A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 13
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.
Fast fashion refers to clothing that is designed, produced and sold cheaply in very large quantities. While it makes trends affordable, it also generates huge amounts of textile waste and relies on low-paid labour. Some consumers are now choosing second-hand garments as a more sustainable alternative.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Pause after "quantities" and "affordable". Stress the contrast created by "While" and "also". Pronounce "textile" and "sustainable" carefully. Keep "second-hand garments" together and end with a falling tone on "alternative".
Urban planners increasingly favour mixed-use neighbourhoods, where housing, shops and offices sit side by side. Residents can walk to daily necessities, which reduces traffic and encourages social contact. Critics, on the other hand, point out that such areas can push up rents and displace long-standing communities.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Group the three nouns "housing, shops and offices" as a list with rising tone on the first two and falling on the last. Stress "reduces" and "encourages". Pause clearly before "Critics" and after "on the other hand". Emphasise "displace" and end with a firm falling tone on "communities".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Paper can be recycled several times before the fibres become too short.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Many students find it difficult to balance study, work and social life.
Show sample answer
Model answer: The final exam will cover everything we discussed since October.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
| Visits | Books borrowed | Computer sessions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central | 18500 | 26000 | 7200 |
| Eastfield | 6200 | 9400 | 800 |
| Harbour | 4800 | 5100 | 1900 |
| Oakwood | 7900 | 12800 | 1100 |
| Hillside | 3100 | 3900 | 450 |
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.
Show sample answer
Model answer: The table compares five library branches over a month. Central is much the busiest, with 18,500 visits, 26,000 books borrowed and 7,200 computer sessions. Oakwood is second for visits, 7,900, and loans, 12,800. Hillside is the least used, with 3,100 visits and only 3,900 loans. Computer use is low everywhere except Central and, to a lesser extent, Harbour, which had 1,900 sessions.
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.
Show sample answer
Model answer: The lecture explains that Gothic cathedrals' pointed arches and flying buttresses solved structural problems, distributing weight efficiently and transferring roof forces to the ground. This freed wall space for the large stained-glass windows Gothic architecture is known for, which medieval builders saw as filling interiors with light representing divine presence, not just decoration.
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.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Jack worries AI hiring tools inherit historical biases against disadvantaged groups. Anna argues AI decisions could be more auditable than biased human judgment. Ben notes many AI systems are opaque black boxes, undermining that auditability. They agree AI hiring tools should only be used under mandatory bias audits and transparency requirements, not deployed without accountability.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
Show sample answer
Model answer: I appreciate you mentioning it now, but I really should have been called at the time this happened, even for a minor fall. Could you walk me through exactly what happened and how it was handled? Going forward, I'd like to be notified immediately whenever any incident occurs, even small ones, so I'm not finding out about it hours later.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
The dominant model of industrial production for two centuries has been linear: companies extract resources, manufacture products, sell them and leave consumers to discard them. The circular economy proposes replacing this pattern with one in which materials are kept in use for as long as possible. Its advocates distinguish several strategies. Products can be designed to last longer and to be repaired easily, so that a broken screen does not condemn an entire phone. They can be leased instead of sold, giving manufacturers an incentive to build durable goods that they will eventually reclaim. Components can be refurbished and reused, and, as a last resort, materials can be recycled into new products of equivalent quality. Some firms have already put these principles into practice: a tyre manufacturer sells kilometres of use rather than tyres, and several furniture companies buy back and resell used office chairs. Proponents claim that the approach cuts waste and reduces dependence on scarce raw materials, while creating skilled jobs in repair and remanufacturing. Sceptics reply that a fully circular system is impossible, since energy is required to collect and process used goods and some material is always lost, and that the model may not be profitable while virgin materials remain cheap. Even so, several governments have introduced right-to-repair laws and requirements for recycled content as first steps in a gradual shift.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
Show sample answer
Model answer: The circular economy seeks to keep materials in use through durable design, repair, leasing, reuse and recycling, and although sceptics doubt that perfect circularity is achievable or profitable while raw materials are cheap, governments are starting to encourage it with laws supporting repair and recycled content.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Some governments monitor citizens' internet activity and restrict certain websites in the name of national security. Is this an acceptable trade-off between safety and personal freedom?
