Analysing responses: Pronunciation

Hi, everyone, and welcome to week three of the course. So far, you have learned some skills to speak more fluently, and we have shown you how to properly include and organise content for Re-tell Lecture and Describe Image items. This week, we’ll cover pronunciation. And as you may expect, this is one of the key aspects considered when calculating your final score in the speaking section of PTE Academic. For this skill, you’re assessed on how clearly you can produce single sounds of both vowels and consonants, and also on how easy it is to understand your speech. Before we show you how you can improve your pronunciation, we would like you to attempt a Read Aloud item.

Read the instructions on the slide, and remember to record your answer so that you can check later.

(timer beeps)

Now listen to Nisha attempting the same item type and analyse her response in terms of pronunciation. Are all the words clearly pronounced? Did her pronunciation have a negative effect on comprehension? (timer beeps) Archeologists have unearthed what they believe is an ancient Greek fortress, which archeologists around the world have been looking for more than two centuries. Historians say that the fortress, which is 250 meters long and 60 meter wide is the most important ancient Greek discovery made in several years.

Overall, Nisha’s pronunciation was reasonably clear. However, there were some problems with some sounds, especially with lone vowels, like in the word Greek and consonant clusters in words like archeologists and unearthed. Now listen to your attempt. Did you have any problems producing any of the words in the text? In the next step, we’ll help you identify the sounds that are difficult for you to produce and we’ll show you how you can improve them.