In Fill in the Blanks tasks, a passage up to 80 words long, with some missing words, is displayed on the screen, and you have to fill the gaps from a list of words placed in a blue box. 4-5 questions based on the Fill in the Blanks format typically appear in the PTE Academic test.

You must build your vocabulary and have a reasonably sound knowledge of “collocations” to ace Fill in the Blanks tasks.

Collocations are groups of two or more words which are commonly used together, for example,

“once upon a time”

“the general public”

“open an account”

Reading English newspapers, listening to podcasts, watching news channels like BBC on a regular basis can go a long way in improving your language skills.

To select a word, left-click on it, and with the left mouse button held down, drag the word to the gap where you want to place it. To remove a word from a gap, use the same process to drag it back to the blue box.

Since there are more words than blanks, you will not use all the words provided.

Follow these 4 tips to perform better in the Fill in the Blanks task:

1. It is very important to understand the basic theme behind the text to get the maximum score in this task. Read the whole paragraph carefully and try to understand the meaning of the text. If you are able to do this, it will become easier to guess the answer, without even looking at the options.  
2. You must fill the easier blanks in the Fill in the Blanks task first. This will leave you with fewer options to choose from, for the other blanks.

     

3. Look for any possible collocations. If a word in the passage collocates with an option in the blank, that’s your right answer.
4. Use your understanding of grammar and tense to eliminate options. If a sentence is in the present tense, the verbs in that sentence must be in the same tense. In such a case, you can eliminate the verbs that are in the past or future tense.

     

Also, if your English grammar is decent, you will be able to figure out which part of speech (verb, noun, adjective, etc.) should occupy the gap. Since the options will consist of different parts of speech, it will become easier for you to eliminate words.

For Fill in the blanks tips on Listening Section, click here.

If you don’t feel very confident in your language skills, or your preparation is not up to the mark, get the best deals on practice tests at https://ptenote.com/