A Bad Listener Story

Let's begin the story of a bad listener!!

My husband(Sivy) and I decided to write any English language proficiency test to get an AUS PR, and as our prejudice was PTE is easy to crack compared to IELTS, we decided to go for it.

Without any hesitation, I booked my exam on Oct, 6th 2018 to know where I stand. Before the exam week, I watched all E2 videos from youtube. It was too difficult for me to understand the pattern itself and to remember when to write, speak, read, and listen. Listening was like Greek & Latin to me, so I listened to one thing and wrote different thing completely which I didn't realize for a few months.

After the first devastating attempt, I just gave up and never thought of writing PTE for four months. I got to know about Nakul Gowda & Skills PTE Academic in the month of February through Sivy's friend, and I started exploring the reviews on facebook. Without much delay, I enrolled only for speaking initially in Skills PTE Academic online classes on Feb, 9th 2019.

When my PTE journey started, I went through a perennial struggle for balancing life which I never expected.

After attending Nakul's Read Aloud and DI sections online, I was pretty sure that I'm going to crack the speaking very soon. I started believing him, so I immediately subscribed for the other three sections in which I didn't have much confidence in myself. I started attending Skills PTE Academic's weekday mocks and weekend sessions without fail, and I started scrutinizing all the google drive offline sessions.

PTE is not a cakewalk, It's a combination of skills.

I must say that Nakul has correctly analyzed where people can be wrong in terms of grammar and writing, so he explained their tiny mistakes in most of the offline videos. I watched all the offline videos(sometimes twice) in the order mentioned by the team, and noted all those mistakes and avoided doing them in my practice. At the end of the day, I must grammatically write every word correctly,  must know where to add a comma(,), hyphen (-), and an apostrophe('), and must also know the difference between singular & plural and tenses.

Skills PTE Academic's mocks were really good and created with much effort, and I never missed the first few minutes of a motivational speech by Nakul. There were days I really stood up because of those motivational words. Nakul has set the base strong for all sections, but I knew I was the one to improve my skills with consistent practice.

         "There is no end to Knowledge.. Strongest alone survives. This is the rule of life"

During the Skills PTE Academic's weekday mocks, I never scored above 20 out of 25. Every time I felt really bad for not scoring the cut-off marks set by the team, but Sivy motivated me continuously. Nakul's mocks have all range of questions from easy to tough, so always felt that I'm in safe hands.

I'm a person who used to add expenditure of effort if I want to achieve something. I do laborious work, but PTE needs both smart and hard work. After two weeks since enrolment, I prepared a daily schedule to excel my skills in PTE.

Daily Routine (3-4 hours)

                                     

1) Sent 2 SWT, and 1 Essay for review.
2) Practiced around 10 Reading FiBs consciously, but nowadays I could practice 30 Fibs by 1 hour.
3) Sent RL, RA, and DI audios to Nakul till I get "Perfect" from him.
4) Practiced around 30-40 RS/WFD, but later(in the month of May) I was able to complete 100 RS at one go by 1 hour.
5) Watched web series for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

I spent 4 hours daily on the weekdays and almost 8-9 hours on the weekends as I was obsessed with PTE ;-)

After a month, I slowly got "Perfect" from Nakul for RA, DI, SWT, and Essay, but I started preparing SST mid of March only.

My classes were ended in the mid of April, but I was confident only with writing and speaking because I was scoring less in reading and listening during Skills PTE Academic's mocks. Sivy was persistently encouraging me to take official Scored Test Mock because he was questioning me how could you evaluate yourself without attempting an official mock or a real exam.

Click here to know my mock and real exam experience.

I found there are two methods of practicing.
1. Practice with repeated questions (each section has more than 300 questions)
2. Practice by reading books, writing a summary, and listening to podcasts daily.

