A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 1
AI-generated practice paper in the style of PTE Academic — original material, not a reproduction of any real exam paper, following the official task types. Listening audio is read aloud by your browser's voice. For Speaking you can record yourself and compare with a model answer, and Writing tasks include a model answer — neither is scored automatically, since that needs real speech and writing evaluation this site does not offer for this exam.
Speaking
Read Aloud
Look at the text below. In 30 seconds, you must read this text aloud as naturally and clearly as possible.
Astronomers detect planets around distant stars by measuring tiny dips in starlight. When a planet passes in front of its star, it blocks a small fraction of the light, and this regular dimming reveals both the planet's size and its orbit. Thousands of such worlds have now been catalogued.
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Model answer: Pronounce "astronomers" and "catalogued" carefully. Pause after "stars", "star" and "light". Stress "tiny dips" and "regular dimming". Close with a strong falling tone on "catalogued", giving "Thousands" extra energy at the start.
Effective leaders listen as much as they speak. They ask open questions, acknowledge different perspectives and give credit to others when a project succeeds. Studies of workplace teams indicate that such behaviour increases motivation and reduces staff turnover.
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Model answer: Stress "listen as much as they speak" to show the balance. Pause after "questions", "perspectives" and "succeeds". Say "indicate" and "turnover" clearly. The last clause should be a steady, falling statement.
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: The bookshop on campus sells both new and second-hand textbooks.
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Model answer: The seminar room is on the second floor.
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Model answer: She spoke so quietly that the people at the back could hardly hear her.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
Look at the image below. In 25 seconds, prepare, then describe in detail what the image is showing. You will have 40 seconds to speak.
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Model answer: This bar chart shows how many international tourists visited seven countries in 2019. France was the most popular destination with about 90 million arrivals, followed closely by Spain with 84 million and the United States with 79 million. At the other end, Mexico received the fewest visitors, roughly 45 million. Overall, the gap between the top and bottom is around 45 million, and European countries dominate the list.
Re-tell Lecture
Listen to the lecture and retell it.
Listen to the lecture. Then retell it in your own words. You will have 40 seconds to speak.
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Model answer: The lecture argues that economic decline, not just invasions, drove Rome's fall. Currency debasement caused inflation, heavy taxation displaced small farmers, and wealth concentrated among elites who avoided taxes. By the fifth century the empire could no longer afford to defend its borders, leaving it exposed to the invasions that ultimately ended it.
Answer Short Question
You will hear a question. Type your answer in one or a few words.
1. Type what you hear.
2. Type what you hear.
3. Type what you hear.
4. Type what you hear.
Summarize Group Discussion
Listen to a group discussion and summarise it.
Listen to the discussion. Then summarise it, covering each speaker's main point. You will have 70 seconds to speak.
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Model answer: Anna supports mandatory uniforms for reducing visible economic differences among students. Ben worries uniforms suppress teenage self-expression. Carla suggests uniforms can coexist with self-expression through other outlets like clubs or accessories. They agree on affordable, subsidized uniforms alongside preserved opportunities for individual expression, rather than uniforms controlling every aspect of student identity.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: I appreciate the recommendation, and I can see it's a nice jacket, but it's quite a bit more than I planned to spend today. Could you tell me specifically what makes it worth the price difference compared to the one I originally picked out? If it's mainly about the brand, I think I'll stick with my original choice.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
Before 2020, remote work was a perk offered by a minority of employers; within months, it became a necessity for tens of millions. Surveys during this period suggested that many employees were happier and no less productive, prompting some companies to announce permanent home-working policies. More recent research provides a subtler picture. A well-known experiment at a Chinese travel agency found that call-centre staff who worked from home were roughly thirteen percent more productive, mainly because they took fewer breaks and sick days, and fewer of them resigned. Yet other studies have found that fully remote teams generate fewer new ideas, since spontaneous conversations at a desk or by the coffee machine seldom occur on video calls, and that junior employees learn more slowly without the chance to observe experienced colleagues. Workers also differ: some enjoy the quiet and the absence of a commute, while others feel isolated or struggle to separate work from domestic life. Many organisations have therefore settled on hybrid arrangements, in which staff spend some days in the office and others at home. Evidence suggests that this compromise retains most of the benefits of flexibility while preserving collaboration, but only if managers coordinate schedules so that colleagues are present at the same time. When employees come in on different days, the office simply becomes an expensive place from which to make video calls.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Remote work can raise productivity and satisfaction but weakens spontaneous collaboration and the training of junior staff, so many organisations have adopted hybrid schedules, which succeed only when managers ensure that colleagues are in the office at the same time.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Many schools require students to wear a uniform. Supporters say uniforms create equality and discipline, while opponents say they restrict self-expression. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
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Model answer: School uniforms remain a controversial subject among parents, teachers and pupils. Having considered both sides, I lean towards the view that uniforms are beneficial, provided that they are comfortable and reasonably priced.
