Tips to Boost Your Score in PTE Essay

Worrying about the PTE essays? A lot of test takers find it intimidating to sit down at their computer on test day and write an essay in 20 minutes … and then write another one directly after that! That’s what PTE Academic provides you an essay after an essay especially if you are unlucky enough to get 2 Write Essay items on the PTE Academic. But fear no more! Remember even native English speakers find writing an Essay challenging as it has always been treated as an art. But there’s never one right way to write an Essay response. As long as you write an essay according to a PTE-specified format in a clear, logical and grammatical way, you are doing it right. Even impressive and correctly-used words can help you to write a great essay!

A handful of key PTE Essay Writing tips will help you sit down at those word processors and proceed—with confidence—to get the PTE Essay score you want. With this in mind, here are all the PTE essay tips you’ll need to send you on your way to that perfect score.

#1 Remember to KISS

You say what? Whenever you write a PTE Academic essay, remember that you remind yourself to KISS. KISS means Keep It Simple, Stupid! What else did you think? Well now that I’ve got your attention, let’s understand what I really mean. A lot of students who fail to write a good essay feel that long, convoluted sentences will help their cause but they are far off the mark. The longer your sentences, the more likely you are to make grammar and punctuation errors. These not only affect your grammar score, but also the general linguistic range. What you should be focusing on is writing clear and logical sentences that will push your scores higher.

For example:
In the modern world, global warming is one of the most popular topics causing many environmental difficulties and tough challenges arising from its serious consequences.

This is one complicated sentence with a lot of words and ideas stacked into one long one.

Let’s try to simplify this and see if we can understand it:

One of the most common environmental issues is global warming which causes many serious environmental problems. There are tough challenges associated with this issue and its effects have very serious consequences.

A simple and grammatically correct response like this would certainly improve your writing score and fetch you a higher score!

#2 Brainstorm before You Write

A lot of us just feel that they can think and write simultaneously, but in a timed response, this can land you in trouble. You must either think or write at one time. When you think while writing your thoughts can go in different directions and you might lose your focus midway. What you would expect out of your response wouldn’t be there on the screen then. So you should take out some time to plan your response before you begin to write.

I know some of you might think that it just wastes time to think beforehand but believe me that it really works in your favour. Jotting down a few ideas on the erasable notepad would help you stay on track when you write your essay or if you choose to plan them out while you type them in the space provided you can let them prompt you what to write next. You can even plan out your response using simple structures such as this:

For:

Point 1

Point 2

Point 3

Against:

Point 1

Point 2

Point 3

#3 Stay Organised

Even a cogent response falls apart if it is not put into a essay form: the introduction, a few body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Remember not to make the introduction needlessly long as you try to stuff in everything you want to write. The Intro should serve only to introduce the topic. It should clearly bring out the side on which you want to argue (your opinion) and make it explicit. You go easy on the checker and yourself if you write it as the last sentence of your introductory paragraph. The body paragraphs should develop opinion and include both reasons and examples. Finally, the conclusion should wrap up your main points that you have stated in the essay. Don’t try to add any new information.

#4 Write Within the Word Limit

A lot of us do not note the word limit specified in the instructions. Some write essays that are 300+ words and even fall short of 200 words. Remember the PTE Score Guide tells you to write your response between 200-300 words. So make sure you do not write more than 300 or less than 200 words.

#5 Stay Relevant

Remember to always read the question thoroughly and understand the topic. A lot of students make this mistake of writing without understanding the entire question and when they write with a vague knowledge of the essay topic they start writing whatever comes to their mind. You must remember that whatever you write your essay should answer the question fully without going off-topic. One tip here is to refer to the question statement every time you write a new paragraph. This will help you stay on the topic and remind you about what to write about. A related point is to plan beforehand which we have discussed before.

Remember that you must keep practising writing essays to ace the Essay Writing section. TCY helps you score better on PTE Writing by providing you evaluation for 3 PTE Academic Writing Tests and Scored Mocks. You too can avail of this service and know your strengths, capitalise on them, know your weak areas and work on your mistakes so that you never repeat them again.