As I was very confident in my writing, I never practiced writing but improvised my writing skills with grammar, spellings, written discourse, etc., I'm not an amateur reader because I already read around 15 novels, but I still preferred the first method for reading. As I wasn't sure about certain words' difference like hypothesis and assertion, etc., I decided to go for the repeated questions. For listening, as suggested by Nakul, I watched web series  "Grey's Anatomy", "Silicon Valley", "Friends" and of course "GOT". I can't say watching series helped me to crack PTE entirely in a short span of time, but it improved my skills. For example, in one of the Nakul's listening mocks, the blank was "realm", and I was able to identify it easily. To my surprise, only a few have identified the word "realm", and I must say here I was able to grasp it since I watched series "GOT". So watching series will get you familiarised with words in all speeds and accents. Hence, for listening, I preferred both methods. I never worried about Speaking as I was in safe hands ;-)

Speaking

Read Aloud & DI

Skills PTE Academic's Tips & tricks.

Repeat Sentence

I made myself familiarized by practicing more, and I practiced around 100 every alternative day from Careercoves. I almost practiced each RS more than 6 times.

Re-tell Lecture

Practiced around 50-60 audios using the template provided by Skills PTE Academic, and here I tried to write all the points and used 2 complex sentences with the template. After the audio played, I developed the sentences from my memory if I missed writing or if the audio was too short.

ASQ

I repeated the answer thrice in my last two attempts because I was worried about what if the software doesn't capture my voice in the beginning. If I don't know the answer, I repeated the question or words from the question itself.

Writing 

SWT 

Skills PTE Academic's Tips & tricks.

Essay

I followed Skills PTE Academic's template and Nakul's bottom-up approach. I often practiced around 400 vocabulary words which I wrote in sheets before writing essays. I didn't forget to use few adjectives like profoundly, adversely, immensely, greatly, predominantly, etc., in every sentence of the  essays, and I used to remember a few vocabulary words, which fit for almost all essays, such as proliferate (instead of the word increase), alleviate, diminish (instead of the word decrease), culminate, hinder, detrimental, deprive, etc., and used them in the essays. 

Reading

Fill in the Blanks

There are two ways: reading a book or practicing the repeated questions. Before starting the FiBs, I ensured to understand the basic parts of speech (Noun, Verb, Subject, Adverb, Adjective, etc.,) through Nakul's video "Advanced session on how to identify Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs, and Adverbs". I have gone through only realpte for fill in the blanks as they were repeating. From my 2nd till 5th attempt, I have seen mostly seven questions from realpte.com, but in my sixth attempt, I got all questions only from this website. These FiBs were initially shared by other 79+ scorers, and I didn't memorize them but understood the meaning. PTE often releases the upgraded version, so you can't expect that you will receive the same questions all the time.

I used to set two mins timer for each and try to finish 25-30 by an hour. Before every attempt, I almost practiced 100-150 questions from realpte.com. Though this was my schedule, fast reading is the key to score well. By fast reading the text, I got abundant time to proofread.

Reading Trick

Eg: TV gives/provides more awareness and knowledge. Here, I must know the meaning of options given, so to know the meaning, I must familiarize with more vocabulary or at least I must be able to differentiate the meanings and usage. "Give" is the word used when the object/information is received by the other person whereas in "provide", the object/information can or can't be received by the other persons.

Reorder

For all sections, Nakul has provided the basic to advanced offline session videos, so I watched them thoroughly. This section was a little difficult as I wasn't able to find the matching pairs exactly. When I scrutinized the reorder, I found always demonstratives (this, that, these, those, etc.,) and words like "such", are the keys. I started to understand the context because a single "this" can mean two incidents/persons most of the time.

Listening

SST (Game Changer of my score)

Practiced around 50 SSTs to get familiar. After 6th attempt, started taking notes using note & pen as I wasn't taking proper notes directly on the screen. Investigated in Grammarly for verbal errors and evaluated in realpte.com. I ensured that I shouldn't make the same mistakes again every time, so noted my mistakes and revised before writing next SST.

Sample Notes of my SST on the topic "Journal & History writing" and "Bumble Bees"

                                   

Listening FiBs & HIW 

Practiced with 1.2 & 1.4 speed audio from realpte.com and apeuni.com for FiBs, I read along with the audio for HIW, and proofread after the audio for the parts of speech, demonstratives, singular & plural, and tense. Practice and consistency is key.

