How I got PTE 90 in the 1st attempt and max scores in all the other section as well..

So... it was a while and deciding there was not much to do , thought I will prepare for PTE as required for Australian Immigration.

I think preparation is the key, youtube has ample exercises and lot of practice material.
I think it is very imp to identify your respective weakness and strengths.

Weakness have to pin pointed and more practice is required. For me Re-order was very tough and also multiple choice multiple answers , I just found some material on youtube, and kept practising these 2 parts...
Practice is key...

I also have some other material in my laptop and can fwd to anybody who is intersted.

So sat  down tried to understand the pattern and then started doing some exercises in listening and reading the topics I thought were  the toughest. And surprise surprise it did turn out to be a little bit difficult that I had imagined .

Did some test exercises from youtube and funnily always seemed to get the re-order sentences wrong , always it was uncanny there was always 2 sentences out of order.

This re-ordering is I think like a jumble and there is perspective for all,,, what looks correct to you does not necessarily mean it is correct for the computer.

Another head aches  I later realized was the speaking section , there was re-tell lecture and re-tell summary both of which i felt were tough. you would have to listen to a lecture of almost 90-120 seconds and in a time of 25 odd seconds we would  have to decribe the image or re-tell the lectiure.

It is definitely daunting, if you to start to write down you will miss the imp points and if you dont' write down you will not remember when you to have to retell . This was good experience.


Another tricky part was multiple order multiple choice questions , all the options looked right and ypou were never sure which were the correct options..


Finally went and wrote the exam on the day of Ugadi.

Was pretty nervous but it turned out to be easy.


Again the speaking section was a shocker since so many people started speaking at the same time, it will felt very dis-orienting and was thinking what the hell am i going to do., I could hear the person next to me screaming at the top of his voice and worse , he kept the volume in his computer so high, that I could hear his questions and lectures..

But I think they key is to speak loudly and slowly  and you will sail through,,
Cannot emphasize enough about speaking slowly, with the Indian accent I feel we speak fast and words literally flow like a stream..though when we are speaking at home our pals and family kind of guess some of words through the context the computer might not be so kind... :-))
also it fills the time..

40 seconds seems like an eternity...while speaking and you can hear the rest of people in the test room shouting at the top of their voice..

Finally the crazy  wait for the score.
The score for me exactly 24 hours later and i was anxious to see the score after seeing the notification in the phone,.

Quickly reached to the computer was with trepidation opened the score report.

and was immensely pleased to see very good score of 90 overall and pretty awsome scores in rest of the section as well..

L:90
R:90
S:90
W;90

so a perfect score on Ugadi, I would say a brilliant good start to the year,..

Was happy with the score in speaking , amidst all the noise , some how quite managed to convey everything to the computer..
remember stumbling a few times while speaking.. but managed to get a perfect score :-))))

got some pretty awsome material from youtube,
especially from 2 sources
1. e2language
2. 7bands...


SOME GEN TIPS:

1. I think it is good if you are aware of all the  individual section and what comes next , it kind of helps you plan , the sections on which you can take more time and sections in which you get less time.. I was aware what were sections that were coming up...

Speaking:
1. You have to speak loudly, there is an option to check the microphone before the test actually starts and make use of it , to hear your voice, see that it is clear, my microphone was kind of close to my nose initially, and apart from my speaking I felt I could hear an elephant snoring when I played back my recording , so make time to set it up correctly and that you should not hear the sound of your breathing..you can ask the test examiners if you are not happy the quality of sound recording.
2. Speak Slowly , words should be audible and clear, again in the speaking section if you make a mistake , keep chugging on, other wise you will lose marks for oral fluency.
3. Re-tell lecture - You have to take notes, it is good if can write in short forms, because when you speak you tend to forget what you heard and notes make an enormous difference, in my test how ever I was not able to read my own hand writing.. so short forms are necessary..try and target  to speak 4-5 sentences.. some lectures are more than 120 seconds long, so if you think writing is not going to help then stop and try to remember the imp stuff that is being said, you DON'T need to remember everything since you will be able to speak at max 5 sentences.
4. Re-tell image -this is tricky., But I feel for this section and re-tell lecture we should target to speak about 4-5 sentence , each of them should take about 8-10 seconds, and its no use speaking more , since the computer will cut it off.. so plan an intro, 2 sentences on the graph, the most visible points and 1 sentence kind of  a conclusion..
5. For the repeat sentence you have to listen carefully some of the accents are confusing and if you are not alert you will surely miss a part of the sentence , again if you are not the remembering type
write down 1-2 key words..

Reading:
1. I feel the tricky part here is Multiple Choice Multiple Answers, again you have to listen intently, usually there are 3 correct, so I kept that in mind, in some cases I was not sure which of the 3 so in 1 question I just selected the 2 i was most sure of.. rather than guessing and selecting one more..
its 1 point for correct and -1 for incorrect, so keeping that in mind I selected only 2.
2. Re-order - Found this always difficult , I would always get 3 right and my last one would be inevitably wrong and thereby making another one wrong.. for this during the test day just followed the gut instinct.. the key is always to look for key words, however, but , yet, since that, despite that, with these you will be able to get 3 /5 in place for the remaining my mantra was trial and error, put the 2 sentences in which you have a doubt in a any order , see if it makes sense as a whole if not just  swap.. but you gotta keep a watch on the time ticking down, here it helps if you know the format ,..
if you know the next sections are easy for you, then you can do some trial and error here..All the best.
3. Fill in the blanks - i would suggest practice, some times synonyms are used, but they are do-able I  think.

Listening:
1.Summarize spoken test: for this I felt , since it's a summary, its ok to listen, I don't recommend taking notes, since you might miss out in some crucial information.. so listen calmly, and be alert in the 90-120 second lecture, there will be 2-3 sentences which pretty much give you the summary and the tone of the speaker , he might be sarcastic or appreciative of certain thing described in the lecture, if you are able to lock on to the tone/attitude of the speaker, then you will get max out of the summary section.
2. MC-MA- again listen intently , mostly 3 will be correct, if you are not sure select 2 of them, some of them will be blatantly wrong, and if you have time you can do the elimination method, some of them will be obviously wrong, so the others logically have to be correct, if you have listened intently and you are not able to get the right answers , the wrong ones will be easy to spot, so you can eliminate them.
3. Rest of sections are based on intent listening and while typing for eg: in fill in the blanks you dont have to get the spelling of the longish words correct while you are listening to the lecture, write something with which you can identify the word.once the complete passage is over , you can fill out the words with the correct spelling..if try and write correctly the 1st time, you might miss the next fill in the blanks.

Writing:
1.Essay: for this task, I feel the time is ample, so take some time initially to formulate your ideas , before you start writing, i think using example and analogies help , so make use of them for the essay writing.. Do a proof reading once you are done , cos if are from IT , outlook spell check is "SPELLING KIller" you tend to forget all the basic spellings, get the spelling and commas right by reading once you have completed the essay.
2.  Summarize text: This needs to be only 1 sentence , so try to get the flow of  the text.you DON'T need to write the entire thing which was displayed for the summary , the main point is sufficient, I think keeping it short and simple is the KEY here..

WISHING all of you the very best !!! ACE IT-->... :-))

WOULD DEFINITELY ADVISE FOLKS TO RELAX ON THE DAY BEFORE THE EXAM AND LISTEN TO SOME GOOD MUSIC AND GO INTO THE EXAM WITH A POSITIVE ATTITUDE..

please excuse some of the typos my thoughts are flowing fast and thick,much faster than I can type ... ;-))
I will correct them in due course...