Show sample answer
Model answer: Balancing national security against personal freedom online is one of the defining debates of the digital age, and I believe current levels of government monitoring in many democracies go further than can be justified.
Governments argue that monitoring communications and restricting access to certain content helps them detect terrorist plots, organised crime and the spread of material that incites violence, threats that can cause serious and irreversible harm. In this view, a limited loss of privacy is a reasonable price for collective safety, especially when oversight mechanisms exist to prevent abuse.
However, history offers many examples of surveillance powers being extended far beyond their original justification, used to monitor journalists, political opponents or ordinary citizens with no connection to any genuine threat. Mass monitoring of an entire population also assumes that everyone is potentially a suspect, which sits uneasily with the presumption of innocence that underpins fair legal systems. Furthermore, there is little solid evidence that broad surveillance programmes have prevented more attacks than more targeted, court-supervised methods.
I therefore believe that security measures should be narrowly targeted at specific, credible threats, subject to independent judicial approval and regular public review, rather than applied indiscriminately to entire populations. Citizens deserve transparency about what is monitored and why, and any restriction on speech or access to information should be the minimum necessary, not a permanent and unaccountable expansion of state power.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
In 1800, the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta demonstrated that stacking discs of two different metals, separated by a moist material, could a steady electric current. His invention, later known as the voltaic pile, was the first device capable of producing electricity continuously rather than in a brief spark, and it quickly the attention of scientists across Europe. Researchers soon used the device to isolate new chemical elements through electrolysis, a technique that would have been impossible a reliable source of current. Although Volta's original design was inefficient and its chemicals corroded quickly, it laid the foundation for every battery since. Modern batteries operate on broadly similar chemical principles, even though the materials involved have dramatically over the past two centuries.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Sunlight, though it appears white or pale yellow to the human eye, is actually composed of a full spectrum of colours, each corresponding to a different wavelength of light. As sunlight passes through the atmosphere, it collides with tiny molecules of gas, and these collisions scatter shorter wavelengths of light, such as blue and violet, far more strongly than longer wavelengths, such as red and orange, a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering. Although violet light is scattered even more strongly than blue, the sky nonetheless appears blue rather than violet to human observers, partly because sunlight contains comparatively less violet light to begin with, and partly because the human eye is considerably more sensitive to blue wavelengths than to violet ones. At sunset and sunrise, sunlight must travel through a much greater thickness of atmosphere to reach an observer, scattering away most of the blue light before it arrives and leaving mainly the longer red and orange wavelengths to dominate the sky's appearance during those hours. This same scattering principle explains why distant mountains often take on a bluish haze and why smoke or fine dust in the air can noticeably alter the colours visible in the sky.
1. According to the passage, which THREE of the following are true?
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.
Early machine translation systems relied primarily on programmed grammatical rules and dictionaries to convert text word by word from one language into another, an approach that frequently stilted, awkward translations that struggled with idiomatic expressions or ambiguous sentence structure. Later systems instead adopted a statistical approach, analysing enormous collections of text that had already been translated by humans to common patterns of correspondence between the two languages, an improvement that produced noticeably more natural results than the earlier rule-based systems. The most recent generation of machine translation relies on neural networks trained on vast quantities of bilingual text, allowing a system to complex relationships between words and phrases that earlier statistical approaches could not adequately account for. Although modern machine translation has become remarkably capable for many everyday purposes, it can still occasionally highly specialised, technical or deliberately ambiguous text, meaning that professional human translation remains essential for many high-stakes or literary applications.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Switching costs refer to the various expenses, inconveniences or genuine risks a customer must reasonably weigh and absorb when deciding whether to abandon one company's product or service in favour of a competing alternative, and businesses frequently and deliberately design their products specifically to increase these switching costs as a means of retaining existing customers over time. These costs are not always primarily financial in nature; a customer switching between mobile phone operating systems, for example, may need to invest considerable additional time relearning basic and advanced features, might permanently lose access to previously purchased applications, or could face the genuine inconvenience of transferring years of accumulated personal data to an entirely new, unfamiliar platform. Companies operating within highly competitive markets frequently exploit switching costs deliberately, for example by offering escalating loyalty rewards specifically to long-standing customers or by deliberately designing their own products in ways that integrate poorly, or not at all, with a rival company's competing products or services. Consumer advocates argue that excessively high switching costs can meaningfully reduce genuine market competition by effectively trapping otherwise dissatisfied customers within a company's existing ecosystem, prompting some regulators in certain industries to specifically require companies to make customer data more easily portable between competing providers.
