The PTE Academic Write Essay implies to take a position on a given subject and defend it in 200 to 300 words,in only 20 minutes.
We will focus here on the improvement of your grammar since it will turn out to be useful for uncountable situations, and necessary to master your PTE.
Scoring: How an essay can reach grammar’s 2 points?
Two points are assigned to proper usage of the English grammar. You are required to show you mastered some complex grammatical structure.
You may get only one point if your phrasing leads to inconsistencies, or if it could render your opinion ambiguous. Of course, the correctors take into account mistakes.
No point is given if the grammar you use contains only basic structures, nonetheless with errors.
In a nutshell, this part of the writing test evaluates if you know:
- how to structure a sentence
- when to use punctuation
- which words to write with a capital letter
1. STRUCTURE
You should compose your sentence with a subject(s), a verb(s) and an object complement(s).
A subject represents the element or person doing or processing action or a state expressed by the verb.
A complement can take different forms, but it is always the object(s) of the verb.
The form of a verb depends on the time of a sentence and the person of the subject, particularly the third with “he, she, it”.
In case you lose the meaning of a sentence, you can ask yourself:
Who is doing what to whom?
It will indicate you “who” as the subject related to the verb and “whom” for the complement.
Examples:
Tom likes chocolate cakes.
Notice the third person of the subject and the “s” at the end of the verb.
Once you go further than a basic sentence, you must respect a parallel construction.
Tom likes chocolate cakes, croissants and donuts.
A good trick here to make sure you respect a proper phrasing implies to remove either of the examples, and if your sentence still means something, you are on the right path.
It allows you to construct more elaborated sentences, which remain clear and grammatically correct.
To celebrate his birthday, Tom likes chocolate cakes, home-made pastries such as croissants and donuts.
Once you manage to handle these two main points, you can correlate clauses by applying coordinating conjunctions, linking words and different time.
Conjunctions link two independent clauses, but do not rank them.
It means they all have the same importance. The coordination conjunctions are mainly:
- and, or, but, so, for, yet.
Tom eats and smiles a lot.
More complex phrasing implies at least one subordinate clause.
You still need an independent one to express the leading and most important idea, then you precise it thanks to subordinating conjunction introducing a subordinate clause.
Subordinating conjunctions are too various to enumerate them all, but some are more common:
- if, because, while, whereas, when, since, for, before, after, although, despite…
Tom smiles a lot when he celebrates his birthday.
2. TO AVOID
- Contractions: I do not recommend them in your PTE essay. Try to type
“cannot” instead of “can’t” for instance.
- A dangling construction is common but difficult to notice on your own since you usually know what you mean! It is the case when you add elements to a description, but it ends up giving a false sense.
- Never-ending sentences called “run-on sentences” are unnecessarily long ones. It won’t make it look more elaborate than it is. It may just lose the reader’s attention. If you can put a full stop, do it instead of keeping on going indefinitely with commas after commas.
- A passive voice is not wrong, but it may often be considered as weak English. Hence:
“Tom appreciates cakes” sounds better than “cakes are appreciated by Tom”.
It tends to remove a bit of the power a sentence conveys.
- Splitting infinitive may be tolerated sometimes, but when in doubt avoid it!
“Tom tries not to eat too much” fits better than “Tom tries to not eat too much”.
- Beginning a sentence with “this” or “that” when you are not certain to what it refers to is obvious, so avoid it.
3. WHICH TIME WHEN ?
PRESENT SIMPLE
for a habit, recurring and/or lasting facts. Hence, words like “always”, “never” or “usually” are good indicators to use this time.
- Affirmative: Subject + Verb
- Negative: Subject + do/does + not + Verb
- Question: Do/Does+ Subject + Verb?
Examples:
- I am always happy.
- I am not always happy.
- Am I always happy ?
PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE
for a situation or an action, which is still going on, or stopped recently, and, when their results are still noticeable. The beacon words are: ever, never, yet, so far, till now, already.
