PTE Read Aloud | FREE PTE Tutorials

See a text on screen! Read it out to us.

Instructions seem simple, don’t they? Well, that is what the Real Aloud question type is in PTE Academic. It contributes to both your reading and speaking scores – a very important question type!

In this article we will teach how to get full marks in PTE Read Aloud questions!

Ready, let’s go!

You will get 30 to 40 seconds to first read and understand the text. Then you will have another 30 to 40 seconds to read it out.

Your success depends on how you use each block of time.

What to do in the first 30-40 seconds?

Well, you should use this time to read the text. If you are familiar with the text you will find it easier to speak it well. Focus of you reading should be:

1. Identify any difficult words and decide how to pronounce them
2. Decide where to pause in the sentences
3. Figure out where to raise and lower your tone

If possible, you should also try to get a sense of how fast or slowly you should speak. If it is a long sentence then you already know you need to speak faster.

Let us see how to go about each of these three steps with the help of an example.

This is the text given to you:

Fiscal Deficit is the difference between the total income of the government from total taxes and non-debt capital receipts and its total expenditure. A fiscal deficit situation occurs when the government’s expenditure exceeds its income. This difference is calculated both in absolute terms and also as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product of the country. A recurring high fiscal deficit means that the policies are wrong, spending is unplanned, or institutions are corrupt.

When you see this text you can guess this is a longer text.

So it might take you more than 30 seconds or even close to 40 seconds to read properly. Even if the sentence was short you don’t want to read so slowly that you sound influent. On the other hand you don’t want to speak so fast that the computer fails to understand what you are speaking.

(Note: Our expert tutors have put together a full series of PTE Tutorials and PTE Tips and Tricks articles.Make sure to read all!)

When you are reading this text in your mind try to chunk it into smaller pieces.

This way it becomes manageable. One chunk can include 5-6 words or more.

Fiscal Deficit is the difference / between the total income of the government from total taxes and non-debt capital receipts / and its total expenditure. /  A fiscal deficit situation occurs / when the government’s expenditure exceeds its income. /This difference is calculated both in absolute terms and / also as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product of the country. /A recurring high fiscal deficit means / that the policies are wrong, /spending is unplanned, /or institutions are corrupt.

In the above example we have chunked it logically, the way it makes most sense while speaking. By default you can break the sentence at full stops, commas etc.

For many other useful tips and tricks check out the PTE Read Aloud Tips and Tricks article.

Now, see if there are any words that are difficult for you.

Fiscal? Expenditure?

If you don’t find any word difficult than great! Otherwise you need to decide how to pronounce it. For e.g. if “Fiscal” confuses you just pronounce it as “Fis” + “cal” as best as you can. There is no point hesitating and stopping once you start speaking. Always remember that!

To make your answer sound even more impactful you need to put stress on some important words and you need to lower and raise your voice at certain point. This second part is also called intonation.

In the above you can pick “total”, “exceeds”, etc. to put stress on. Don’t overthink this point. Just make sure you have 4-5 words to emphasize upon.

Finally – when you begin a sentence you should raise your tone and by the time you come to the end you should lower your tone. That is the basic concept!

We hope this gave you a good overview of what you need to do to get maximum marks in the PTE Read Aloud section. Remember! The key to your success lies in practice and you can get that through the PTE Mock Test packages.