PTE Reading – Fill in the Blanks

The ‘Fill in the Blanks’ (Reading) question assesses reading skills and requires you to use contextual and grammatical cues to complete a reading text by identifying the single correct answer for each blank.

Number of items 4-5
Prompt Length Text up to 80 words
Scoring Partial credit (for each correctly completed blank)
Communicative skills, enabling skills and other traits scored Reading
Subskills tested Reading: Identifying the topic, theme or main ideas; identifying words and phrases appropriate to the context; understanding academic vocabulary; understanding the difference between connotation and denotation; inferring the meaning of unfamiliar words; comprehending explicit and implicit information; comprehending concrete and abstract information; following a logical or chronological sequence of events.
Strategies
  1. Read the whole passage to grasp the general topic. While reading, fill your mind with the word that best completes the sentence.
  2. Dig deep into your brain for collocations. A collocation is a group of words that are usually combined to form a specific meaning.
  3. Disregard the word options that if chosen, will make the sentence wrong in terms of grammar.
  4. Silently read the sentence and recall if you have heard it before. Listen if it sounds familiar.
  5. Do not worry if you cannot fill the first few blanks. You may proceed to the next blanks. This method may help you progressively comprehend the whole text and fill all the gaps.
  6. Do not proceed to the next task without filling all the blanks.

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