PET exam prep — scored 75 on reading, here's what I wish I'd done differently
I took the PET last month after about three months of preparation. My overall score was a B2 pass but my reading score was 75 and my writing dragged everything down at 61. I'm sharing because when I was prepping I really wanted to hear from people who'd recently taken it rather than just official study guides, which tend to make everything sound more straightforward than it actually is.
I was studying about 90 minutes a day on weekdays and closer to three hours on weekends. For the first six weeks I focused mostly on vocabulary and grammar because my grammar had gotten rusty since I'd last done any formal English study. That was the right call. The writing section requires you to use a range of structures accurately, and drilling grammar explicitly — not just reading in English — made a noticeable difference in my accuracy.
My mistake was not doing enough timed writing practice. I'd do the prompts but I wouldn't time myself strictly, which meant my actual exam writing was rushed and I ran out of time on the second part. If I did it again I'd spend the last four weeks doing nothing but timed full writing tasks under exam conditions. The reading and listening sections are challenging but manageable with consistent practice. Writing under time pressure is its own skill entirely.
Three months at 90 minutes a day is pretty close to what I did. The listening section is the most consistent — once you know the question types it's very practice-able. Writing is where most people leave points on the table.
The writing section time pressure is brutal. I managed it okay because I'd been doing timed practice for six weeks, but a lot of people in my test room were clearly not finished when time was called. Treat it like a sport — you have to train the clock, not just the content.
A reading score of 75 is solid. I scored 71 on reading and found the longer texts in Part 5 the hardest — the vocabulary in context questions require you to understand nuance, not just dictionary definitions. Reading varied materials well above B2 level helped me with that.
Grammar drilling made a big difference for me too. I was comfortable with English but my grammatical range was limited, and PET writing specifically rewards using varied structures correctly. A Cambridge B2 grammar workbook was the most useful thing I bought.