PTE Summarize Written Text overview
A summary of useful and effective practice tipsUnderstanding how to write in a concise and organized way is crucial to succeeding on the PTE Summarize written text task. With this in mind, we want to share with you some of the useful techniques can help to achieve 79+ in PTE writing.
How to preapre PTE Summarize Written Text for high score?
Less is more
Don’t think you have to write 75 words to get full marks! A longer sentence only makes you more vulnerable to grammar and sentence structure mistakes. And highly compressed sentences 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+.
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, except 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.
Summarize the most important points, not EVERY point.
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.
Sample Summarize Written Text
When the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, the carved characters that covered its surface were quickly copied. Printer's ink was applied to the Stone and white paper laid over it. When the paper was removed, it revealed an exact copy of the text—but in reverse. Since then, many copies or "facsimiles" have been made using a variety of materials. Inevitably, the surface of the Stone accumulated many layers of material left over from these activities, despite attempts to remove any residue. Once on display, the grease from many thousands of human hands eager to touch the Stone added to the problem.
An opportunity for investigation and cleaning the Rosetta Stone arose when this famous object was made the centerpiece of the Cracking Codes exhibition at The British Museum in 1999. When work commenced to remove all but the original, ancient material the stone was black with white lettering. As treatment progressed, the different substances uncovered were analysed. Grease from human handling, a coating of carnauba wax from the early 1800s and printer's ink from 1799 were cleaned away using cotton wool swabs and liniment of soap, white spirit, acetone and purified water. Finally, white paint in the text, applied in 1981, which had been left in place until now as a protective coating, was removed with cotton swabs and purified water. A small square at the bottom left corner of the face of the Stone was left untouched to show the darkened wax and the white infill.
1. Above SWT is typical Problem-Solution type, we need to identify problem and its corresponding solution, conducted by whom as well as how.
- 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
2. 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”
3. 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!
In 1999 the British Museum cleaned leftover residue caused by eager hands from the surface of Rosetta Stone with a variety of cleaning agents and uncovered different layers of substances that corresponds to different times in history dating all the way back to 1799 when the stone was first discovered.
I hope this helps you on your journey to becoming a “Summarize Written Text” expert! Remember, our practice platform provides 100% PTE practice SWT, and they will actually show up in the exam.
MYPTE has a huge a collection of PTE Summarize Written Text questions for you to practice, each question comes with sample answers.