Have you heard of ChatGPT yet? Surely you do for at least once. It’s the most advanced model (we have tried all similar software and we believe it’s the most advanced at this moment) in answering your questions in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to revert to follow-up questions, and of course, it is also easy and possible for you to keep the conversation going.
The most important thing you need to know is that ChatGPT is trained to follow your instructions and answer rapidly in a detailed response. From this standout, we can utilise it to help us improve our answers for Writing and Speaking question types.
How do we do that? Let’s get into business and you will see.
A three-step strategy to utilise ChatGPT
Step 1: Answer the question by yourself first
Some of you may ask: “Why should we answer the question by ourselves first but not directly ask ChatGPT to give the answer?” Yes, technically, you can do that. However, this Step is truly crucial in helping students get familiar with the question and its topic, so in the future, if we face a similar question or topic, it will likely be as easy as pie. On the other hand, if students don’t write the answer by themselves first, it will be really challenging if they face similar questions on test day.
On top of that, our strategy of utilizing ChatGPT requires students to answer the question by themselves first because if students don’t answer, we don’t have enough information to request a response from ChatGPT. Most importantly, the answer from ChatGPT will be in over your head, and we will learn almost nothing from it.
If you want to utilise ChatGPT to answer Speaking and Writing questions better, treat all questions as practice questions to at least practice brainstorming on how to answer the question. It doesn’t matter if you answer the question badly, so now give the following question a try.
Part 1: Retell Lecture, question number 3 on the PTE Practice Platform. In case you need an effective strategy to deal with Part 1: Retell Lecture, read our strategy: "Guide to face P1: Retell Lecture questions successfully".
If you have a Premium account on the PTE Practice Platform, you should visit the platform to practice on your computer to get instantly detailed feedback. Otherwise, it’s okay to listen to the lecture and record yourself. Please bear in mind to apply the same timer you have for Part 1: Re-tell Lecture. After listening to the lecture, you have 10 seconds to prepare and the next 40 seconds to answer.
And here is the transcription of the question audio.
I've moved about 20 times in my life. Moreover, each time that I move to a new neighbourhood, a new city, or a new country, it seems to get harder and harder to sustain the friendships I left behind. Nonetheless, right now, sustaining those friendships seems especially important and especially difficult. So I'm wondering what is manageable. How can I keep those friendships afloat without getting overwhelmed? In order to find out, I turned to my two most trusted sources: data and my mom. Now, since she hates being on camera, this puppet is going to be as good as it gets. But before she weighs in, I wanted to look at the studies on how friendships fall apart in the hopes that I might be able to avoid some of those pitfalls. According to one study, friendships often dissolve because of a lack of opportunities to meet, hang out, and connect. This may explain why, after a year of isolation, some of my friendships feel like they're hanging on by a thread. The same researcher made headlines with the finding that we lose half of our friendships every seven years.
After recording yourself, the next step is to transcribe your speech into text so we can use your answer in the text version from Step 2: Use templates to ask ChatGPT.
Step 2: Use templates to ask ChatGPT
At this stage, hopefully, you already answered our sample question. If you haven’t, please stop here and get back until you finish answering the question.
We also have the sample answer that we will be using until the the end of this article as an example for your study.
After moving 20 times, it's hard for the speaker to keep friendships intact, especially now. They seek advice from data and their mom, who doesn't like being on camera. Studies show friendships break because of limited chances to hang out. After a year of isolation, some friendships feel fragile. Research also says we lose half our friendships every seven years, making it even trickier to maintain connections.
We have two templates that students can use to request ChatGPT for a better answer as follows:
2.1. The basic template
In this basic one, we will request an upgraded answer from our original one by pasting the following content template into the ChatGPT chatbox.
The template
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I have a question and an answer to that question, please upgrade my answer to have 15% higher scores than the original one in less than 110 words.
Question:
I've moved about 20 times in my life. Moreover, each time that I move to a new neighbourhood, a new city, or a new country, it seems to get harder and harder to sustain the friendships I left behind. Nonetheless, right now, sustaining those friendships seems especially important and especially difficult. So I'm wondering what is manageable. How can I keep those friendships afloat without getting overwhelmed? In order to find out, I turned to my two most trusted sources: data and my mom. Now, since she hates being on camera, this puppet is going to be as good as it gets. But before she weighs in, I wanted to look at the studies on how friendships fall apart in the hopes that I might be able to avoid some of those pitfalls. According to one study, friendships often dissolve because of a lack of opportunities to meet, hang out, and connect. This may explain why, after a year of isolation, some of my friendships feel like they're hanging on by a thread. The same researcher made headlines with the finding that we lose half of our friendships every seven years.
