knowledge-zone » PTE Speaking » PTE Retell Lecture: It’s Not as Difficult as You Think
PTE Retell Lecture: Ah ! so here we go again: Another post talking about the task types in PTE speaking, but what are we going to talk about.

Now we thought a lot about it and we decided to show you how easy PTE Retell Lecture can be and actually it’s not as difficult as you expect it to be.

In fact, we are going to look at it step by step. To be frank,  its basically three steps for PTE Retell Lecture

1: Listening to the speaker

2: Penning down the keywords

3: Speaking or retelling the lecture

PTE Retell Lecture: Listening to the speaker

Here is an example of Retell lecture screen : 

It is very much clear that one needs to listen to an audio clip from which you have to derive the content for speaking. Now if you are not confident enough or lack the listening/ understanding skills. The very first thing you need to work on is your vocabulary. 

Here is how you can improve your listening skills for PTE Retell Lecture  :

1. Learn from the collocation list provided on the PTE Academic website. Now you are not going to learn them all in one gone. So give them a regular approach.

Spend two-three minutes on daily basis on the list. Make sure to repeat that atleast twice or thrice on a daily basis. Remember you don’t need to cram it; instead learn how to use it.

 2. Now the collocation list won’t be enough if you don’t have a practice-based approach. After all PTE speaking is all about assessing your speaking skills. Here is how you add a practical approach to your practice. 

Read newspapers on a daily basis and by newspapers we mean English language newspapers. You can also tune in to the audio clips on BBC News. 

3. Ted Talks: Ted Talks are the gold mines. Not only they improve your listening skills but they also enhance your concentration while listening to the talks. You will come across a series of new unfamiliar words that you can note down and understand their meaning. 

Every Ted Talk comes with a transcript option which you can read/skim at your own pace to get acquinated with unfamiliar words. You should always note down the news words that you are coming across and go through them twice-thrice daily to enhance the vocabulary. 

PTE Retell Lecture: Penning down the keywords

Now it is important to understand that you can’t get a perfect or decent score in Retell Lecture until and unless you have mastered noting down keywords that the speaker has said. You need to understand that lectures are lengthy if not complex and to remember every word is not possible.  Understanding and noting down the keyword is very crucial to score in PTE Exam.

Now there are two things involved while taking the notes :

1. Everyone has their own method of taking notes, which is perfectly fine but it shouldn’t be complex. Remember the more complex you will make it, the more difficult it would be to remember. Now at the same time, while trying to oversimplifying it, you might miss on the important keywords. 

Here is an example to show how you need to put in the keywords :

Now when you pen down the most accurate keywords which are important, retelling the lecture becomes easier and you can always speak while connecting your statements. 

It is important for you to understand that according to Pearson guidelines for Retell Lecture, it tests your ability to repeat, inform and explain what you have heard and if possible support your explanation with examples. That is why  using the right set of keywords is very crucial.

So if you have done the right penning down of keywords. Your answer will be something like this

Retelling The  Above Lecture

Retelling Lecture

Retelling the lecture is the final step in this task type. Now we won’t be talking about this part in much detail as we have already done it in our previous blog.

However, let’s take a brief look at the scoring. As in most of the speaking tasks, you can get up to 5 points for each that is pronunciation, fluency, and content. 

Content: Always make sure to put in the keywords, and make sure to finish within the time limit so that your content doesn’t get overlapped.

Pronunciation: Focus on word stress.  In simple words, complete a word and then speak the next word. Again avoid any silent pronunciation. 

Fluency. Don’t haste! Be smooth, speak with your natural voice, and always focus on the inter-linking of sentences.

How to start with the Lecture/Retelling

We often see many of our test takers struggle with the start, and once they have got hold of the sentence they are able to retell the lecture perfectly. Here is one easy way to start your lecture : 

You can always start retelling the lecture with either of these two statements

The speaker was discussing about / The lecture is about 

Once you have started with any of the above sentences you can add in the keywords that you have penned down. Doing so will prevent you from creating any mind rift as to how should I start the sentence.

What if I missed some parts of the audio?

If you are in a situation where you didn’t get a part of the audio or missed some important keywords; it is completely fine. You can focus on the keywords that you have penned down and try to cover most of the lectures with what you have understood. Surely you will lose some marks on content but your pronunciation and fluency won’t be getting affected.

With that being said, here is how we can sum up the retell lecture in PTE preparation :

1. Listen- Be confident & attentive and try to catch what the speaker says.
2. Pen Down – Write down the important keywords; don’t make it complex, just enough information to make you understand.
3. Retell Lecture: Start retelling the lecture with one of the template sentences and add in your keywords with the flow. Keep the sentence flow natural while keeping the sentences interlinked.

PRACTICE IS THE KEY!

All this information is useless without some guided practice. We have added a few examples below with which you can practice. If you want to take more guidance, you can practice any of our PTE Mock Tests or Practice tests. They all come with scorecards; feedback on individual sections and expert answers. 

PTE Retell Lecture Q1:

Speaker’s Answer

Transcript of the lecture: There are several things that a person needs to consider to ensure while setting up a website. The first and foremost important thing is your target audience. While creating a website you need to think about what actually user wants and this helps to design the site and add relevant information. The second point is accessibility where your target audience is also active that means providing the links on other websites or social media. And finally, retention is important to keep the site up-to-date and make sure that it provides the latest news and interesting information related to everything.

PTE Retell Lecture Q 2 :

Speaker’s Answer

Transcript of the answer: Super-symmetry is a mathematical idea in which people have to develop an effort to understand the sharpest organizing principles. There are symmetric objects in the world such as sphere and basketball. There are certain particles, when a person transforms one particle into another, even though looks like the identity of the particles has changed. Super-symmetry relates to two kinds and also have proven that this is the last possible symmetry of the fundamental particles that are mathematics but reality has not been shown to make use.

PTE Retell Lecture Q 3 :

Speaker’s Answer

Transcript of the answer: There are main three guiding principles such as equity, democracy, and diversity. The speaker’s main choice of the word equity rather than equality because this policy ought to distribute the benefits to people where the worst off and do not have to become equal to everybody but there is no other policy that has more disadvantages. The benefits will trickle down to those people who were worst off and does not justify making them worst off. But equity means that do not take any advantage of those people who are weakest.

So, in the end, all the secrets related to PTE Retell Lecture is out. Now it is your turn to put them in constant practice and assess your score.

Want to put the above guidelines in Practice: Try real PTE Practice Tests 

Got any suggestions or feedback; we would love to hear from you. Put it down in the comment below and we will soon revert on that.