While preparing for the PTE Academic Exam, students use considerable effort on remembering numerous essay templates, enlarge their academic vocabulary, and mastering complex sentence transitions. The common idea of the preparation is to amaze the automatic grader with the level of their language. However, many people are surprised after receiving their results, seeing an unusually low score for their Writing. There are two major causes of such a low score, and neither of them has anything to do with the poor vocabulary or arguments.
The real problem is an invisible but deadly execution of some punctuation mistakes. As the whole test is automatically graded, there is no possibility of getting any kind of leniency from the grader. It is much easier for a human grader to overlook a comma or a capital letter and see the meaning behind the sentence, while the computer immediately deducts points from the score for each mistake. Well, if you want to crack your IELTS exam on your first attempt, and get more help on this. Then you can seek some guidance from the top-notch IELTS Institute, which has a strong reputation for its quality services.
How to Fix Your Punctuation to Boost Your PTE Writing Score
Read the following pointers to learn how to fix your punctuation to boost your PTE writing score:
Get to Grips with the Algorithmic Law of Capitalization
To the mind of the PTE grading computer, capitalization is an essential part of structural punctuation security. The computer checks your text with a high level of accuracy for two key trigger points: the beginning of a sentence and the usage of proper nouns. Failure to capitalize even one letter after a period means that there has been a critical mistake in constructing the basic sentence structure. Moreover, you have to bear in mind that proper nouns such as specific names of countries, structural establishments, or global organizations ("the United Nations") will need to be capitalized regardless of their place in the sentence. Consider capitalization as structural code: when there is any error in capitalization, the grading program lowers your grammar score right away.
Introduce Transition Words Using the Transition Comma
To help achieve top scores in Written Discourse and Grammar, your essays will probably have transition phrases for introduction (Furthermore, In conclusion, As a result, From an economic perspective, and many more). Even though such words are great for providing logical flow in your writing, they can turn into serious drawbacks if you neglect the transition comma rule when using them. As soon as you use any introductory words or dependent clauses at the beginning of your sentence, you should put a comma right after them because it signals to the system that you’ve introduced the context and now the independent clause starts. “Furthermore, the technological landscape has changed” without a comma will raise a parsing error.
Fixate on the "One Sentence Only" Constraint in Summarize Written Text
In the Summarize Written Test (SWT) task item, punctuation has a particularly rigid and strict constraint- you should sum up the entire text in a single sentence that begins with a capital letter and ends with one full stop. Having used two full stops in the SWT task will get you automatically scored as zero for the entire item.
Be cautious about double-tapping the entire key: Be certain that you have not typed two periods (“..”) at the end of your response since that will disrupt the logic of the format.
Use subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns to build your long-scored sentence safely.
Integrate a semicolon to Combine Two Ideas Without Crossing the Single-Sentence Barrier.
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Conclusion
PTE Writing is not an assessment of creativity and complexity. It is a test of pure mechanical accuracy. Stop thinking about punctuation marks as something decorative. Treat them as the foundation on which your grammatical correctness depends. Devote the last two minutes of your task time only to the automatic editing procedure: review all full stops for a capital letter immediately after them, make sure that no comma separates two sentences, find all the places where a comma is necessary after the transition phrase, and make sure that there is only one period at the end of your summary. Thus, you will be sure that the algorithm recognizes your true vocabulary and language proficiency.
