PTE Reading and Writing: Fill in the Blanks | THREE CRITICAL TIPS with Jay!

hey guys hey going it's J here I hope you're doing well in this lesson we're going to look at PT reading and writing fill in the blanks and yes this task contributes points to both your reading score and your writing score this is the super method so firstly let me describe this task to you so on test day this is what it will look like this is what you will see on the computer screen in front of you you will see an instruction you'll see a paragraph of text the text will be about 80 words max and as we'll learn from the method that I'll show you in a minute it doesn't take that long to read any words and to read it very carefully and you must read it very carefully in fact okay so you'll also see for gaps within this paragraph of text and if you click on one of those gaps you'll see four answer options of course the task is your ability to choose the word that best fits the sentence and the paragraph in terms of meaning we're going to talk a lot about meaning in this lesson you'll get five to six of these particular questions on test day and then as I said they contribute both to your reading and your writing score so they are important I suggest that you spend about two minutes on each of these questions you can do it in about a minute and a half you can spend about two and a half minutes if you want but remember in PT reading you need to manage your own time about two minutes per reading and writing fill in blanks is best okay all right scoring just quickly it's very simple this goreng you get one point for each correctly filled blank and there's no negative scoring so if you don't know just guess and move on don't waste time this task is all about word choice word choice what does that mean well imagine that you have just returned back from university and your friend says to you hey was the lecture and you are thinking to yourself well it was boring but instead of the word boring you have a mountain of synonyms to choose from okay this is word choice he could say it's boring alright you might say it was tedious or it was dull monotonous repetitious repetitive unrelieved that then isn't very good uneventful passionless derivative an original vanilla dry stale tired mundane prosaic unremarkable it was routine it was run-of-the-mill that was frustrating was unspiritual is unstimulating it was dime a dozen no great shakes it was not much chop now do all of these words mean the exact same thing as boring here we've got boring what about tedious what's the what's the semantic difference the difference in meaning between boring and tedious well for me tedious has an element of pain involved like it's it's so boring this is tedious would be even worse than boring so it's a different level a different degree of boringness dull well it's probably not as bad as tedious you can see this what about monotonous well that means it was just sort of flat there was no there was no events in the lecture that were that was that were interesting repetitious well that's got a different slightly different meaning about one like unoriginal well that would mean that the lecturer was saying things that were just that weren't original that were that weren't creative and said that's got an element of boringness in it but it's different okay so imagine that this is a big family right so they're all related and let's say we're looking at the word interesting and let's pretend that all of these people are a different word for the word interesting so how would you describe your extended family well interesting fine what about what about this this woman here well maybe she's maybe she's fat dating fascinating see they're related but they're slightly different and this guy's I don't know compelling okay so it's it's a related word they're all related but they're slightly different so interesting fascinating compelling I don't know this guy's engrossing whatever the other synonyms are for interesting so words are related synonyms are related but they do have slightly different meanings they're slightly different from each other let's look at this example here this is a very simple example of how reading and writing fill in the blanks works you won't get one this easy on test day but I want to use it as an example so let's read it says Jack had worked every day for 25 years building a new piece of technology that day he sold it for 60 million dollars he calmly sat back on the couch and felt a sense of happiness satisfaction joyfulness or exhilaration which is the correct answer because what you can do when you first look at these gaps is think okay semantic difference between happiness satisfaction joyfulness and exhilaration now if we did a little spectrum here so spectrum from sad face to super happy face so where's happiness let's say happiness is here so what's that that's a so we put a here let's leave satisfaction joyfulness is probably here so let's see an exhilaration is like super happy like actually jumping up and down where satisfaction on here well it's related to happiness but it's not so much on the spectrum whereas happiness joyfulness and exhilaration are on the spectrum this is slightly different the answer is of course be the answers be satisfaction now we arrived at this let me ask you actually how did you if you did choose be satisfaction why well you may have just looked at the for answer options and thought about the difference in meaning but there are some other tricks or insights that you need to be aware of that will help you to choose the right word let's look at those because there's the first one I want to look at is let's call it context so the context is all of the surrounding information so let's read it again jack had worked every day for 25 years building a new piece of technology that day he sold it for 60 million dollars he calmly sat back on the couch so here we get context surrounding information first of all we can see that he worked extremely hard every day for 25 years now he calmly so we can't use exhilaration or joyfulness because calmly contradicts that you also sat back on the couch I mean you can sit back and be happy where you sit back be and be satisfied so that's the first