PTE Academic Speaking Retell Lecture Study Guide Practice Sample 2

Retell Lecture – You will hear a lecture first. After which you will have to retell the lecture in your own words. You will have 40 seconds to give your response. These type of questions in PTE integrates listening and speaking skills. Here is “PTE Academic Speaking Retell Lecture Study Guide Practice Sample 2”.

PTE Academic Speaking Retell Lecture Study Guide Practice Sample 2

PTE ACADEMIC SPEAKING – RETELL LECTURE

2. – Listen to the following audio and retell lecture in your own words.

NOTE: (Transcript is given for reference and practice purpose only, it will not be given in PTE Academic test)

What I want to look at today is the question of how much technology – if, um, a pen can indeed be called technology… perhaps I should say the instrument of writing affects a writer’s style and level of production. Read Full Transcript
I also want to consider other factors that may have an effect on prose style, such as personality, educational background, and so on Now, production levels aren’t so hard to measure in relation to the writing instrument used. The quill pen, for instance, would need continual re-filling and resharpening, which led to a leisurely, balanced style of prose full of simple sentences. Writing took a lot longer than now and the great novelists of the 18′” century – Fielding, Smollett, Richardson had a relatively small output, though some of their books ran to enormous length. By the middle of the 19h century, the fountain pen had been invented. It didn’t need such constant refilling, which can account for the more flowing, discursive style of, say, Dickens and Thackeray, as well as their tremendous output. Then came the typewriter, whose purpose, once you got the hang of it, was to speed up the writing process and was therefore much favoured by journalists. This, it seems to me, gave rise to a short-winded style characterised by short sentences. A short prose style, if you like. Dictating machines and tape recorders led, as one novelist complained, to writers becoming too conversational, rambling and long winded. Henry James, although he didn’t use these machines, dictated his later novels and, well, some might agree with this accusation. Well, it looks as though we’re going to have to leave word processors, computers and, of course, the way film and its narrative techniques have affected writing style for another day.

Sample Answer is Here

The instrument writers use affects their style. Writing with a quill took a long time so writers tended to write in short sentences. They had a balanced style and their output was small. Writing with a fountain pen led to a more flowing style. writing with a typewriter produced a more journalistic style and writers produced much more work. Some people feel that writers who dictated their work, such as Henry James, became too conversational.

Source: (PTE Retell Lecture)

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