Understanding how to write in a concise and organized way is crucial in succeeding in the PTE summarize written text task. With this in mind, we want to share with you some of the useful techniques which can help you achieve 79+ in PTE writing.

1. Less is more

Do not be misled and think you have to write 75 words to get full marks! Why? This because a longer sentence could only make you more vulnerable to grammatical and sentence structural mistakes. What you really should be doing is try to produce highly compressed sentences, because they are what the PTE examiners are looking for. Anywhere between 35 and 50 words is the magic length that can support the majority of test takers to achieve 79+.

2. Rephrase

One of the most common mistakes our students make is copying the words from the original text and adding them directly into their summary. This is a MAJOR MISTAKE! To achieve a high score, you must use your own words, the only exceptions are some terminologies such as globalization, global warming, socioeconomic background etc. Therefore, you need to use synonyms (words that have the same or a similar meaning e.g. banish and expel). When you study, please learn synonyms for words by looking them up in a thesaurus.

3. Summarize the most important points, not EVERY point.

We cannot stress this enough! This one is crucial to remember. So many myPTE subscribers often stress about Summarize Written Text section, because they’re worried that they won’t be able to address every point in the paragraph in a single sentence. Stop worrying! The PTE examiners aren’t looking for a word-for-word summary, what you are expected to do is pinpointing the most important ideas in the text to summarize. Once you get into the habit of identifying key points, it becomes easy to ignore extraneous information. It just takes practice.

To begin with, let’s look at below SWT real exam question as an example

Explanation:

• Above SWT is typical Problem-Solution type, we need to identify problem and its corresponding solution, conducted by whom as well as how. (To learn more about five different SWT types, please subscribe myPTE study pack)
  • Problem: there was leftover residue caused by eager hands from the surface of Rosetta Stone
  • Solution: with a variety of cleaning agents and uncovered different layers of substances that corresponds to different times in history dating back to 1799
  • Conducted by whom: the British Museum
  • How: with a variety of cleaning agents

• It’s not necessary to name all cleaning materials – cotton wool swabs and liniment of soap, white spirit, acetone and purified water, instead we can just say, “with a variety of cleaning agent”
• We don’t have to mention all those years that associated with different substances such as 1800, 1981 ect, only important timeline (the year when the store was first discovered and when the British Museum did the cleaning) needs to be covered

Here’s model answer

I hope we have provided a few useful tips. Please utilize them to your advantage. Good luck on your journey to become a “Summarize Written Text” expert! Remember, we provide 100% real exam SWT, and yes,  these real exam SWT will actually show up in the exam. Also, when you subscribe our study pack, we analyse your writing and identify your areas in need of improvement. So if you’re struggling with this task, you should check us out!