In order to understand how to approach your PTE exam, here is an article that will tell PTE scoring for newbies. A post from Edutrainex overviews the PTE Scoring and summarizes the different skill components needed.
What is the PTE’s scoring system? However, a lot of people ask us this question. But, this is not surprising at all! A PTE Score Guide is given to curious students who ask about PTE scoring. Nevertheless, informative guides are very long and difficult to understand.
At this point, it is important to have a good understanding of PTE scoring. When you clearly understand where to focus in your preparation, you will be able to do well. Therefore, let’s examine what a newbie to PTE needs to know about the scoring system. If you need to understand the PTE Exam format, you can read our blog to understand it in detail.
What You Need to Know- PTE scoring for newbies
The newbies need to understand at length the PTE scoring. There is an Overall Score for PTE Academic, a combination of what they call ‘Communicative Skills Scores’ and ‘Enabling Skills Scores.’ Scores range from 10–90 (90 being the perfect score). The computer grades all the items on the PTE.
What are “Communicative” and “Enabling” Skills?
Writing, reading, speaking, and listening are the four core competencies in language. Explicitly, the number of points you can earn per communicative skill can range from 10 up to 90.
Each communicative skill includes some subskills. Sometimes, an item assesses two skills simultaneously (listening and speaking).
You don’t have to memorize facts to answer the questions because they are provided in the passage. Scores will differ depending on the tasks performed throughout the exam.
These are the Enabling Skills-PTE scoring for newbies
Grammar: Putting words in a sentence in the correct order. For example, is the position of the action verb correct?
Oral Fluency: Equally important, the pace at which you speak. For example, are you smooth? Is your voice natural? Is there a lot of stuttering or pauses? Read our “PTE Speaking: Best Techniques for Indian Speakers” article for tips on increasing your English fluency.
Pronunciation: First thing to remember is your clarity of expression. Ex. Will a native speaker easily understand you?
Spelling: It is important to realize that there must be the correct spelling.
Vocabulary: The usage of words in appropriate places, only when required.
Written Discourse- PTE scoring for newbies
A clear and well-developed idea or concept in writing, Ex. How well organized are the ideas? Does the text make sense and is easy to follow?
What is the impact of “Enabling skills” on “Communicative Skills”?
PTE scoring involves a lot of complexity. The tasks given in the PTE exam evaluate all the skills that you have acquired.
An Enabling Skill is considered a foundation or building block for a Communicative Skill. For example, your “Oral Fluency” and “Pronunciation” will directly influence your Speaking score during a speaking task.
You must strengthen your enabling skills to enhance your overall performance.
The scoring process for the PTE is divided into three steps.
FOLLOW DIRECTIONS at all times! If the task requires you to respond in a two-three word format, then do so! When you take the PTE exam, you must remember that a computer grades the PTE exam. In the event of detection of a long sentence, then the participant will not receive any credit for it.
There are three steps to the grading system:
First step:
Content determines the scores. Did you include the correct content in your response? For example, if the question asks you to describe a diagram, but instead you speak about a completely unrelated topic, then your answer would be incorrect.
If ‘Content’ is correct, the ‘Format’ is evaluated.
Second step:
Next, the form determines the score. Were you able to answer “the right way”? In my previous post, I explained that you should follow certain guidelines if a prompt asks for specific information. For instance, a “summarize written text” response should be written only in one sentence.
Scores will be applied to the other skills if the “Form” is correct.
The third step is:
Evaluation and marking of applicable skills. Depending on the task, different skills may apply.
With this content-form-skills method, it is essential to use the RIGHT content and form to answer the question. Grammar and spelling are areas where you have worked hard to improve. Don’t waste your chance to boost your score by overlooking the form in which the answer needs to be provided. When you answer in the wrong form/content, you lose all chances to gain marks on critical skills, like Spelling, Grammar, Writing, etc.
“NEGATIVE” PTE scores!
In the PTE scoring, the newbies have a lot of confusion about the negative marking of the exam. Here’s how you can understand it. Every incorrect response on the PTE is deducted one point under the “Partial Credit” scoring.
The three tasks are as follows:
- Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers (READING SECTION)
- Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers (LISTENING SECTION)
- Highlight Incorrect Words (LISTENING SECTION)
These tasks are often misunderstood as being graded with ‘negative scoring.’ Here’s why this isn’t true. I will explain this part in detail.
The points system- PTE scoring for newbies
Each response carries certain marks:
- Correct – Correct responses earn 1 (one) point.
- Incorrect – Incorrect answers will give 0 (zero).
- Partial Credit – Providing correct responses will earn you a maximum of points. The maximum amount of points will be lower if they are partially correct.
Here is how the scoring works in PTE to make newbies understand:
CORRECT Response: 1 point
INCORRECT Response: -1 point
For any of these questions, you will receive a minimum (lowest possible) mark of 0. Yes, that’s right! ZERO.
Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers:
There is confusion about how both Reading and Listening’ Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers’ are scored on the PTE.
As confirmed by Pearson, the following explanation is accurate.
Example: Let’s say there are four possible answers to a question: A, B, C, and D.The correct options are B and C.
-Two points will be awarded if you select B and C.
-If you select B, you will get ONE point. However, if you do not choose C, you will not lose any points.
-Further, if you select C, you will get ONE point. There is no penalty for choosing C over B.
-If you choose A, B, and C, you will score 2-1, which is one point. Selecting the incorrect option will deduct your ONE mark.
-The score will be 2-2 = zero if you select A, B, C, and D. Selecting two incorrect options will deduct TWO marks.
In order to maximize your score, try to select all the correct answer options and avoid selecting any incorrect answers. Alternatively, you can choose only one answer if you want to be careful. Watch this video on Reading Multiple Choice Choose Multiple Answers, to view and understand the scoring in detail.
Highlight Incorrect Words:
In this section, every incorrect answer will also result in a ‘Partial Credit’ (-1 point). Grades for this task are similar to those for multiple choice, multiple answer tasks. There is no need to panic about these sections. Negative marks are not possible.
In order to clear up some of the confusion regarding PTE scoring, we wrote this post. I hope the PTE scoring is all clear for newbies. Read the article- “PTE Exam: Exam format 2022” for a better understanding of the whole PTE exam format. It’s time for you to stop being a “Newbie.” Instead of worrying, you should focus on studying. I would appreciate any further questions you may have!