Answer:
After moving 20 times, it's hard for the speaker to keep friendships intact, especially now. They seek advice from data and their mom, who doesn't like being on camera. Studies show friendships break because of limited chances to hang out. After a year of isolation, some friendships feel fragile. Research also says we lose half our friendships every seven years, making it even trickier to maintain connections.
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Explanation of the content template
Why 15%: 15% is a good gap between your answer and the upgraded one to learn new ways of articulating your thoughts and expand your vocabulary bank including idioms, collocations, expressions, and so on. If you try over 15%, for example at 20%, 30% or even 50%; the higher the gap, the more difficult the upgraded answer, which will be counter-production because your level is not that good yet to understand. Students will likely find lots of high-level words, idioms or collocations that they haven’t seen yet. As a result, we strongly recommend students go with a 15% higher score to get the most out of it.
Word limits: We need to notice the normal speaking speed to limit the number of words from ChatGPT in order to make it suitable for a real Retell Lecture answer. For your information, a normal speaking rate is around 150-160 words per minute.
Part 1: Retell Lecture: 40 seconds for speaking is equal to around 100-110 words.
Part 1: Summarize Written Text: The PTE requires students to write from 5 to 75 words in one single sentence.
Part 1: Write Essay: The PTE requires students to write from 200 to 300 words.
Part 3: Summarize Spoken Text: The PTE requires students to write from 50 to 70 words.
For example, if we want an upgraded answer for Part 1: Summarize Written Text, this is the requested content: “I have a question and an answer to that question, please upgrade my answer to have 15% higher scores than the original one from 5 to 75 words in only one sentence.
If you want an upgraded answer for Part 1: Write Essay, use this request content instead: “I have a question and an answer to that question, please upgrade my answer to have 15% higher scores than the original one from 200 to 300 words.
Question: We need this information so ChatGPT is able to compare your original answer to the question and offer 15% higher scores for your upgraded answer. The questions that we can apply here are P1: Retell Lecture, P1: Summarize Written Text, P1: Write Essay, and P3: Summarize Spoken Text. Apparently, PTE takers need to send texts to ChatGPT for upgraded answers.
Answer: This is your answer to any question, simply use your answer text (or transcribe from audio to text).
So, this is the result after we sent requests to ChatGPT.
cre: TADE Hub
Our upgraded answer here has a total of 103 words, which meets the requirement.
We put the original and upgraded answers as follows again for your check more easily.
Compare your answer to ChatGPT’s
cre: TADE Hub
Do you see any differences?
More ways to express your ideas: ChatGPT always elaborates the upgraded answer to make it more details. In our sample question, they used more grammatical structures and articulated themselves in a very detailed way. To understand everything in upgraded answers, PTE takers also need to advance their Reading and Listening skills every day to have more inputs (ideas, knowledge, vocabulary, and so on) to foster their progress.
More linking words are used: To name a few, we have after, increasingly, particularly, notably, etc. We all know that linking words helps connect bullet points to bullet points, and sentences to sentences together. Besides, as you can see, adverbs are also linking words, which are used to give a clearer meaning to adjectives or nouns.
New idioms, collocations, expressions etc.: There are so many including the challenge of, the importance of, the impact of, the fragility of, the need for, adds an extra layer of, etc. Students can easily check all their meanings, as we cannot explain everything in this article, which makes it very long to read.
Apparently, there are so many benefits from ChatGPT that we can learn from its upgraded answers to improve the way we answer Speaking or Writing questions. However, students definitely need to enhance their general English skills every day to have the best results.
2.2. The advanced template
Here we come to the advanced template that we can ask ChatGPT to list out all new vocabulary (linking words, idioms, collocations, phrasal verbs, etc.) and their meanings for our study. In this case, PTE takers can save lots of time for searching.
Please use our following advanced template and paste it to the ChatGPT’s chat box.
The template
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I have a question and an answer to that question, please do the following tasks:
Task 1: Upgrade my answer to have 15% higher scores than the original one in less than 110 words.
Task 2: List out all new idioms, collocations, expressions, phrasal verbs and their meanings.
Question:
I've moved about 20 times in my life. Moreover, each time that I move to a new neighbourhood, a new city, or a new country, it seems to get harder and harder to sustain the friendships I left behind. Nonetheless, right now, sustaining those friendships seems especially important and especially difficult. So I'm wondering what is manageable. How can I keep those friendships afloat without getting overwhelmed? In order to find out, I turned to my two most trusted sources: data and my mom. Now, since she hates being on camera, this puppet is going to be as good as it gets. But before she weighs in, I wanted to look at the studies on how friendships fall apart in the hopes that I might be able to avoid some of those pitfalls. According to one study, friendships often dissolve because of a lack of opportunities to meet, hang out, and connect. This may explain why, after a year of isolation, some of my friendships feel like they're hanging on by a thread. The same researcher made headlines with the finding that we lose half of our friendships every seven years.
