@supercow and others, thank you for your wonderful posts. I wish to seek the help of those who had taken PTE-A and met their 79 cutoffs - could you please send me the PTE practice/study materials you used? I know there are a lot out there, which is why I am hoping to tap on your experience for which you think were most helpful, thanks! You can PM or email me directly, would be keen to hear your experiences too.
My situation is the same as supercow. I need the Superior English points as I did not work in the same field as my academic qualifications. I took IELTS last year, scored L8 R8.5 W7 S8, and was very demoralized. I had assumed achieving Superior English would not be an issue with English being almost a first language for me. But with the subjective scoring of the IELTS Writing, it seems almost impossible to achieve the needed perfect score. I thought PTE-A would be even harder being machine scored, but after recommendation by others and reading this thread, I feel more hopeful now. Hope that all the kind people can relate to my story and help me out, thanks!