Strategies to solve Reading and Writing: Fill in the blanks type of question in the Pearson Test of English
These are considered one of the toughest types of questions in the whole PTE test of English. I have seen a lot of students struggling to solve these questions; however, with the below techniques, you will be able to land an answer quickly.
1. You should not take more than 2.20 minutes to solve one question. You will have a total of 5-6 questions that you are supposed to solve in 14 minutes.
2. Read the question carefully and first mark the answers that you are confident of, then move to the ones you are not sure of. This will save you time and will get you maximum answers correct.
3. Use collocations to get the answers. A list of collocations published by the PTE has 2469 active collocations. Read them thoroughly before trying these questions.
4. Try to eliminate two wrong options, and it is easy also as these words will either not relate to the context (paragraph) or the statement. Finally, you will be left with two choices, and it becomes easy to get the answer.
5. Build on your lexical resource, as it is easy sometimes to fill the blank by understanding the meaning of it.
6. Learn words with similar meanings, like ENQUIRE OR INQUIRE. Both have the same meaning, but the former is used in an informal setting whereas the latter is in a formal tone. Like, the cops were INQUIRING (formal setting) the suspect of the murder.
7. Sometimes it is not important to read the entire paragraph, and you can easily mark the answer by just reading the sentence in which the blank is there. Try this with a few blanks; it will save you precious time during the test in case of lengthy paragraphs with 7-8 blanks.
8. It is pivotal to use common technicalities like understanding the topic and fitting the related vocabulary.
9. Make use of grammar to eliminate the wrong choices. For instance, if the topic is in present continuous tense, use the -ING form of the verb and not the past, such as -ED or -T.
10. Proofreading is important to mitigate the chances of error.
11. Focus on 3-4 words before the blank, most of the time, these are prepositions that give you a hint of the answer.
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