How to Solve Fill in the Blanks for PTE Reading and Listening?

Each year, more and more students are choosing to pursue their studies abroad. However, to do so, they need to appear for the PTE language test. The modules of PTE reading and listening, along with writing and speaking, check their English competence. Each section covers a lot of tasks within it. However, this article will focus on attempting strategies for fill in the blanks questions. Along with, how the PTE mock test can be a tool to practice for the same.

Brief of Fill in the Blank Questions

Out of the three modules of the test, this task generally appears in the listening and reading ones. The general format of the task is the same for both modules. In this, the candidates will be given a passage or a transcript, which will have some blank spaces. However, in the case of the reading task, there will be a help box with several words. You will choose the appropriate one and put it in the blank. Meanwhile, in the listening part, you will hear an audio and find the answers from it. Let’s now discuss some of the PTE reading and listening strategies for solving this task.

Strategies for the Reading Section

The task contains a text of around eighty words with gaps in it. Along with that, there is also a box that contains the words to be filled. The candidates need to read the text and fill in the gaps. However, the number of blanks and helping words is not the same. Therefore, students need to remember that they will not be using all the words in the text, only the suitable ones. Other than that, the task uses partial scoring, meaning you will get some marks even if a few blanks are incorrectly filled. The following are some more ways shared by PTE exam coaching to solve this task:

Skimming Text

Skimming refers to the quick way of going through the contents of the passage. It will give you an idea of the context, along with what terms need to be there in the blanks.

Transition Words

The terms like, however, because, etc., can help you grasp the flow of the text. Therefore, you can use them to identify the more appropriate word for the blank.

Elimination

Elimination can help when you are unsure about the correct response. With the help of grammar and the context of the text, you can select the terms that are incorrect for the blanks. It will help to narrow down your choices.

Vocabulary

A good word power can be helpful in the case of both PTE reading and listening sections alike. Having an enriched word bank will allow you to know the meaning of the words and see if they fit in the space or not.

After the reading section, let us now see how to solve the same task for the listening module.

Methods for Fill in Blank in Listening Module

In this task, students will be given a text from the audio that they are going to hear. After hearing, they will have to fill in the gaps using words from the recording. While it is playing, the students can take down notes and words, which they think will fit in the gap. Below are some methods that will surely help students with this task in the listening module.

Focus On Context

When hearing the audio, pay attention to the context. When you grasp the main idea of it, you will be able to get to the correct response. Moreover, you can use it to predict the term that is missing from text.

Keywords

Try to identify the key terms and use them to locate the correct answer. Moreover, practice this with the help of the PTE mock test for better results.

Grammar

Select the word and then check if it is according to the grammar and syntax of the sentence or not. Since the right reply will be the one with the correct grammar structure.

Active Listening

Take the help of a PTE mock test for practice that involves active hearing. Moreover, you can listen to news, lectures and podcasts to improve your skills.

Reviewing

After you fill in all the gaps, go through the text to check for grammar or spelling mistakes. In addition, see if the term you are writing aligns with the context or not.

Conclusion

To conclude, filling in the gaps can be a scoring task for the PTE reading and listening modules. However, it requires students to do regular practice if they want to excel at this task. You can easily do so with the aid of practice tests that are available to you. Along with that, for further doubts, you can also get help from centres like Gradding.com. The tutors here guide and support the aspirants. In addition to that, this PTE exam coaching also has a lot of amazing offers like free classes for students.