Fill in the Blanks is the third type of exercice you will encounter in the Listening part of the PTE test.
This exercise assesses your reading, listening and writing abilities. Your task is to listen a one minute-ish recording and to fill the blank boxes with the words you hear.
Sounds intimidating, doesn’t it ?
Here is why you shouldn’t be scared
- There are only 2 to 3 of these exercises.
- You are not timed.
- There is no negative marking.
- It is easier to listen and follow a transcript of a text at the same time than just hearing it.
What is the main challenge and how to solve it ?
Fill in the blanks can be considered as an introduction to the last Listening test, which is “Write from dictation”.
They both require accurate listening and writing qualities. This can be a challenge to foreigners. If it’s your case, here is how to improve.
Plan for your method
Fix yourself a goal to train towards: Do not exceed 2 minutes per exercise of this kind, since only one listening of the 30 to 60 seconds audio is made available.
You can expect around 3 sessions of Fill in the Blanks in Listening.
Even though you do not have a time limit, it is not recommended to spend too long on these short ones, since you still have to respect an overall time for the whole Listening section.
You will have the 7 seconds at the start, as mentioned above, to grasp the main topic of the text and visualize where are the blanks for the missing words.
The objective of two minutes would leave you with at least half a minute to check the grammar and the tense of the words you put in.
Do you type or write faster ?
In my case, I would use the provided note-board rather than directly typing the answers, by fear to be too slow between the words, and mainly to try to correct my spelling despite the time remaining at the end to do it.
But it is up to you. Indeed here, it may become a bit difficult to try to follow the speaker on the transcript and take down the words.
If you choose to type in your answers, I advise you to follow the text with the mouse and to go from an empty box to another by using your “tab” key on your computer’s keyboard.
What to look for when you check your answers ?
1. Verbs: You should check
- the tense.
- if it is at the third person.
- if the prepositional and postpositional surroundings work with this verb.
2. Other words: Check
- if they fit within the subject and the sentence.
- if the nouns could be plural.
- how they fit with the words before and after.
Practicing this on a regular basis should make this task easier. Over time, 2 minutes should become easily reachable. Do not avoid reading back after yourself.
How to practice my listening skills ?
You need to train your listening skills, and at risk to sound like your grandma, you need to practice, practice and practice again.
Anyway, you train your ear to hear more and more precisely.
The key to effective and lasting training involves two parts:
The academic part
with rigorous and formatted exercises, which help you to be totally prepared for this type of tasks. It is necessary.
That being said, they can become a bit tedious if you do them all day long.
Even if you need to train every day, you can complete your prepping with other methods.
The entertaining part
This part allows you not to give up and even get a second wind to go back to more formal studies. It also enables you to spend more time on your English, even when you are tired.
Your day should begin and end by listening to something in English. I always choose a movie, an audiobook, a podcast I like. It helps to maintain the training in the long run.
Listening to the news can also prove to be beneficial as it covers various different topic, which is a great tool to improve your aptitudes to understand another language accurately.
The good thing about learning English is that you access to numerous free sources.