Supporters make several persuasive points. When everyone dresses alike, differences in family income are less visible, and pupils are less likely to feel pressure to own expensive brands or to be teased for their clothes. A uniform also creates a sense of belonging to a community and can make the morning routine simpler, since nobody has to decide what to wear. Some teachers add that pupils behave more seriously when they are smartly dressed.
Opponents respond that adolescence is a time for developing identity, and that clothing is one of the most natural ways to express personality. They also point out that uniforms are not necessarily cheap, especially when a school requires items from one particular supplier, and that rigid rules about hair and jewellery can seem petty.
In my opinion, the advantages outweigh these objections. Equality and focus on learning are valuable goals, and pupils still have many other ways to express themselves through hobbies, friendships and creative work. Schools should, however, keep costs low, offer practical designs for different weather and religious requirements, and perhaps allow occasional non-uniform days so that students can enjoy some freedom.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
The world's first formal stock exchanges emerged in European trading cities during the seventeenth century, where merchants gathered to buy and sell shares in trading companies that long and risky overseas voyages. By pooling money from many investors, a single company could afford ships and cargo that no individual merchant could alone, while each investor risked only a small portion of their wealth. Shares could then be bought and sold among investors, allowing people to profit, or lose money, without ever foot on a ship themselves. Over time, similar exchanges spread to other major cities, gradually evolving into the highly regulated markets that exist today, shares in thousands of companies are traded every day. This early system of shared ownership and risk laid much of the foundation modern corporate finance.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
The tragedy of the commons describes a situation in which individuals, each acting rationally in their own self-interest, collectively deplete or degrade a shared resource that would have remained sustainable if everyone had cooperated to limit their use of it. A frequently cited illustration involves a shared pasture where each herder benefits individually from adding one more animal to graze, while the cost of the resulting overgrazing is spread across the entire community of herders, meaning the individual gains far more than they personally bear in cost, encouraging continual overuse until the pasture is eventually ruined for everyone. Economists have identified similar dynamics in numerous other contexts, including overfishing in international waters, air pollution, and the overuse of groundwater, wherever a valuable resource is shared and no single party has either the incentive or the authority to limit overall consumption. Proposed solutions generally fall into a small number of categories: assigning clear private ownership over portions of the resource, establishing government regulation that limits use directly, or, as some researchers studying real-world commons have found, fostering community-based management systems in which local users establish and enforce their own rules, an approach that has succeeded in some traditional fishing and forestry communities without requiring either full privatisation or heavy-handed government control.
1. Which THREE statements are supported by the passage?
Re-order Paragraphs
Click the sentences to put them in the correct order.
2. Put the paragraph in the correct order.
Reading: Fill in the Blanks
Choose the best word for each blank.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a lengthy embroidered cloth, nearly seventy metres long, that depicts events leading up to and including the Norman conquest of England in 1066, stitched in coloured wool onto a linen background rather than woven as a true tapestry. Historians consider it an extraordinarily valuable historical source because it details of medieval warfare, clothing and ships that few written accounts from the period describe in comparable visual detail. Scholars continue to debate exactly who commissioned the work and where it was originally produced, since no contemporary document these details with certainty. The tapestry's narrative appears to have been designed to the Norman conquest from the perspective of the new ruling power, subtly shaping how the event would be remembered by later generations. Despite surviving for nearly a thousand years, the fragile textile requires careful ongoing conservation to it from the gradual damage caused by light, humidity and simple age.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
The framing effect describes how the way a choice or piece of information is presented, or framed, can significantly influence a person's decision even when the underlying facts and available options remain objectively identical. In a well-known demonstration of this effect, participants were presented with a medical treatment described in one of two ways: either in terms of a specific survival rate or, equivalently, in terms of the corresponding mortality rate, and participants proved considerably more likely to favour the treatment when it was framed in terms of survival, even though the two framings conveyed mathematically identical information about the treatment's actual effectiveness. Researchers attribute this effect partly to the way the human mind processes gains and losses asymmetrically, generally weighing a potential loss more heavily in decision-making than an objectively equivalent potential gain, so that a mortality-framed statistic tends to trigger a stronger negative emotional reaction than the mathematically equivalent survival-framed statistic. Because framing can influence decisions so significantly, ethicists studying medical communication have argued that healthcare professionals bear a particular responsibility to present treatment information to patients in as balanced and neutral a manner as reasonably possible, avoiding language that might unintentionally bias an important, potentially life-altering personal medical decision.
