Learning About the PTE Academic Essay Scoring Guide

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Learning About the PTE Academic Essay Scoring Guide PTE Writing Sub-test: Essay In this writing task, you are required to write an argumentative essay (200–300 words) in response to a prompt. You have 20 minutes to construct your response. The PTE Writing—Essay Task measures your ability to understand the main idea of a writing prompt and to construct a clear and concise essay about it.

As a test taker enrolled in PTE review packages, it is important to know the scoring system for the Essay Task as it helps improve your PTE preparation and get your ideal PTE Writing score goal.

PTE Academic Essay Scoring Guide The PTE Writing—Essay Task is scored on seven item traits, each representing a separate aspect of essay quality and a rating scale. Below are the scoring guidelines for each item traits of the PTE Academic Essay Task: Item Trait 1

Rating

Description

Scale Content

3

The essay satisfactorily discusses all aspects of the writing prompt, and provides details and examples related to support the test taker’s point of view.

2

The essay discusses the writing prompt but fails to deal with one minor aspect.

1

The essay converses the writing prompt but fails to deal with more than one minor aspect or one major aspect.

0

The content of the essay is not related to the writing prompt.

Item Trait 2

Rating

Description

Scale Formal Requirement

2

The length of the essay is between 200 and 300 words.

1

The length of the essay is between 120 and 199 or between 301 and 380 words.

0

The length of the essay is less than 120 or more than 380 words.

Item Trait 3

Rating

Description

Scale Development, Structure and

2

Coherence

The essay shows a good development and logical structure.

The essay has a basic structure with some

1

elements or paragraphs that are poorly connected.

0

The essay lacks coherence with complicated structure and organization of ideas.

Item Trait 4

Rating

Description

Scale Grammar

2

The essay has a consistent grammatical control of complex language with minimal errors that are difficult to spot.

1

The essay has a relatively high degree of grammatical control with some errors that don’t lead to misunderstanding.

0

The essay has a simple structure with several basic grammatical errors.

Item Trait 5

Rating

Description

Scale General Linguistic Range

2

The essay displays a wide range of language to formulate ideas accurately, express viewpoints and develop arguments.

1

The essay exhibits a sufficient range of language to explain ideas properly.

0

The essay contains basic language and lacks precision.

Item Trait 6

Rating

Description

Scale Vocabulary Range

2

The essay shows a good command of broad lexical resources such as idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms.

1

The essay contains a wide range of vocabulary related to the general academic topics. However, there are lexical errors that led to vague and inaccurate discourse.

0

The essay has basic vocabulary insufficient to deal with the prompt at the required level.

Item Trait 7

Rating

Description

Scale Spelling

2

The essay has no spelling errors.

1

The essay contains one spelling error.

0

The essay has more than one spelling errors.

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