WFD

I made myself familiarized by practicing more from Careercoves, and I practiced almost 100 every three days. I chose the speed in Careercoves, and we didn't want to worry about the speed here unless it's a simple sentence.

Sources

As we live in an age of unprecedented resources online, it is easy to prepare for PTE. I believe the daily practice can build confidence and improve skills. I never memorized anything, so I just understood all the meanings and enjoyed reading & listening. If we are only lucky, we will get the same repeated questions.

Youtube Channels

PTE King                     Few SST questions
PTE Melon English      Practiced all the SST questions
Smash PTE                 Practiced all the SST questions
Careercoves                Practiced all Repeat Sentence & WFD videos from Jan 2019 to August 2019                                        for more than 3 times
Careercoves                Practiced all ASQ videos & reorder videos

Websites

realpte.com                       Used this site to evaluate all the SST answers
apeuni                               Practiced all listening Fibs
realpte.com                       Practiced all reading & writing Fibs for more than 3 times
realpte.com                       Practiced around 500 - 600 RS & WFDs
60 seconds Podcasts        RL & SST
realpte.com                       Practiced RLs (tags High Frequency)

PDFs

Firefly Prediction File                  Have gone through all the listening fibs blanks and wrote all the words from the specific month, and you can download this from the telegram group.
PTE Tutorial Exam Memories     Have gone through all the reorder, RS & WFDs

Apps

The Hindu    Practiced read aloud
TED Talk     Installed but didn't listen even more than 5 audios :-(
PTE Study    Practiced reading FiBs

Struggles 

Audio speed

Practiced RS, WFD, and Listening FiBs with 1.4 speed slowly through realpte.com. I started practicing for the worst after the 4th attempt.

Spellings

One Day Spelling Practice

I struggled with the following spellings, so I started writing them. I wrote all these words in the pic on 8th Aug 2019. 

• Spellings with 2 same letters such as accommodation, accumulation, etc.,
• Spellings like neighbour or neighbor, favour or favor, etc., - "our" combinations
• Spellings such as intuition, exquisite, etc., - multiple alternative "i"s
• Spellings such as practice or practise, fulfill or fulfill, occur or occurred, etc.,

Hyphens

I missed watching Nakul's Hyphens video, so I struggled. Later, I was shocked when I verified my answers with realpte's SST "save&score" option. It said "43 year old woman" was wrong, and it should be "43-year-old woman". Hence, I scored 6/10 during SST practice.

Possessive Nouns & Apostrophe

I watched Nakul's Apostrophe video, so I was cautious to use apostrophes in possessive nouns. I was missing apostrophes in the initial days without my knowledge in sentences such as "The talk was about Kids Museum". Ideally, It should be "The talk was about Kids' Museum".

Space between two words

Words like at least(not atleast), extracurricular(not extra-curricular), Homo Sapiens(not Homosapiens), hyperconnected(not hyper-connected), viewpoint(not view point), worldwide (not world wide), earthquake (not earth quake) were little confusing in the exams, so I started writing them and revised it often. These simple words will diminish your score in writing, especially SST. 

Concentration

Sleep earlier and start the day early because the brain needs rest. I was trying to hit the gym regularly, but I couldn't get much time for Gym. Once the online classes ended, I mostly hit Gym at least alternative days. This alleviated my office & PTE stress, so I was able to concentrate predominantly.

Self-realization

Whenever I lost marks in the real exam, I immediately wanted to identify the mistakes. I used to irritate the "Guru" Nakul with more questions or the Skills PTE Academic's Old Students (79+ scorers).

Meanings

I always confused to choose words in reading FiBs such as situation or circumstance, discovery or invention or finding, predicts or claims or tells. I started finding the difference between these words and usage.

Articles 

I ensured I added the articles in relevant places, and I proofread the articles properly only in my final attempt. 

Proofread

Proofreading was of paramount importance for me to score, so I tried to have more time left for proofreading in SWT, Essay, FiBs, SST, and WFD. Only in my last two attempts, I made good progress in proofreading. Though I formed proper sentences, without cautious proofreading, I was losing marks til my 5th attempt. 