one context we can see clues Clues Clues related to both what's going on with my pen context context surrounding information and we've looked at the difference in meaning semantic difference there's one more thing I want to show you look at this phrase here he felt a sense of he felt a sense of happiness he felt a sense of satisfaction he felt a sense of joyfulness or exhilaration well he felt a sense of satisfaction is a phrase a commonly used phrase I felt a great sense of satisfaction after I completed my studies whatever it is so in fact there's another clue here this context there's also a missing word here which would be satisfaction so I'm not sure if you're conscious of those aspects when you're reading but your brain is doing a lot of things your brain is reading for the context your brain is reading for the subtle semantic or meaning differences between words and brainy's also taking into account grammar such as collocation and particular vocabulary and phrases for you to select the right word right so context surrounding information semantics subtle differences in word meaning grammar word form for example let's let's let me just explain this one you'd have happy isn't the adjective and happiness as the noun now in all the examples that I've seen you can't really use I I haven't seen an example of word form but just be conscious of it so a collocation I don't know what's it what's a collocation for happy i-i-i-i I can't think of one what about fascinating let's let's think about if a collocation you can say was absolutely fascinating absolutely fascinating so this adverb here often goes with this adjective here to say absolutely fascinating so that's a collocation that might help you to select the right adjective for example and the phrase well as we just looked at a sense of a sense of leads you to the word satisfaction which I won't write all of it cool so they're the three I don't know what you would call them let's call them insights I don't like the word tricks I think tricks doesn't work in language test I think you need to have an insight into language alright let's talk about the method the method is kind of an aside to be honest because this one for describe image and retail lecture and and and a lot of the other PT tasks you can use a step by step method to help you this one's not so much method this visit of course there's a step by step process that you can do but it's not going to give you the answers the answers will come from understanding those three principles context semantics and grammar okay but anyway let's have a look at the step by step process first read the entire text remember it's only 80 words and I'm going to show you that you can read it very carefully in under 30 seconds then focus on the word choices use the context semantics and grammar to help you and select then you select the best option right so here's is the text it's this is 78 words I'm gonna give you 30 seconds I want you to read it carefully and you'll notice that 30 seconds you can read this and understand it very carefully cool when I did this I I read it very carefully in 22 seconds maybe you'll take a little bit longer but you can't just go straight to the gaps and try to find the word because again you need the context you need to understand what's going on so right and you have about between you know around two minutes two and a half minutes to do each of these question types so there's enough time to read those those 80 words okay so do that on test day don't freak out and just go ah stop read that's the first step cool now using the context using the semantic differences and using your understanding of grammar I'm going to give you another minute and a half to select the right answers 20 seconds left all right that was two minutes you can spend a little bit longer if you want but I suggest around 2 minutes fantastic how did you go let's look at it together I want to go through it with you and look at the context look at the semantic differences and look at the grammar and see if we can do it ok let me get out my pen here all right so what do we go we've got sporting occurrences events episodes contests okay so the best word here is sporting events sporting events that's just the word we use these again similar synonymous words synonyms but we don't say sporting episodes we say TV episodes and we can have particular contests but we'd usually say like I don't know the type of sport has a contest often leave people on the edge of their seats now this is a clue to the next one but what does all that excitement thrill fever or zeal do to their hearts if you're sitting on the edge of your seat as we say that refers to excitement it turns out that both the thrill of victory and the agony of well what's the opposite of victory victory and failure victories are a victory and defeat victory and failure victory and ruin victory and loss well in fact it's the agony and again this is a grammatical thing the agony of defeat this is a phrase that we would use so victory and defeat are opposites the thrill of the victory and the agony of the defeat can have a substantial effect on the cardiovascular system during a hockey game fans heart rates increased by 75% when watching on TV and by a whopping 110 percent more than doubled approximate to the cardiac his stress near to the cardiac stress parallel to the cardiac stress equivalent to the cardiac stress with vigorous exercise equivalent when watching in person so what are the answers the answers are events excitement defeat and equivalent if you got those and if you're on YouTube do do write something nice into the comments below click thumbs up and remember to subscribe to this channel by the way so you can get all of these videos as soon as we do them cool well done if you got that excellent now this task absolutely relies on vocabulary okay because you you can't just have imagine if you just had the word let's say this guy's boring ok so you've just you know the word boring but didn't do you know the word excruciating do you know the word are an anaemic which I probably wouldn't use myself do you know the word tedious dull for example how big is your vocabulary right so vocabulary is absolutely key to this if