A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 10
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.
Philosophers have long debated whether free will is compatible with a universe governed by natural laws. Determinists argue that every decision is the inevitable result of earlier causes, whereas others maintain that meaningful choice remains possible even within a lawful world.
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Model answer: Read slowly; this text is dense. Stress "long debated", "free will" and "natural laws". Pause after "laws" and after "causes". Use contrast on "whereas others" and articulate "inevitable" and "meaningful" clearly. Fall on "lawful world".
Inflation occurs when the general level of prices rises over time, reducing the purchasing power of money. Central banks attempt to control it by adjusting interest rates. Higher rates make borrowing more expensive, which slows spending, but they can also hold back economic growth and increase unemployment.
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Model answer: Stress the key economic terms: "inflation", "purchasing power", "interest rates". Pause after "time" and after "rates". Keep "borrowing more expensive" as one smooth group. Take a short pause before "but", raise your energy on "hold back", and fall on "unemployment".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: You are required to attend at least eighty percent of the classes.
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Model answer: She would have gone to the conference if she had received the invitation.
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Model answer: The government has promised to invest more money in public healthcare.
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: The chart compares the average number of days patients wait for non-urgent surgery in six regions. The South-West has the longest wait at 61 days, while the East has the shortest at 34. The North-East, at 55 days, is also high, whereas the Midlands, at 38, and the North, at 42, are below the middle. London sits at 47 days. The gap between the best and worst regions is 27 days.
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 explains that the gut microbiome actively trains the immune system, with early microbial exposure helping calibrate immune responses and possibly explaining higher allergy rates in overly sterile environments. An imbalanced microbiome is linked to inflammatory disease and, via the gut-brain axis, mood disorders, prompting research into probiotics and fecal transplants as treatments.
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: Jack argues a shorter school day would improve focus by reducing fatigue. Anna worries this cuts instructional time unless content is also trimmed. Ben proposes restructuring the day with longer breaks and varied activities instead of simply shortening it. They agree this addresses fatigue without losing content, though implementation logistics remain a real challenge.
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 work, but I paid for the premium package, and there are still several smears and a few spots that look completely missed. Could you go over those specific areas again before I consider this finished? I'd like the car to actually match what the premium package promises before I leave.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
For decades, manufacturers pursued efficiency by keeping inventories as small as possible and by sourcing components from whichever supplier offered the lowest price, often on another continent. This strategy, known as just-in-time production, reduced storage costs and freed up capital, and it worked well as long as deliveries arrived on schedule. The disruptions of recent years exposed its weakness. When factories closed during the pandemic, a blocked canal delayed hundreds of ships, and a shortage of a few dollars' worth of semiconductor chips halted the assembly of expensive vehicles, companies discovered how little slack their supply chains contained. In response, many firms are re-examining their approach. Some are holding larger stocks of critical parts, accepting higher storage costs in exchange for protection against interruption. Others are diversifying their suppliers so that no single factory or country is essential, and a few are relocating production closer to their customers, a practice sometimes called nearshoring. These changes carry costs of their own, and they are likely to raise prices for consumers. Supply chain specialists therefore talk less about maximising efficiency and more about resilience, defined as the ability to absorb shocks and recover quickly. The challenge for managers is to decide how much insurance is worth paying for against events that may occur only rarely but could be extremely damaging.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Because lean, low-cost supply chains proved vulnerable to disruptions such as the pandemic, companies are prioritising resilience by holding more stock, diversifying suppliers and producing closer to customers, accepting higher costs as the price of protection against rare but severe interruptions.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
City councils often have to choose between preserving old buildings and allowing new development that could provide housing or jobs. How should such decisions be made?
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Model answer: Conflicts between heritage preservation and new development are common in growing cities, and I believe the right decision depends on weighing several factors rather than applying a single rule.