3. According to the passage, why might a regulator require companies to make customer data more portable?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
When people hear that glaciers are melting, they often picture a summer snowman shrinking. The reality is more significant. Glaciers store about seventy percent of the world's fresh water, and when the ice on land melts, the water flows into the ocean and raises sea level. That's different from floating sea ice, which doesn't change sea level when it melts, just as melting ice cubes don't overflow your glass. Satellite measurements show that Greenland and Antarctica are now losing hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice every year. Sea level is already rising by a few millimetres annually, and the rate is increasing. That may sound small, but over decades it worsens coastal flooding and storm damage. Glaciers also feed rivers in dry seasons, so their retreat threatens water supplies for hundreds of millions of people.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Melting land-based glaciers and ice sheets add water to the oceans, unlike floating sea ice, and Greenland and Antarctica are losing vast quantities of ice, so sea level is rising at an accelerating rate. This worsens coastal flooding, and glacier retreat also threatens dry-season water supplies for millions of people.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun, where light atomic nuclei combine to form heavier ones and release enormous energy. Scientists want to reproduce it on Earth because it could provide almost limitless power with no carbon emissions and much less long-lived radioactive waste than fission. The fuel, isotopes of hydrogen, can be extracted from seawater. The challenge is that fusion requires temperatures of over a hundred million degrees, so the hot gas, called plasma, must be held in place by powerful magnetic fields. In twenty twenty-two, a laboratory in California achieved a milestone, producing more energy from a fusion reaction than the laser energy delivered to the target. But that doesn't include the energy used to run the lasers, so commercial power plants are still probably decades away.
1. Which TWO statements are true according to the speaker?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Edison is popularly credited with inventing the light bulb, but the truth is more complicated. Several inventors had already built working bulbs decades earlier, using different for the glowing filament, though none lasted long enough for use. Edison's real achievement was assembling a practical system: a durable carbon filament, a good vacuum inside the , and an entire supporting network needed to actually deliver to homes. His laboratory reportedly tested thousands of filament materials before settling on one that could burn for of hours.
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Animals living in the deepest parts of the ocean face crushing water pressure that would instantly kill most surface-dwelling creatures, yet many deep-sea species thrive there, largely because their bodies contain no significant air-filled spaces that pressure could compress or collapse. Many deep-sea fish also produce specialised proteins and other molecules that keep their own cell membranes and internal proteins stable and functional under conditions that would otherwise distort or destroy the folded shapes those proteins need to work properly. Bringing a deep-sea creature rapidly up to the surface, as sometimes happens accidentally when nets haul them up from great depths, can be fatal precisely because the sudden pressure drop causes gases dissolved in their tissues to expand rapidly, sometimes visibly deforming or rupturing the animal's body on the way up.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Canada geese are known for flying in a V-formation during migration, and researchers confirm this isn't just for show. Each bird flying slightly behind and to the side of the one in front benefits from reduced air resistance created by the wingtip ahead, saving energy on a long flight. Geese also take turns at the demanding lead position, since flying at the front requires the most effort, and tired leaders drop back to let another take over. The honking heard during flight is thought to help geese at the back encourage those leading at the front.
3. According to the lecture, why do Canada geese rotate the lead position?
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. Water alone struggles to wash away grease because oil and water molecules simply don't mix, but soap molecules have a dual structure: one end is attracted to water, while the other end is attracted to oily , greasy substances. This lets soap effectively surround tiny droplets of grease, creating a structure that can then be rapidly rinsed away completely in ordinary running liquid.
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 14