Strategies to deal with P3: Fill in the Blanks

This question type – Part 3: Fill in the Blanks is available in both the PTE Academic and PTE Core, which judges PTE takers’ Listening and Writing skills. In comparison with other Listening questions particularly and the whole test in general, from our point of view, this item type is a bit easier as we simply need to listen to the audio recordings and fill in what we hear.

Nevertheless, in order to achieve the highest score on each question, PTE takers need to try hard practising every day. This article will offer a helping hand to boost your scores. 

Fundamental information

• Task: Listening to an audio recording and fill in the gaps in a transcript on the screen
• Prompt Length: 30-60 seconds for both PTE Academic and PTE Core
• Recommended timer: 2.5 minutes
• Frequency: 2-3 questions
• Skills assessed: Listening and Writing

You may already know that we recommend a specific timer for each Reading and Listening question type for a better time management strategy based on research. Part 2: Reading and Part 3: Listening offers an amount of time for dealing with all question types. Specifically, in the PTE Academic Part 3: Listening, test-takers have 30-43 minutes to face eight different question types. If we don’t have a clear and trusted time management strategy, it’s super hard to keep track of our process, far less completing all questions on time. In this item type, we recommend two and a half (2.5) minutes for each question. For details, feel free to review this article: PTE Time management strategy.

If you are still concerned about the timer recommended. For your study, Pearson itself also recommends the same amount of time for PTE takers' practice in the face of this Part 3: Fill in the blanks item type as follows:

If you are ready, let’s get down to our main part. 

A unique step-by-step strategy

Each Part 3: Fill in the Blanks has from four to fix gaps to fill in, PTE takers get one point for each correctly spelled word, which is how this item type is evaluated. If the word is not correct or test-takers skip some, they receive zero points in both cases. Therefore, it’s always better to fill in the blanks even if we aren’t sure about our answers. The following strategy is developed to ensure that you are able to achieve the highest score in your ability.

Step 1: Skim through the text

In the seven seconds before the audio plays, we need to skim through the text quickly to get fundamental information. But how could we skim through with that only seven seconds? There are three things that you should focus on finding.

• Nouns with a capital letter: If there are words with a capital letter, they are personal names, city, country names and so on. It’s very easy to notice, and of course, if a text mentions a city, for example, it absolutely has connections with that city.
• Repeated words: The first time you see a word, you may not notice. The second time you see it, you may feel familiar. The third time you see it, you will definitely remember. Most of the time, words will repeat around two times, so make sure that you pay attention to them because the text is trying to tell you something about them.
• The general idea: This is the most challenging part as we can only do it after reviewing the text. Besides it requires PTE takers great skills in observation and fast brainstorming in order to get a general idea. Nevertheless, if PTE takers are able to get the general idea, it’s much easier to fill in the blanks. Otherwise, it’s okay, we will utilise the listening opportunity to take notes and fill in the gaps.

Here is our sample question, number 1 Part 3: Fill in the Blanks on the PTE Practice Website. This is a FREE question, and we strongly recommend visit the website and try it in the live-interactive version. 

Have you tried to get the general idea from the text yet? If you did, congratulations! This is ours: The text shares about the Technical University and its campus.

Timer Recommendation: Seven seconds are all we have in the preparation period, so try as much as you can to utilise it and get as much content from the text as possible to support you fill in the blanks later.

Step 2: Take notes while listening

You should not worry if you couldn't get the general idea when the seven preparation seconds finish. In this item type, the blanks are not in the first five seconds, so when you hear the sounds, get your eyes back to the first words of the text and follow them accordingly with the audio. During the next 30 to 60 seconds (the length of the audio), we need to completely concentrate on the text and listen to the audio simultaneously in order to catch the missing words.

When it comes to the blanks, be ready, take notes on the word and then immediately get back to the text and continue listening to the audio because the audio doesn’t stop waiting for you to take notes. There are several tips to help you take notes efficiently and faster. 