Those who favour preservation argue that historic buildings connect a community to its past, attract tourism, and often display craftsmanship that cannot be reproduced today. Once demolished, such buildings are gone forever, whereas the housing shortage that development promises to solve could, in principle, be addressed through other sites. Character and identity, they argue, are difficult to value in purely financial terms but matter enormously to residents.
On the other hand, cities facing severe housing shortages or unemployment cannot always afford to leave valuable land underused for sentimental reasons. A crumbling, poorly located warehouse of no architectural significance is a very different case from a building of genuine historical importance, yet both are sometimes defended with equal vigour by opponents of any change.
In practice, I believe planning authorities should distinguish clearly between buildings of real historical or architectural value, which deserve strong legal protection, and ordinary older structures that could reasonably be replaced. Independent heritage assessments, public consultation, and creative compromises, such as preserving a historic facade while rebuilding behind it, allow cities to grow without erasing everything that gives them a sense of place. Blanket policies in either direction, whether automatic preservation or unrestricted development, serve communities poorly.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Mangrove trees grow in the muddy, salty conditions found along many tropical coastlines, where most other plants would quickly . Their tangled roots rise above the waterline, allowing the trees to absorb oxygen directly from the air rather than relying entirely the oxygen-poor mud beneath them. These root systems also trap sediment, gradually the coastline outward and creating sheltered nursery habitats for young fish and crustaceans. During storms, mangrove forests act as a natural barrier, absorbing wave energy and reducing the damage that reach nearby villages. Despite their value, mangroves are frequently cleared to make way for shrimp farms and coastal development, and conservationists warn that continued loss could leave many coastal communities considerably more flooding.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Airline ticket prices for the same flight can vary enormously depending on when and how a ticket is purchased, a practice known as dynamic pricing that relies on sophisticated algorithms constantly adjusting fares in response to demand, remaining seat availability and even the browsing behaviour of individual customers. Airlines typically sell a limited number of very cheap seats early, both to generate early cash flow and to gauge overall demand for a route, then gradually raise prices as the flight fills up, reserving a small number of expensive last-minute seats for travellers, often business passengers, who need to book close to departure and are less sensitive to price. Because empty seats cannot be sold after a flight departs, airlines are strongly motivated to fill every seat, even at a low price, rather than leave it empty, which explains why fares sometimes drop unexpectedly close to departure if a flight is not selling as well as expected. Critics argue that this system can feel unfair to consumers, since two passengers sitting next to each other may have paid dramatically different prices for identical seats, and the lack of price transparency makes it difficult for travellers to judge whether a fare is genuinely good value.
1. Which TWO statements are consistent with 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.
Political scientists have identified numerous factors that influence how likely citizens are to vote in an election, ranging from the practical, such as how easy it is to register or to physically reach a polling station, to the psychological, such as whether a person genuinely believes their individual vote can the outcome. Turnout tends to be considerably higher in elections that voters perceive as closely contested, since a competitive race can the sense that a single vote might genuinely matter to the final result. Civic education in schools is often cited as a long-term strategy for improving turnout, on the theory that early exposure to how government functions can a lasting habit of political participation later in life. Some countries have also experimented with making voting compulsory, a policy that reliably turnout figures but remains controversial among those who argue that voting should always remain an entirely voluntary civic choice rather than a legal .
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
The sonnet is a fourteen-line poetic form that originated in Italy during the thirteenth century before spreading across Europe and eventually being adapted into English by poets including Shakespeare, who developed a distinctive variation on the original Italian structure. In the Italian, or Petrarchan, form, a sonnet is typically divided into an eight-line section, called an octave, that establishes a problem, question or observation, followed by a six-line section, called a sestet, that offers some form of resolution, response or turn in perspective. Shakespeare's English variation instead organises the same fourteen lines into three four-line sections followed by a concluding two-line couplet, with the decisive turn in the poem's argument or emotional tone frequently arriving within that final, often memorably concise couplet rather than at the midpoint of the poem. Despite its strict, seemingly restrictive formal structure, including a specific rhyme scheme and typically ten syllables per line, the sonnet form has proven remarkably durable and adaptable, with poets across many subsequent centuries and numerous different languages continuing to use, and often creatively modify, this centuries-old poetic structure to explore an enormous range of subjects.
