I took the PTE Academic yesterday at the Herald Test Center near Apgujeong Station! A few notes while everything is fresh in my mind:
- Check-in was efficient and quick. The center’s equipment is modern and clean and there are dividers between each computer. The staff know what they are doing. A bathroom is across the hall. That said, it doesn’t really compare to the ultra-lux “Pearson Professional Center” near Seoul City Hall. If you have a choice, I do recommend utilizing that testing center.
- I appreciate how Pearson sends detailed instructions to help test takers find the test center. I received general directions, directions from both city airports, and directions from the main train station.
- I also remain a fan of the laminated “helpful suggestions” sheets passed out to test takers as they wait to enter the testing space. The sheets point out that it is never necessary to yell.
- The test center was full, just like when I took the PTE Core last month. This speaks to the growing popularity of the test in this market. It also suggests that the city could support a third test center.
- I took my time reading the pre-test instructions and let the clock run out while the speaking instructions were displayed. This made it possible to answer the most challenging speaking questions without hearing chatter from other test takers. I’ll tell my students to do the same.
- Is the speaking section adaptive? Like when I took the CORE test, I didn’t get any “describe this picture” questions. I was only asked to describe graphs (sometimes tricky ones). I think I overheard one of the other testers describing an actual picture.
- Again: I warn test takers to keep within the recommended word counts when writing responses. There are penalties (sometimes serious ones) for exceeding them. This makes the PTE unlike the TOEFL and IELTS tests.
- I know that the use of real-life audio snippets (from TV, radio, lecture halls, etc) is a selling point of the test, but I’m still not a fan of how the audio files are sometimes potato quality. Also: a couple of the recordings I heard, presumably taken from a TV broadcast, were accompanied by background music.
- I was happy to encounter a couple of very challenging reading and listening questions. Some of my answers were guesses.
- One of the reading questions was an “ultra-Britishism.” I’m fairly certain it depended on knowing one weird difference between British and North American English. I swore under my breath and chose the answer 99% of Americans would pick. I probably got that one wrong.
- Tutors: teach your students time management techniques. Test takers will encounter both timers for individual tasks, and timers covering multiple tasks. I went in mostly blind and really had no idea how much time I could spend on each task.
- Interestingly, a message at the end of the test said my results would arrive in 5 days. Pearson generally provides results in 2 days.
I’ll share my scores in a future post.
