I hesitated about whether to post this since it’s a personal failure story, but I still wanted to share this part of my life in a calm, honest way. This post is about an experience where things didn’t go the way I hoped :)

Even while studying English, my heart was still drawn to my personal project Anotherhome.com.au and this blog 😅.

Took it here.

The day of the test, feeling nervous.

I sat the PTE English exam, and unfortunately I didn’t reach the Superior level. I fell short by 4 points in Speaking and 3 points in Writing.

My score took a big hit in the Extended Speaking section. I’ll own that one. The Summarise Group Discussion was a format I hadn’t encountered before, and I stumbled through it with quite a few pauses. I think trying to include everything ended up making it disorganised, and when it came time to actually pull it together, I dropped the ball.

And was Retell Lecture always this hard? In the first question, the recording kept mentioning something that sounded like “salt” being connected to air pollution and I had no idea what that was about. (Turns out it was “soot,” meaning dust or fine particles, something I’d never come across before.)

I’d prepared reasonably well for the English exam, so it’s a little disappointing that my goal didn’t come through this time. That said, I’ve identified where I fell short, and objectively speaking, I think the potential is still very much there so I’ll give it everything I’ve got in the next round.