- Affirmative: Subject + auxiliary “HAVE” in present: have/has + past participle (PP)
- Negative: Subject + have/has + not + past participle
- Question: Have/has + Subject + past participle?
Examples:
- I have worked here since I graduated school.
- I have not worked here since I graduated school.
- Have I worked here since I graduated school ?
PRESENT CONTINUOUS
for an action happening in the moment of saying it, and in a limited time table. It goes with indicators like now, at the moment.
- Affirmative: Subject + auxiliary “BE” in present: am/are/is + Verb-ing
- Negative: Subject + am/are/is + not + Verb-ing
- Question: Am/are/is + Subject + Verb-ing?
Examples:
- I am still currently busy playing.
- I am not playing.
- Is he still playing ?
PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS
for facts that began in the past but kept on going up till now, or just stopped. Its beacon words are for, since, all day, whole week/month/year, how long.
- Affirmative: Subject + has + Past Participle
- Negative: Subject + has + not + Past Participle
- Question: Has + Subject + Past Participle?
Examples:
- She has been playing tennis all day !
- She has not been playing tennis all day.
- Has she been playing tennis all day ?
FUTURE with decisions to come.
The words to look for are tomorrow, next day/month/year.
- Affirmative: Subject + will + Verb
- Negative: Subject+ will + not + Verb
- Question: Will + Subject+ Verb
Examples:
- He will study tonight.
- He will not study this weekend.
- Will he study next week ?
CONDITIONAL
relates to an action that would happen if. (use it when imaginary scenarios)
- Affirmative: Subject + would + Verb
- Negative: Subject+ would + not + Verb
- Question: Would + Subject+ Verb?
Examples:
- If I win the lottery, I would travel around the world.
- If I could not sing, I would be an accountant.
- Would I be a champion if I trained every day?
4. PUNCTUATION
The punctuation marks are essential in order to keep the intended meaning of a sentence and the respect of the English grammar.
It also often makes it more pleasant to read.
Commas
Do not place a comma between a verb and its subject.
The most common situation with commas is to enumerate. You separate the items with it.
Tom had cakes, sweets, and sodas for his birthday.
It becomes necessary when you place a subordinate clause before its independent one, as well as just before a coordinating conjunction.
When he celebrates his birthday, Tom smiles a lot.
You have a coma around a quotation when you nominate who is saying it.
“It is sunny”, Sonia said. Sonia said, “It is sunny”.
In a date, you put a comma after a day, the date’s number and the year.
Monday, July 25th, 2019, will always be remembered.
You can use it to give more details about an idea, like dashes or brackets.
Tom likes astronomy, the study of stars.
You should always place a comma when it is after an introductory adverb or around “however”.
Finally, his birthday satisfied Tom.
It is, however, his birthday.
In an answer, a comma should follow yes or no.
Semi-colons
You use them to make a pause but not too long. Both parts before and after the semi-colon are full sentences on their own. Do not often use them.
If I consider you should avoid dashes to precise explanations like with brackets, in this exercise, you will encounter some situations where hyphens are necessary.
Hyphens join two words, such as “three-quarters majority”.
5. ENGLISH CAPITALIZATION RULES
You need to refrain from writing everything in uppercase. It would cancel all your points for this exercise.
10 different cases when to use capital letters:
- Beginning of a sentence.
- Starting of a quote. For instance, Mark always says “Better late than never”.
- Proper nouns and titles, even like Mom.
- Names of places, and monuments: New South Wales or the Eiffel Tower, for example.
- Always with the personal pronoun “I”.
- Countries, nationalities and languages, like Australia, Chinese, Buddhism.
- Days and months.
- Holidays, such as Christmas and Labour Day.
- All the letters of an acronym and some abbreviations: WTO for World Trade Organisation.
- The first letter of each main word of a title: The Art of War or Stairway to Heaven.