Life Lessons & Takeaways  

Fast Reading & Improvised Writing Skills

Though I'm a blogger and reader, I don't possess good writing skills and fast reading skills. Now It's time to buy more books and write more posts with these improvised skills.

Spellings & Grammar

As I'm a computer bound person, spellings will be auto-corrected while writing design documents or composing emails. This made me not to know spellings of words such as aggressiveness, so I started writing all words using a pen or in Notepad++.

Vocabulary 

I started writing the words & its meaning I come across every day from March 2019. I have learned almost 800 words, and I love using them in my everyday life such as DSM, text messages, blogs, etc.,

Color Writing Method to remember

Listening 

I started understanding the difficult words nowadays, and I admit I was also one of the persons in the theater who laughed at the joke after everyone started laughing. This was the skill I was so bad at it, and I realized it after the 5th attempt. Though I could understand all familiar words such as emphasize, subsidizing, etc., I was not able to understand words like ad hoc, crooked, etc., as I wasn't heard or not used them much. I have been improvising my listening. 

Obsessiveness 

This endeavor taught me about life, patience, seeing the world in the other angle, focus, consistency, prioritizing the work, etc., Sivy is the reason to salvage every time when I was down. I was hardly waiting for the culmination of months of hard work. Sivy taught me constantly how to get it if I wanted something so badly. By procrastinating other things and obsessed with one goal, I could reach one of the horizons of my life.

Concentration

If I prepared when I was tired or totally occupied with something else, my preparations were inefficient. When I was tired, I started to burn calories by cycling which made my mind so fresh. I eventually approached it feeling fresh, alert and happy, it was so much easier, and I learned more and faster.

Procrastination of other Goals/Events

Some situations or events had impacts on my preparation of reaching my full potential though I was procrastinating all these situations or events. If anything or anyone hurt me, I started to watch some motivational movies, and I gained the potential back. Though I'm a married person, I didn't have much pressure on the household chores as I had some help, so I could always focus on my preparations in the home. My office work was not more stressful, so I was able to manage between office and PTE. Though it wasn't stressful, I didn't have much time to prepare, so I took more leaves to watch all offline grammar, writing, and mock videos.

Wait for your Time

I stopped worrying that others were achieving it, but I couldn't. I also worried why I'm alone in the world taking these many attempts, but I still know others are also taking a number of attempts. Click here to know how many attempts I took to get my dream score 90. Nakul always says everyone has their own potential to learn things. Some are fast to grasp, and some are slow. I finally stopped worrying about others and focused only to crack it. This made me stronger in life also to face everything without considering others' growth.

Get rid of Social Media and Cellphone

I have bad addiction to Mobile Phones, Whatsapp & Instagram, so I uninstalled Instagram for 5 months. I couldn't uninstall Whatsapp as I had Nakul's Samartha group. When I was not actively wasting my time on social media, it meant I'm improving myself. I cherished the moments of staying away from the world and running for my goal. I missed a few catchups, outing with friends, and family togetherness, but I knew if I miss this important part of my life, I will never be able to succeed in anything. This meant "A Life" to us. I stopped worrying about people's emotions, sentiments, backbiting and gossips which are available all the time but not my life.

Make Mistakes to Learn More

I always believe that if I make more mistakes, I will learn more and remember things easily. I was greatly happy to make mistakes and learn from them. Since I learned from my mistakes, I was conscious not to make the same mistakes in the exam. 

Never Give Up

The last but not the least is "Never Give Up". I was thinking often that I will not be able to crack PTE, so to motivate my mind, I often watch short motivational films, and I will instantly presume my preparation with 10% more potent than before. I used to cry and vent out, but I will wake up from depression as a strong woman. I have a great pillar "Sivy" to support me all the time because he knows mental health is prominent. In the beginning, I wrote in my head that if I give up, I'm a quitter. I don't want to be a quitter even if it takes 20 attempts. Just believe there is nothing as impossible.

Check out the video from Guruji Nakul now ;-)