PTE Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks | SUPER METHOD!

hello how precise are you when you speak okay how good are you at selecting the right word at the right time to make the right meaning well if you need a little bit of help with that and you want to improve your reading and writing fill in blanks then you should watch this lesson my name is Jay I'm one of the expert teachers here at e2 language so this is reading and writing fill in the blanks method 2.0 this is what reading and writing fill in the blanks looks like on test a although it won't say blah blah blah blah blah there'll be a paragraph of text or a couple of paragraphs of text it'll be up to 300 words you'll see a few gaps in there and when you click on the gap you'll see drop-down lists there'll be four answer options only one will be correct typically it's going to test you on meaning or word choice that is one of the words will be precise it will complete the sentence accurately or precisely but there'll be three synonyms or related words that will sort of be tempting to choose but they're going to be imprecise or slightly wrong not completely wrong just slightly wrong that's what makes this task so challenging so for example you might click on the drop-down list and the four words will be smart scholarly clever and intellectual you can see that there's a relationship a meaningful relationship between these four words but in this particular context only the words scholarly for example is right you'll also get tested on your grammar this is a little bit less common this question type or in this drop-down list but basically what you'll get are four different word forms that is it'll be the same word one of them will only be grammatical only one of them I should say will be grammatical the other three will be ungrammatical for example you might get scholar scholarly school and scholastic these are pretty much the same word in terms of their meaning however their form differs here you've got an adjective if you've got an ad you've got a noun and another adjective but in this particular context you need to select the adverb for example we're going to look at these in detail by the way I'm just very briefly introducing this to you but later on in this lesson we're going to look at how we can do this properly you'll also be tested on your understanding and application of collocation that is your ability to create a natural sounding phrase let's say for example you get a verb like take right and you need to complete this natural sounding phrase so there'll be three words that will be wrong it won't make a natural sounding phrase but one of the words will okay for example take duty is wrong take authority is wrong take task is wrong but take responsibility for example is a nice natural sounding phrase so that's collocation and finally it's going to test your ability to read in context so you click on the drop down list three of these words will be wrong because the correct one will come from the general context of the paragraph either before the gap or after the gap okay you might get questions like this as well okey-dokey so let's talk about some facts of this task so on test day you're going to get five or six reading and writing fill in the blanks they have integrated scoring that is they contribute points to both your reading and writing score and you can see why word choice is important for writing because when you're writing a sentence and you're thinking mmm which word am I going to use and you've got these series of adjectives in your mind for example only one or maybe a few but particularly one will be precise in that moment in that context to convey the meaning precisely correctly accurately and with regard to time management you should be spending less than three minutes on each of these reading tasks remember in the reading section you manage your own time there you need to take responsibility there's that collocation for each question as you go along okay cool bananas if you're watching this on YouTube and you'll notice subscriber to a PT channel I don't know how you live with yourself you should click that subscribe button because we do cool live streams and launch videos and do red stuff all the time okie dokie alright let's talk about the method behind word choice okay because what you're doing really is some sort of cognitive magic trick right I don't know where language appears from it's just bizarre I actually like I don't choose my words or I don't make the words appear named in my mind they just sort of appear there by themselves I guess what I can do is if I get a bunch of possible words appearing in my mind I can sort of select which one I want to use and sometimes you just have to rest and let it sort of appear magically by itself okay how does this work though let's talk about that in detail okay with regard to word choice we're talking about meaning grammar collocation and context let's talk more deeply about meaning first so here we have an excerpt from a dictionary and we're looking at the word messy which is an adjective and there are heaps of synonyms synonymous words words with very similar meaning to the word messy like dirty filthy grubby soiled grimy background mucky muddy slimy sticky Sally spotted stain smeared smudged tarnish disheveled blouse he scruffy rumpled matted unkept tousled bedraggled tangles slapdash slovenly yucky British apparently say Dungy there you go and the antonym or the opposite is clean so this is what's sort of happening in your mind and if you have a broad vocabulary which is a very good thing to have on test a and a deep vocabulary that is you can see the slight meaning differences between each of these words because they don't mean the exact same thing there are slight differences you use some of them in some context and others in other contexts etc I forget how to finish that sentence there but the point being one word will have many synonyms cool okay so let's take a look at this sentence here it says an extremely something personal space leads people to believe the owner of that space is more neurotic so I'm going to give you 10 seconds to select the right answer here according to the context and according to meaning you so it can't be soiled because soil typically refers to dirty clothes like I might soil my shirt I think babies soil nappies it can be tarnished because tarnished usually refers to like metal objects like you might have I don't know a metal cup that is tarnished right and smeared refers more to like using pens and ink when you smear ink on the paper so you can see the relationship between the meaning of being related to messy but in this context messy is the correct answer because we're talking about a messy personal space the other ones although related are not precise cool so messy is the answer there that's pretty straightforward let's look at grammar now and see how grammar works with regard to word choice let's look at this sentence here it says psychologists psychologists explored the degree of something in one's workspace and how it affects perceptions of the owners personality if you're really good at your grammar you can probably look at this sentence and look at that gap and decide whether it's supposed to