3. According to the passage, why did participants prefer the survival-framed description of the treatment?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
We usually think of exercise as good for the heart and muscles, but it may be just as important for the brain. When you exercise, your heart pumps more blood to the brain, delivering extra oxygen and nutrients. Exercise also triggers the release of a protein called BDNF, which some researchers describe as fertiliser for brain cells, because it supports the growth of new connections and even new neurons in the hippocampus, an area vital for memory. Studies of school children have found that students who exercise before lessons often concentrate better, and long-term studies suggest that people who stay active in middle age have a lower risk of dementia. You don't need to become a marathon runner. Most research points to about thirty minutes of moderate activity, like brisk walking, several times a week as a very worthwhile target.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Exercise benefits the brain by increasing blood flow and releasing the protein BDNF, which supports new connections and neurons in the memory-related hippocampus. Active children concentrate better and active adults have lower dementia risk, and about thirty minutes of moderate activity, such as brisk walking, several times a week is a worthwhile goal.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Community gardens turn unused urban plots into places where neighbours grow vegetables together. The most obvious benefit is fresh food, but studies suggest the social benefits may be even greater. Gardeners meet people they'd never otherwise talk to, and neighbourhoods with gardens often report lower crime and stronger trust. There are health benefits too, since gardening is mild exercise, and people tend to eat more vegetables when they've grown them. Successful gardens usually share certain features. They have clear rules about who looks after which tasks, and they secure long-term access to the land, because many have been lost when landowners decided to build. Some cities now protect gardens by giving them official status, so residents can invest time and money without fear that it will all be taken away.
1. Which THREE points does the speaker make?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
A tsunami is usually triggered by a sudden movement of the seafloor, most often a large undersea , which displaces water and sends waves racing outward. In the open ocean these waves travel almost unnoticed, sometimes only a high, but they slow down and grow taller near shallow water close to a . Modern warning systems use networks of seismic sensors and ocean pressure gauges that detect the wave far offshore, giving coastal communities precious minutes, or occasionally , to evacuate before the water .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Ocean thermal energy conversion generates electricity by exploiting the natural temperature difference between warm surface water in tropical oceans and much colder water found at greater depths, sometimes a difference of twenty degrees or more between the surface and a few hundred metres down. One common design uses the warm surface water to evaporate a fluid with a low boiling point, and the resulting vapour drives a turbine before being cooled back into liquid form using pumped-up cold deep water, ready to repeat the cycle continuously. The technology could theoretically provide steady, around-the-clock power, unlike solar or wind, but it currently works only in specific tropical locations with deep water conveniently close to shore, and the enormous pipes needed to pump cold water up from such depths remain expensive to build and maintain.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Early roller coasters developed from Russian ice slides, where riders sat on sleds and slid down long, steep ramps for entertainment, a tradition that inspired wheeled versions on tracks once engineers realised similar thrills could be created without relying on ice, which only lasted through cold winters. American designers in the late nineteenth century refined the wheeled design considerably, adding loops and locking safety mechanisms that kept cars securely attached even while inverted. Modern coasters now use computer-modelled designs and advanced braking, letting engineers build far more complex, higher-speed rides than early designers safely could.
3. According to the lecture, what inspired the earliest wheeled roller coasters?
Select Missing Word
The recording ends with a beep. Choose the option that best completes it.
4. Choose the word or phrase that best completes the recording.
Highlight Incorrect Words
Listen to the recording and select the words in the text that differ from what you hear.
5. The text below differs from the recording in some words. Select the words that are DIFFERENT from what you hear. The modern necktie is often traced back to Croatian mercenaries serving in the French army in the 1700s, who wore tied scarves around their necks that French nobility quickly found fashionable and began imitating. Over the following centuries the simple scarf gradually evolved through numerous styles into the narrower, standardised necktie generally recognisable today, largely stripped of its original practical military purpose.
Write from Dictation
Listen to the sentence and type it exactly as you hear it.
6. Type what you hear.
7. Type what you hear.
Keep your streak going
Up next: PTE Academic Practice Test 2