PTE Reading Fill in the blanks Tips and Tricks | Top 11 Tips for 2024
Want to know what are the common pitfalls in the PTE Reading Fill in the blanks and how to avoid them? In this article we will share out top PTE Reading Fill in the blanks Tips and Tricks with you.
At PTE Mock Tests we help hundreds of students each week get ready for their PTE exam. These tips and tricks are based on our experience helping these students achieve their target PTE Scores.
Let’s see what these tips and tricks are, one by one:
Learn to understand the basic sentence structure
The first in our list of PTE Reading Fill in the blanks Tips and Tricks – Understand basic sentence structure! You don’t need to be an expert in English grammar, but you should know what the parts of an English sentence are. This will help you immensely in these Fill in the blanks questions. If you know which grammatical form is required for a blank you can pick the word based on that.
Select possible options based on their grammatical form
This is closely tied to the previous tip. Learn to identify common PTE Academic words and their grammatical forms. You should be able to tell which of the given 5 words are nouns and then drop one of those into a blank that requires a noun.
[cp_info_bar display=”inline” id=”cp_id_5242f”][/cp_info_bar]Start with the first blank and try all possible options
Note! we don’t say try all options, we say try all possible options. There will be some options that you should be able to rule out simply by looking at the word options. No need to put them in the blanks. For all other potential candidates, try them one by one. See that they make sense in the whole context of the sentence, and the overall text.
Don’t answer in a hurry
The next in our list of PTE Reading Fill in the blanks Tips and Tricks – Don’t be in a hurry! Don’t just take the first word that seems right and drop it into the blank and move on to the next question. Spend a few seconds reviewing and reading the text after you have filled the blanks. This will help you to catch any silly mistakes.
(Note: Our expert tutors have put together a full series of PTE Tutorials and PTE Tips and Tricks articles.Make sure to read all!)
If confused move to the next blank quickly
Just as you shouldn’t be in hurry, you should also not get stuck at any one blank. If you are unable to answer a blank, move to the next. Once you have filled a few blanks, the available options will reduce and it will be easier to make an educated guess.
Eliminate wrong options before finalizing the answer
In one of our earlier tips we asked you to not answer in a hurry. This tip is related to that. Look at other options too and make sure to rule them out before submitting your final answer.
Use logic to pick the right word
Sometimes you can answer a blank simply on the basis of you logic. For that you should be able to understand the overall text and the sentence. Then based on that context you can guess which word is needed in the blank.
Examine the selected word in the context of the whole sentence
As we have said earlier too – the context is very important. Check how the selected option relates with the words before the blank and the words after the blank.
Learn common collocations
Collocations are groups of English language word that often appear together. It is immensely useful to learn these collocations. You can find a list of these PTE collocations on our website. This is useful for questions where the blank is part of a collocation.
Review the main academic word list
The PTE Reading Fill in the blanks question is to a large extent a test of your English vocabulary. Review the PTE Academic word list before your exam. Learn the usage and think of some example sentences where those words are used.
Decide beforehand how much time to spend on each question
We have been telling time and again that time management is very important in the PTE Reading section. So use your practice with PTE Mock Tests to figure out how much time to give to each question.
We hope these tips and tricks will give you a better understanding of the PTE Reading Fill in the blanks questions! Use these to get a better score.