be a noun a verb an adjective or an adverb or even a preposition perhaps okay just take a look for a second here what type of word could fit there it's a little bit difficult let me give you a hint and give you the options so is it messy messily messed up or messiness in other words is that the adjective the adverb the phrasal verb or the noun you have ten seconds to select the right answer you and in this particular context the right word form is in fact the noun form psychologists explored the degree of messiness in one's workspace and how it affects perceptions of the owners personality the other word forms were ungrammatical they wouldn't work they just wrong so that's another type of question you have to keep in mind and just here I want to give it a little plug to this amazing website called e to school comm and on e to school comm you can do the grammar review course it's a hundred percent free I'm one of the teachers has lots and lots of activities related to building your grammar and what we do is we look at all the different parts of speech in English all the verbs present perfect past simple present continuous etc look at nouns abstract concrete countable uncountable we look at all the adverb forms the adjectives all forms etc so if you are having trouble with your English grammar sign up for frayed e to school comm and check out the grammar review course okay let's push on let's talk about collocation remember when what I mean by collocation is a natural sounding phrase so let's look at this sentence here in three experiments about a hundred and sixty participants were randomly something to sit in a researchers office that was clean and uncluttered what do you think the word is that completes the natural sounding phrase here and pairs with that adverb randomly randomly what what do you think it is let's take a look at the possibilities is it randomly assigned randomly appointed randomly elected or randomly designated you have ten seconds to choose okay the correct answer here is randomly assigned participants were randomly assigned okay I guess what's happening here is we've talked about meaning we've talked about grammar we've talked about collocation and in all of those scenarios it's all also been about context because here we're talking about a scientific experiments now if this were about I don't know political elections for example it would be randomly elected or something like that you know it might change so it is a collocation but the collocation sits within a greater context and I guess what I'm trying to say here or what I'm getting at is it's really important if not critically important that you understand what you read entirely in that paragraph or those paragraphs in reading and writing fill in the blanks you need to understand it because it's only from the context that you will then be able to do the meaning the grammar the collocations okay if you need help with your vocabulary because reading ultimately is about vocabulary if you need help check out level 4 test ready on e to school comments the website I mentioned just before this particular course is awesome Alex and Sally would teach you or how to build your vocabulary they'll give you some test practice they'll look at reading listening writing speaking as well as grammar it's a really good course if you ask if you if you're sort of lacking a wide vocabulary and they teach you by theme so you look at education environment technology for example okay so if you are taking a PT test or an IELTS test or whatever this will be helpful for you okay let's look at context more broadly here so here we're looking at well what is it is it a few sentences three sort of paragraph and you can see a gap there in the middle in the something office now this one is not about meaning well it is about meaning but it's more than that it's not about grammar and it's not about collocation in order to get this one right let's look at the answer options in order to choose if the answer is messy first neat or primary you need to have understood what comes before the gap and what comes after the gap the greater context with in which that gap exists okay so I'm going to give you 45 seconds to quickly read all of the paragraphs here please do don't skip forward see if you can do this because on test day you're going to have to do this but the importance here is that you understood what comes before you understood have understood what comes after and then and only then will you be able to select the correct word you have 45 seconds you all right let's take a look at this I'm gonna jump in here okay so we've got a bit of a background sentence here talking about sort of setting up the experiment have a look here papers were stacked on the desk books and journals were oh you can't quite see this upright files drawers had typewritten labels all garbage was in the waste okay now think about the contrast of that paragraph to this one the somewhat messy office had books tilted over a textbook and papers lying on the floor and a wall clock an hour off okay and the very messy office had appeared even dirtier more disorganized and had increased clutter so here this one were talking about something very dirty okay so if we're going to be contrasting this in this what office would this be called and it'd probably be called a neat office right in the neat office it was all organized and then it was contrasted by the very by the messy and then the very messy so the only way I could get that answer was by understanding the beginning the middle and the end did you get it right hopefully you did by the way if you're watching this on YouTube leave a lovely comment below including a smiley face or a thumbs up or whatever thoughts you may have about this ok so what did we learn in this lesson well we learned that word choice consists of meaning ultimately a consists of meaning right you need to be precise in your choosing of the word and that is why this contributes points to your writing score as well but also think about it when you're speaking when you're doing describe image or retail lecture be precise in your word choice it also takes into consideration grammar word forms as well as collocation natural sounding phrases and it also considers the overall context in which that gaps it's ok that's what we learned in this if you're watching this on YouTube and you are not yet a student on e to language comm do become one you can sign up for free we have live classes one on one tutorials smart questions speaking and writing feedback check out WWE - language calm cool I hope it helps remember to check out this website I'll see you soon [Music]

Channel: E2 PTE Academic

Views: 109,109

Keywords: PTE, PTE Academic, E2 PTE, PTE E2, E2 PTE Academic, E2, E2Language, e2language, pte speaking, pte academic, pte reading, PTE Writing, E2 Language, pte exam, pte mock test, e2 jay, pte class, pte describe image, pte retell lecture, pte reorder paragraph, describe image, pte e2 describe image, pte course, e2 pte course, esl, The PTE Reading Test, e2, Super Method, Super, Method, PTE 2020, PTE writing, pte, pte writing, Fill in the Blanks, fill in the blanks, E2 PTE Reading, tips

Id: lCBXIOs6bHc

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020