you don't understand the words it's just guesswork and you are just guessing so I think one of the trickiest questions in language learning is how to build your vocabulary there's no one way that works every time for every different every person it's different for each person people learn visually people learn you know by reading whatever me personally if I want to build my vocabulary I use flashcards I like to write down the word and for some reason my brain can remember that you need to find a way that works for you you can go to e2 language comm and download the PT word list which is for free it's in the vocabulary tab also when you're learning vocabulary think about building your vocabulary by theme for example if we think about space as a theme then we have associated vocabulary with space for example like planets stars rockets you know moon landing Elon Musk whatever words come to your brain when you're on that theme similarly you might have the theme like history so you'll think of stuff like war conquest development whatever it is so learn vocabulary by theme as well and I suggest just writing words down as you read reading is critical anyway that's a complex topic which I won't get into practice let's do another one I'm gonna give you two minutes I want you to read through this carefully in about it should take you about under 30 seconds then I want you to use the context I want you to think about the subtle differences in meaning and I want you to use the grammar to help you to select the right words your time starts now thirty seconds left alright that's 2 minutes if you feel like you need some more time do go back and keep reading right now though let's have a look at the context the subtle semantic differences and the grammar to find the right answers right so what do we got let's just read it first so lord howe island stick insects were once diverse numerous frequent profuse on the tiny crescent-shaped island off the coast of australia for which they are named the insects which can measure up to 6 inches in length dont similar correspond to it resemble bear stick so much as tree lobsters as they are also known after ships accidentally fortuitously predictably coincidentally introduced rats to the island about a century ago the Lord Howe Island stick insects quickly disappeared they were later declared defunct extinct dead exterminated only to be found again decades later living on a volcano about 12 miles away ok I would actually read a little bit more slowly than that on test day because I really want to understand and absorb the information by the way if you're nervous on test day focus on meaning focus on meaning your body's probably hearts racing your mouth dry your hands are trembling there's probably not much you can do about that to be honest but if you look at that text and you concentrate on understanding the meaning of what you're reading fine the anxiety will be back here but the meaning will be central and that's what the test is all about it's all about meaning ok cool let's say we've understood the context now so let's now dig into this Lord Howe Island stick insects were once diverse on the coast of Australia numerous on the coast of Australia frequent on the coast of Australia or profuse on the coast of Australia well diverse is the wrong word because the stick insects would diverse no we're talking we could say bird life was diverse which means there were many types of birds but that's the wrong word because we're talking about one little animal numerous ok I like that one frequent well this has to do with time numerous and frequent well yeah there's a time element hidden here which is wrong and profuse is just the wrong word okay on the tiny crescent-shaped island off the coast of Australia for which they are named the insects which can measure up to six inches in length don't do not similar sticks remember the cold stick insects so they don't similar sticks they don't correspond to sticks they don't resemble sticks or they don't bear sticks well I don't like any of these ones apart from resemble fine after ships accidentally introduced rats fortuitously introduced rats predictably introduced rats or coincidentally introduced rats well fortuitously means it was a good thing which I don't think this text means predictably has some sort of negative opinion about it which this text doesn't have and there's no coincidence between the ships arriving in the introduction of rats it's not a coincidence to the island about a century ago the Lord Howe Island stick insects quickly disappeared okay here's some context they were later declared defunct no extinct dead exterminated extinct is the correct word here only to be found again decades later living on a volcano about twelve miles away again extinct here they were declared extinct only to be found again okay that would declared extinct they weren't so it was just a thought it was incorrect so answers are as we've just seen numerous resemble accidentally and extinct if you got that do put a little smiley face into the comments below that would be cool right that's it guys if you need some help if you want to do lots more practice on this one and learn methods for all of the PT tasks do check out e to language comm sign up for a free account if you need further help we give tutorials we give feedback on your writing and speaking we have live daily classes lots lots more we have a pronunciation of everything you need for success on the PT a high school cool thanks for watching hope you enjoyed it I hope you learned something my name is J I'll see you soon

Channel: E2 PTE Academic

Views: 433,425

Keywords: pte, pte reading, e2 pte, pte reading and writing, pte fill in the blanks, PTE, pte e2, pte writing, e2 pte fill in the blanks, e2 pte reading, e2 pte writing, e2language, e2 language, pte e2 language, esl tips, pte preparation, pte academic, english, pte practice test, e2 pte webinar, how to, free, study, grammar, vocabulary, PTE HELP, 79, pearson, tips, ielts, test, inglês, learn english, task, e2 jay, pte jay, pte course, online, esl, pte test, E2, fill in the blanks, question, reading

Id: ML-FBqETT1Q

Length: 26min 11sec (1571 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2017