3. According to the passage, where does the decisive turn typically occur in a Shakespearean sonnet?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
For a long time, people worried that raising children with two languages would confuse them. Research over the past few decades suggests the opposite. When a bilingual person speaks, both languages are active in the brain at the same time, so the brain must constantly select one and suppress the other. This is a kind of mental exercise. Studies show that bilingual children often perform better on tasks that require switching attention and ignoring distractions. There's even evidence that lifelong bilinguals develop symptoms of dementia several years later than monolinguals, though scientists are cautious about that finding because it's hard to control for education and lifestyle. What we can say is that bilingualism does not harm intelligence or slow down language development in the long run. Children may mix languages in early years, but that's a normal stage, not a problem.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Research shows bilingualism does not confuse children. Because both languages are active, the brain constantly practises selecting one and ignoring the other, which improves attention switching, and may even delay dementia, although that evidence is uncertain. Mixing languages in early childhood is a normal stage of development rather than a sign of any problem or delay.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Many high achievers secretly believe they don't deserve their success. Psychologists call this impostor syndrome. People experiencing it attribute their achievements to luck, timing or other people's kindness, and they fear that sooner or later someone will discover they're a fraud. It was first described in the nineteen seventies among successful women, but later studies showed that it affects men just as often, and is common among students starting university. Ironically, the feeling can push people to work extremely hard, so they keep succeeding, which then reinforces their doubts. What helps? Talking openly with colleagues is a good start, because you quickly discover that others feel the same. Keeping a record of achievements and positive feedback can also help you judge yourself more objectively.
1. Which TWO strategies for dealing with impostor syndrome does the speaker mention?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Wild wheat plants shatter their seed heads easily, scattering grain the moment it ripens, which helps the plant spread in the wild but makes harvesting wasteful for humans. Around ten thousand years ago, early farmers began unintentionally selecting whose seed heads stayed intact a little longer, simply because those were easiest to by hand. Over many generations of replanting, wheat evolved into a domesticated form entirely dependent on , unable to spread its own seeds effectively in the wild. This change is considered one of the pivotal steps toward settled and eventually early .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
As postal volumes grew rapidly through the twentieth century, sorting mail by hand using only city and street names became increasingly slow and error-prone, particularly in large cities with many similarly named streets. The United States Postal Service introduced the ZIP code system in nineteen sixty-three, assigning a numeric code to specific geographic delivery areas, which allowed sorting to be partly mechanised for the first time using optical scanning equipment that could read the digits far faster than a human sorter could read a full address. Additional digits were added in later decades to narrow the target area down to an even smaller cluster of addresses, further speeding up automated sorting. Similar postal coding systems were adopted by other countries around the same period, each tailored to that country's own addressing conventions.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Elephants can detect the low-frequency rumbles produced by other elephants not only through the air using their large ears, but also through the ground itself, sensing vibrations through soil using sensitive nerve endings in their feet and trunk. This lets elephants detect calls, including warning signals, from other elephants many kilometres away, well beyond the range at which sound would remain audible through air alone. Researchers have found that elephants sometimes lean forward, pressing weight onto their front feet in a stance that appears to improve sensitivity to faint, distant ground-transmitted vibrations.
3. How do elephants detect low-frequency calls from far-away elephants, according to the lecture?
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. Dust and grime settling on a solar panel's surface can noticeably reduce how much sunlight it converts into electricity, which matters especially in dry, dusty regions where manual cleaning is expensive. Researchers have developed ultra-thin coatings that use an electric charge to repel dust particles automatically, or that mimic a lotus leaf's self-cleaning surface so that rain alone effectively washes debris away, fairly efficiently.
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 11