Developing your reading skills is vital to efficiently answer and manage your time during R/W and just Reading Fill in the blanks tests.
You will find all the information you require about these exercises, representing 10 to 12 questions of the PTE, in our article:
In both cases, you are required to replace blank spaces in the middle of sentences of a text by choosing correct terms from a list of words.
You need to become able to read quickly and to understand most kind of topics instantly. Hence get the habit to read different types of article every day.
This is for the training part. I recommend developing a methodology. Here is ours.
The Intensive Reading Approach
It is probably the one you use for a foreign language. You tend to read in details, you question or try to understand almost every word, one after the other.
This process is too slow. It will lead you to spend an unnecessary amount of time on this exercise and to stress out if you do not know some of the words even if they are not essential to your understanding.
Remember the PTE Reading section do not impose a time limit for each question, but an overall one. You have to manage it on your own.
Every kind of Fill in the Blanks grant you a lot of points (1 per blank correctly filled), but it is essential to reach the end of the session to pass your PTE.
The Scanning Method
It involves acquiring the capacity to select almost instantly the parts or paragraphs you need.
We do it more naturally than a skimming approach, but you cannot apply it to Fill in the Blanks exercises types since their texts vary between 80 to 300 words. (text are too short)
Remember to use the scanning method for the Multiple choices, Single or Multiple answers tasks.
The Recommended Method: An Efficient Skimming
It will help you to:
- read in a more selective manner.
- focus your understanding.
- gain some time.
- avoid you to get stuck on a problematic term.
- not to become confused by a specific notion.
- grasp the context faster, which will lead you to an overall understanding even if you don’t know some concepts’ definitions.
If you have to focus on the terms just before and after the blanks to pick the right answer, you should train to reach a comprehension of an article’s context without stopping at every notion.
Your eyes would skip over the sections with details not useful to you, to go straight to the juicy part. It does not mean quickly reading, even though you will end up there.
Efficiently skimming involves reading with goals in mind:
- identify the main topic.
- become aware of the subsequent subjects.
- select the parts that are relevant to you, to the exercise.
- see the structure of the text, such as where the examples are.
- notice the formation of the sentence surrounding the gaps to replace them with the right words.
We also have an article on skimming and scanning.
When you practice reading, try to notice when:
You lose focus
When it happens, stop, and try to summarise what you understood so far. It will help you focus again. If you only go back to the line where you got distracted, it won’t really help.
The summary in your mind approach will get you doing something else. It will have a similar effect as a refreshing short break.
You are struggling
Do not push through. Try to identify why: tired, unknown vocabulary… Then adapt your solution: take some rest, some food, or grab a dictionary. Most of all, be patient with yourself; it takes time.
Your improvements
It is satisfying, and it will keep you going!
How To Skim Concretely?
The average of words your eye can take in one look amounts to about 5, to reach a reading speed of about 250 words a minute.
To become good at skimming, train a bit every day to absorb more and more elements in one glance.
- You choose a paragraph you have never read before.
- Limit a section of a line with two pieces of paper or your fingers: first three words, then 5, 7, and so on.
- Look quickly at this sequence, and understand it.
In a nutshell,
scanning involves reading across a page, whereas skimming requires to absorb several words and a global meaning without your eye moving, or barely.
It may take a bit of time, but your reading skills improvement will be worth it! I advise you to spend only 5 minutes a day, so you do not get frustrated with it.
Reading for pleasure is not negligible. Choose the right medium for you! The more you read, the better you get at it obviously.
It will also make you more comfortable with reading in English and motivate you to improve, as well as to enhance your knowledge of the language.