Answer:
After moving 20 times, it's hard for the speaker to keep friendships intact, especially now. They seek advice from data and their mom, who doesn't like being on camera. Studies show friendships break because of limited chances to hang out. After a year of isolation, some friendships feel fragile. Research also says we lose half our friendships every seven years, making it even trickier to maintain connections.
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Explanation of the content template
In this Advanced template, we only make our requests clearer into two tasks as we see because we need ChatGPT to list out all new idioms, collocations, expressions, and phrasal verbs for our study. Everything else is exactly the same as the Basic template.
So here is feedback from ChatGPT after we sent our requests.
cre: TADE Hub
The upgraded answer has 87 words, which met our requirement of less than 110 words. Besides, right below the Upgraded answer, we have new vocabulary listed out with their meanings. This is a super great way to learn and improve our skills.
Compare your answer to ChatGPT’s
cre: TADE Hub
Do you see the differences?
A new way to express your ideas: Again, every time we request ChatGPT to offer upgraded answers, we receive a completely fresh way to articulate our points coherently and logically. The more ways of expressing ideas, the easier we can learn and foster our brainstorming capability to deal with more challenging questions on our test day.
More linking words are used: To name a few, we have after, increasingly, particularly, moreover, strategically, etc.
New idioms, collocations, expressions etc.: To name a few, we have “a scarcity of… ; the aftermath of… ; the fragility of… ; an extra layer of…; the constant flux of…”.
We strongly recommend PTE takers use both Basic and Advanced templates to request upgraded answers. After that, please compare both upgraded answers to explore new ways of answering the question.
2.3. Ask for suggestions for improvement
This step happens right after requesting upgraded answers to boost our understanding of the question and learn how to give a better answer for both Writing and Speaking questions next time through ChatGPT’s suggestions. PTE takers can apply the following call to both Basic and Advanced templates.
This is a simple call to make it happen: “Advice on how to deliver an upgraded answer like yours concisely.” And we have ChatGPT's answer as follows:
cre: TADE Hub
The above image includes several suggestions from ChatGPT, from case to case, it will offer different pieces of advice, so please pay close attention to their ideas and apply them to answer the question again for a more effective outcome.
Our strong recommendation is to think deeply about the upgraded answer, especially the differences between yours and ChatGPT’s answer to have a better understanding of upgraded answers. It’s a prerequisite to move on to Step 3: Answer the question again by yourself in order to acquire new knowledge from upgraded answers effectively.
Step 3: Answer the question again by yourself
The last step in our strategy of utilizing ChatGPT is to advance your Writing and Speaking skills.
Step 1 is the pre-prepared period, Step 2 is the main preparation, and Step 3 here is to see how effective your Step 2 preparation is. If you prepare well in Step 2: Use templates to ask ChatGPT, you will surely have a better answer yourself in this step. Therefore, please go answer the question again as you did in Step 1 and compare your current answer to the initial one.
There are several questions that you need to ask yourself after answering to see differences and advancement.
Did you speak or write smoother?
Did you have new ideas (from ChatGPT or your own self)?
Did you use more linking words, idioms, collocations, etc?
Please be honest, sometimes it’s hard to see improvement, which is normal. Believe in yourself, get back to Step 2 to review your answer and the upgraded one, but this time, please be more concentrated and do Step 3 again.
Live-Interactive PTE Practice Platform
If you need a PTE Practice Platform, which not only has thousands of practice questions but also offers instantly detailed feedback after submitting your answers to improve your skills, this practice website is all you need. The DET Practice Platform offers the following benefits:
Thousands of practice questions;
Full 2-hour mock tests;
Instant feedback for all question types;
Same grading elements as Pearson uses to evaluate your skills;
Three supportive vocab lists;
An integrated dictionary;
And other supportive self-study features.
This is a sample feedback of P1: Summarize Written Text, we evaluate users’ practice answers based on Content, Form, Grammar (Spelling) and Vocabulary.
cre: TADE Hub
Please take note a look at our video sample feedback to understand how instantly detailed feedback works.
Visit the PTE Practice Platform, and create your FREE account to experience everything for free first before immersing yourself in our huge practice question library and effective technology for advancement.
