Read Aloud – Tips – Do’s – Don’t

First assessed task of the PTE exam and PTE Speaking section is the Read Aloud. This is the task where you have 30-40 seconds to look at the text before the microphone opens, so use this time to go through the text, break the text up into meaningful chunks, using the punctuation, identify the words which are difficult for pronunciation and speak. This will help you the places where you can make a tiny pause, long pauses and alter your intonation – going up when you begin reading a chunk and falling a little when you end a chunk. Time for this section vary depends upon length of the text. However, if you are average reader then also you will be able to complete the task within time. There are around 6 to 7 read aloud tasks are asked in this type of question. You will be only able to record your response once.

Skills assessed: 

• Reading
• Speaking

Prompt length:

Up to 60 words

Tips for Read Aloud:

• Use punctuation to help you pause when you read. Break up the text into meaningful parts, using the punctuation as a guide
• Stress words that give important information
• Identify the words which are important and difficult to pronounce in first 35 seconds
• Take care of a, an, the, plural/singular

Do’s:

• Create chunk for the sentences
• Pronounce each and every word clearly and confidently
• Take a pause at comma and full stop
• Read like a News reader, clearly and confidently

Don’t:

• Don’t false start
• Don’t repeat word
• Don’t pause for long
• Don’t correct yourself
• Don’t rush to complete the sentence

Here are some the sample read aloud to understand the task. This is response equivalent to highest scoring. You can try to copy the stress, tone and rhythm of the speaker.

 

Sample Read Aloud:

The border itself between Mexico and United States is fraught with a mix of urban and desert terrain and spans over 1,900 miles. Both the uninhabited areas of the border and urban areas are where the most drug trafficking and illegal crossings take place. Crime ¡s prevalent in urban cities like El Paso, Texas and San Diego, California.

Yellow is the most optimistic color, yet surprisingly, people lose heir tempers most often in yellow rooms and babies cry more in them. The reason may be that yellow is the hardest color on the eye. On the other hand, it speeds metabolism and enhances concentration think of yellow legal pads and post-it notes.

Akimbo, this must be one of the odder-looking words in the language. It puzzles us in part because it doesn’t seem to have any relatives. What’s more, it is now virtually a fossil word, until recently almost invariably found in arms akimbo, a posture in which a person stands with hands on hips and elbows sharply bent outward, one that signals impatience and hostility.

Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate or we “blink” and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind’s black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they’re discovering that this not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason – and the precise mix depends on the situation.

Moods may also have an effect on how information is processed by influencing the extent to which judges rely on pre-existing, internal information, or focus on new, external information. Positive moods promote more holistic and top-down processing style, while negative moods recruit more stimulus — driven and bottom-up processing.

Tools for Speaking Practice:

Scoring your desire score in PTE Exam is all about learning from your mistakes and identifying your errors. In order to do so, use PTE Journal provided by PTE Sprinters is another tool which can help here to note down the mistakes identified in terms of pronunciation, hesitations, and review on a daily basis so that one is aware of their weak areas and overcome on those.