PTE Reading Multiple choice single answer | FREE PTE Tutorials

In the reading section of your PTE Academic exam you will receive two types of multiple choice questions. In the PTE Multiple choice Single Answer questions you will be shown a text on screen. The text will be accompanied with a question based on the text. You will also be given a number of options. Your task is to pick the correct option! There is only one correct option in this.

Important to remember – the reading section of PTE has only an overall section specific time limit. That means you can spend as much time as you want on any particular question. You can spend your entire 40 minutes on one question or you can divide them as needed.

So, it is important to understand how much time you need to spend on each PTE Multiple choice Single Answer question. It will vary from person to person but if you are spending more than 2 minutes you need to improve that.

The very first thing you should do – even before you start reading the text on the screen is to read the question and then read the options. This will help you understand what exactly you are supposed to do with the text. If you don’t understand that you will end up wasting your time. We discuss this method in great detail in our online PTE Course.

The question will tell you for example – do you have to find a particular piece of information in the text? Are you supposed to verify something? Or do you have to understand the overall theme of the text or the writer’s implied meaning and then understand on the basis of that?

This will dictate how you read the text – do you need to scan it for a piece of information or can you just skim through it to catch the meaning. Skimming and scanning are important reading techniques and we will discuss them in detail in another article.

We have a whole set of tips and tricks for this question type that you must refer – PTE Reading Multiple choice Single Answer Tips and Tricks – Must know Tips and Tricks!

But one thing we must point out right away – when picking options don’t just immediately go with the one you feel is right. You should also look at the other options and verify that they are wrong.

Let’s look at an example of this:

You are given a text on countries in Asia. Now look at the question and tell us which of the following is the correct option according to you?

Which of the following countries is the largest in size?

1. India
2. US
3. China
4. Japan

From your general knowledge you might think that US is the largest! However, the text was specific to Asian countries. Therefore, the correct answer is China.

See if you immediately jump on to what you feel is right you will end up ignoring other important parts of the question.

Therefore, in PTE Reading Multiple choice single answer questions you must always review all the given options.

These questions are not very difficult! They do not require any specialized knowledge except for the ability to find the right information in a text and correlate it to the question asked. This ability can be developed by regular reading on a website like npr.org