7
Re-tell lecture- 3
Answer short question- 11
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Writing items
Summarize written text- 2 or 3
The summary should be of single sentence with no more than 30 words.
Write essay- 1

Essay topics in another post
I have also added essays which I wrote. Please do correct me if you feel there is an error. Your comments are welcomed.
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Reading items
Multiple-choice, choose single answer- 2
Multiple-choice, choose multiple answers- 2
Re-order paragraphs- 2
Refer link: http://www.gr8ambitionz.com/2013/06/tips-for-sentence-rearrangement.html

Reading: Fill in the blanks- 4
Reading & writing: Fill in the  blanks- 6

Refer to www.manythings.org website for read aloud practice
All the other reading sections are easy to do. Let me know if anyone wants help in understanding this section.
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Listening items
Summarize spoken text - 3
Multiple-choice, choose multiple answers - 2
Fill in the blanks- 2
Highlight correct summary- 2
Multiple-choice, choose single answer- 2
Select missing word- 3
Highlight incorrect words- 3
Write from dictation- 3

Refer to BBC learning English 6 minute audio recordings for listening and improving your skills.

Here's the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/general/sixminute/index.shtml
http://englishteststore.net/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsxs/episodes/downloads

Please leave comments if you like the details or want me to add any information which will help in preparation for others :-)