We found the perfect training program to enhance and adapt your listening and note-taking to these exercises requirements (highlight summary and summarise spoken text), and we are excited to share it with you, PTE trainees!
The process we are about to propose applies to Summarise a text and Highlight the correct summary of the Listening section.
For details about the first test, I recommend our article on the subject.
- The test begins with a silence of 10 seconds for each session before a 30 to 90 seconds audio starts.
- Afterward, you have to highlight by selecting one of the 4 written summaries presented to you. You obviously choose the text you think is the one which represents the main ideas and examples of the recording you just heard.
- You get 1 point per correct response. Always select one anyway, since you will not be penalised if your answer turns out to be wrong.
- You will mainly be tested on your listening and reading skills. Let’s learn how to specifically adapt your capacity to listen and take notes to these tests’ requirements.
The Ultimate Trick To Begin Well.
Use the first 10 seconds of silence before the recording begins to skim the different summaries. But do not read them to guess, which one is correct, it would be pointless. Definitely try to select the repeated keywords to generate the main topics. It will most definitely help you during your listening and note-taking.
These exercices require another way to listen, let’ s learn it !
These exams are demanding. In order not to get lost between the lecture and your notes, you need to train your listening to quickly perceive the main topics or issues presented by the speaker, as well as his or hers subsequent ideas or examples.
Where to find the relevant elements
Keep your ears open for repetitions. They will indicate your key markers.
Start
A lecture or an interview usually begins by introducing the key ideas. Hence be focused from the beginning.
Middle
The speaker always uses some signals to introduce an important idea or to justify it. Those beacon words often sound like:
the idea/notion/approach can be ...,
There are 2 main aspects, ...
This is important ...,
To sum up, ...
In conclusion ...
End
Do not get distracted towards the end, since a lecturer tends to summarise on its own his ideas, and give an opening point to debate on.
This last part is important since it gives you the direction he or she tries to direct the listener ‘s point of view.
This opening will enable you to avoid misunderstandings or wrong guessing his or her intentions.
Also, some changes in their voice or intonations could give you some tips, but do not focus on this if you do not feel up to it.
If you are not used to it, it may become misleading, since people tend to be more expressive in English than in some other languages.
Your training program for your listening muscles :
We based it on the very inspiring 2011 TED Talk of the sound researcher and expert Julian Treasure.
LINK : Watch this TED talk: 5_ways_to_listen_better
We retain only 25% of the elements we hear, according to him. We mainly resort to patterns of recognition to identify relevant elements, such as our name. It would seem we are losing our capacity to listen because of the increasing ambient noises.
We need to get back to a “conscious listening”, which would lead to our main goal here: a creative understanding.
I hope I haven’t lost you yet! The notions may seem like big words, but the practice is incredibly simple.
Julian Treasure offers us 5 tools to reach a better level of listening, thus understanding. We selected 2 of them for the purpose of the test :
- you need to grant yourself 3 minutes a day of silence, or at least of quiet. It will recalibrate your capacity to listen.
- you should train to identify the different channels you are hearing at one point of the day. It involves you recognising the different sounds of your surroundings, such as birds, cars, your fridge…
This should definitely help you focus on your listening. It should not be neglected, particularly when you read in the Pearson PTE scoring manual, what sub skills these exercises evaluate :
Summarize Text
- Identifying the topic, theme or main ideas;
- Identifying supporting points or examples;
- Understanding academic vocabulary;
- Inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words;
- Comprehending explicit and implicit information;
- Comprehending concrete and abstract information;
- Classifying and categorising information;
- Following an oral sequencing of information;
- Comprehending variations in tone, speed and accent.
Highlight Summary
- Identifying supporting points or examples;
- Identifying the most accurate summary;
- Understanding academic vocabulary;
- Inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words;
- Comprehending concrete and abstract information;
- Classifying and categorizing information;
- Following a logical or chronological sequence of events;
- Evaluating the quality and usefulness of texts.
Your notes: Do’s and Dont’s
Dont’s:
- Do not try to write down everything you hear.
- Do not write all over, or in-between lines because you think two ideas relate to each other during the audio. It is better to make a mark to remind it to you after the recording.
- Do not write full sentences, but the keywords.
Do’s
- During the introduction and the conclusion, take down the keywords. They often show you the main points or the structure of the lecture.
- Take down the central principles in your own words, to avoid wasting time looking for the same terms as the speaker.
- You can use signage if you are comfortable with it. I fancy the equals and opposite signs. But the most useful remains:
→ for “cause or leads to”
- Write clearly and with spaces.
- Keep it simple!
A method that will write the summary for you
Amongst an infinite number of ways to take notes, it turns out the most famous one is the most adapted by its structure, simplicity, and clarity.
Structure
The Cornell Method imposes you to divide your provided noteboard on test day in three parts. You have one large margin on the left, and another one at the bottom.
Infographic by collegeinfogeek : https://collegeinfogeek.com/how-to-take-notes-in-college/
Clarity
In the side margin, you will take down the primary cues, which you could fulfill quickly when glancing at the various summaries before the audio starts.
Then reorganise them at the end of the lecture if necessary. It will help you organise your thoughts and instantly visualise the essential ideas.
Thanks to this, the body of your notes, i.e. the central part of the board will almost take form on its own if you remain very structured and write with spaces. This will look like this :
First main topic
A. Explanations of 1 B. Example of 1 C. Secondary idea or example related to 1
Second key idea
A. Explanations of 2 B. Example of 2 C. Secondary idea or example related to 2
And so on and so forth
Read your notes back at the end of the recording, and all the correlations and which part should follow which will become clear if it was not already in your organised notes.
Simplicity
At the end of “write your summary” or “recognize which one is the appropriate one”, you will just have to follow the schema of notes and add linking words to elaborate a regular structure of a phrase.