• Practice typing fast: Typing fast ensures that we take notes quickly and are able to follow the rest of the audio. If we type slowly, we may end up missing the next blank, so we will definitely lose its score. It depends on whether you take the Pearson Test of English at the centre or at home to use appropriate note-taking equipment. 
• Don’t worry about spelling: It’s just a draft, there is no time to think about spelling. You may need to intentionally type with incorrect spelling if it helps save time. By doing so, we surely have enough time to pay attention to the rest of the missing words.
• Write the pronunciation version: There are cases when we hear a word and feel familiar but do not know how to type it correctly. In this situation, we can simply type in whatever way you feel right at the moment or type the pronunciation version in your mother tongue, so you still remember what is it after the audio completes in order to brainstorm and find the correct spelling (hopefully). For example, if we have the word “insomnia” (/ɪnˈsɒmniə/), and you don’t know how to type it at first even though you already come across it somewhere. After hearing its pronunciation, we try as fast as we can to draft the word like this “in so nie”. 

Special note: If you don’t feel you can take note of a word before the next one is spoken out, you should skip it because each word has one point, and you should not compromise the unspoken word (it could be very easy to get scores) for the not-able-to-write one. It is just not worth it.

Timer Recommendation: The maximum audio length is 60 seconds, so if the question you face is up to 60 seconds, you still have at least 90 seconds left to fill in the blanks and double-check your work.

Step 3: Fill in the Blanks 

We recommend you spend around two and a half (2.5) minutes for each question. If you haven’t read our Time Management Strategy yet, you should go read it first as we explain in detail why we have that 2.5 minutes.

Even if the audio is at its maximum length of 60 seconds, we still have at least 90 seconds left to fill in the blanks. There are three minor steps to guarantee that you will get the highest score in your ability.

• 3.1. Fill in the blanks that you are confident first: There will always be some blanks that we are sure about our answers, so fill them all out first and move to not-so-confident gaps because in case we don’t have enough time to fill in all the blanks, we still get some points.
• 3.2. Apply grammatical structures: Grammatical structures help us determine what kind of words should we fill in the blank. It could be a noun, an adjective, or any verb form. 

In our example, all blanks should be nouns. The first one is right after the definite article “the”, so it is a noun referring to something, which has been mentioned before. All the last three gaps are nouns as well to create noun phrases. In other questions, the blanks could be verbs or adjectives, and we also apply grammatical structures to find the best type of word, so you are able to adjust your unsure answers. We also highlighted all the verbs in orange frames, apparently, the main tense here is the Simple Past, if we have verb blanks, it most likely follows the Simple Past tense.

• 3.3. Check spelling: No one wants to lose scores for just a small spelling mistake, for example forgetting one “ p “ in the word “apple”. This is something that you could prevent in advance by simply paying a bit more attention to the blanks that we filled in. 

Things to avoid

• Fill in the blanks while listening: Do not do this as most of the time, we need to adjust our answers, and it takes more time to edit them back and forth. If you take the PTE Academic at test centres or PTE Core, we have papers and markers to take notes. If you take the PTE Academic at home, we have online note-taking features. Thus, using them to take notes and fill in the blanks. 
• Don’t utilise the first seven preparation seconds: As we already explained earlier, never underestimate these seven seconds as they could be a lifesaver. Practising is the key to mastering utilising these seven seconds, and kindly remember that you have everything you need right on the PTE Practice Website.

Practice makes perfect!

Live-interactive PTE Practice Website

The PTE Practice Website is developed predominantly to support self-study test-takers for a more effective, transformative and affordable preparation. You don’t need to pay for any training courses because it provides everything you need including thousands of practice questions, and instantly detailed feedback so you can learn from your mistakes and improve your scores. Moreover, there are tips and strategies free of charge to help you deal with item types successfully. 

If you practice a Part 3: Fill in the Blanks question, here is your feedback. 

If you practice a Part 1: Retell Lecture question, here is your feedback.

We evaluate your practicing answers based on Content, Oral fluency, and Pronunciation, which are the same grading elements that Pearson uses to judge your skills. For other Speaking and Writing sample feedback, kindly take a look at this video link.

Everything’s free for experience, let’s visit the PTE Practice Website, create your FREE account and start boosting your scores.