A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 16
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.
Bilingual children often switch between languages within a single conversation. Linguists once regarded this habit as a sign of confusion, but recent research suggests the opposite: switching demands considerable mental control and may strengthen attention and problem-solving skills later in life.
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Model answer: Pause after "conversation" and after the colon-like break at "opposite". Stress "once regarded" then "recent research" to mark the change of view. Enunciate "considerable" (four syllables) and keep "attention and problem-solving skills" as one flowing group. Drop your voice on "later in life".
Shakespeare's plays continue to be performed nearly four hundred years after his death. Their appeal lies partly in their language, but also in their exploration of universal themes such as ambition, jealousy and love. Each generation of directors finds new ways to stage them.
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Model answer: Pause after "death" and after "language". Stress "universal themes" and give the three nouns "ambition, jealousy and love" a list rhythm. Say "generation" and "directors" clearly. End the final sentence with a light falling tone on "them".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Spiders are not insects because they have eight legs instead of six.
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Model answer: Electric cars are becoming cheaper and easier to charge.
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Model answer: The company plans to open three new offices across Asia next year.
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 compares the recycling rates of seven places. Germany recycles the largest share of household waste, 67 percent, followed by Slovenia at 60 and Wales at 56. England is in the middle with 44 percent, while Poland manages 35. Turkey and Romania recycle very little, at only 13 and 11 percent. The chart shows a wide range, from over two thirds to about one tenth.
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 traces the Olympics from their origin around seven seventy-six BCE in Olympia as a religious festival honoring Zeus, including a truce pausing wars for competitors. Limited to free Greek men, the ancient games ended around three ninety-three CE when banned as pagan. The modern Olympics revived the tradition in eighteen ninety-six and have since become a global event.
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: Ben feels uneasy about huge athlete salaries compared to underpaid teachers and nurses. Carla notes athlete pay comes from private revenue, not tax funds. Frank argues this reflects society undervaluing essential work. The group agrees the real issue is properly funding public sector pay through taxation, separate from what private sports revenue pays athletes.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: I cancelled my subscription weeks ago and received a confirmation email at the time, yet I've just been charged again this month. I still have that cancellation email if you need it as proof. Could you please refund this charge immediately and confirm that my account is genuinely cancelled so this doesn't happen again next month.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
Medieval European paintings often look strangely flat to modern eyes. Figures float without clear relationship to their surroundings, and buildings tilt at angles that ignore how they would appear from a single viewpoint. The change that occurred in Florence in the early fifteenth century is therefore striking. The architect Filippo Brunelleschi is credited with demonstrating around 1415 the principles of linear perspective, a geometrical system in which parallel lines appear to converge at a single vanishing point on the horizon, and objects diminish in size in proportion to their distance from the viewer. Within a decade, the painter Masaccio applied the method in his frescoes, creating the illusion that the wall of a church had opened into a deep, convincing space. The theorist Leon Battista Alberti then codified the technique in a treatise, encouraging its rapid spread throughout Italy. The effect was more than technical. Perspective reflected a new confidence in mathematics and observation as ways of understanding the world, and it positioned the individual observer at the centre of the picture, a shift that scholars often connect with the humanist emphasis on human experience. Artists such as Leonardo da Vinci went on to combine perspective with careful study of anatomy and light. Not all cultures adopted the approach, however, and many artistic traditions, including Persian miniature painting and Japanese woodblock prints, developed sophisticated alternatives that valued other kinds of visual clarity.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: The development of linear perspective in fifteenth-century Florence enabled painters to depict convincing depth and reflected a humanist confidence in mathematics and individual observation, although other artistic traditions successfully pursued different ideas of visual clarity.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
As populations in many countries live longer and birth rates fall, some governments are raising the age at which people can receive a state pension. Is this a fair way to address an ageing population?
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Model answer: Raising the pension age in response to longer life expectancy and falling birth rates has become common policy in many developed countries, and I believe it is a necessary, if unwelcome, response, provided it is implemented fairly.
The underlying arithmetic is difficult to avoid. When pension systems were designed, people typically lived only a few years past retirement, whereas many now live for two or three decades afterwards, while a shrinking working-age population must support a growing number of retirees. Without some adjustment, either through a higher pension age, higher taxes on current workers, or reduced pension payments, the system risks becoming financially unsustainable, threatening support for future retirees altogether.
However, a uniform increase in pension age can be unfair in practice. People in physically demanding jobs, such as construction or manual labour, often experience greater health problems and shorter life expectancy than those in office-based careers, meaning a later pension age affects them disproportionately, forcing continued heavy physical work well into old age or years of financial hardship before benefits begin.
For this reason, I believe pension reform should combine a gradual rise in the general retirement age with flexibility for those in physically demanding occupations, such as earlier access to reduced benefits or support to retrain for less strenuous work later in their careers. This would preserve the financial sustainability that a rising pension age provides while recognising that not everyone can simply keep working under the same conditions for longer.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
The magnetic compass, first developed in China and later adopted by sailors across Asia and Europe, relies on a simple but powerful principle: a freely suspended magnetised needle itself with the Earth's magnetic field, consistently pointing toward magnetic north. Before its invention, sailors navigating open water had to rely largely on the position of the sun and stars, methods that became useless clouds obscured the sky for extended periods. Once compasses became widely available, ships could maintain a reliable heading even in poor visibility, which considerably the danger of long ocean voyages. This new confidence in navigation is often credited with encouraging the era of extended maritime exploration that in subsequent centuries. Despite the later development of satellite navigation, magnetic compasses remain standard equipment on ships and aircraft a simple, reliable backup.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Retailers and airlines have long used loyalty programmes, which reward repeat customers with points, discounts or exclusive perks, as a strategy to encourage continued spending with a single brand rather than switching between competitors based purely on price. From a company's perspective, such programmes can be valuable not only for retaining customers but also for gathering detailed data on individual purchasing habits, information that companies can use to personalise marketing, adjust pricing, or identify which products to promote to specific groups of shoppers. Behavioural economists note that loyalty programmes often exploit a psychological tendency to value rewards that feel personally earned through repeated effort more highly than an equivalent discount offered to any customer regardless of loyalty, which can lead some shoppers to spend more than they otherwise would purely in pursuit of reaching the next reward tier or avoiding the sense of losing accumulated points. Critics argue that the genuine financial value of many loyalty programmes to ordinary customers is often fairly modest once the effort of tracking and redeeming points is taken into account, while the customer data collected in the process delivers value to the company that may considerably exceed the cost of the rewards it distributes.
1. Which TWO 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.
Gentrification describes a process in which a previously low-income urban neighbourhood gradually attracts wealthier residents and businesses, often following a period of renewed investment in housing and public spaces. As property values rise, existing residents can find themselves priced out of a neighbourhood they have lived in for decades, a consequence that critics argue the very community character that made the area attractive to new arrivals in the first place. Supporters of urban renewal counter that gentrification can much-needed investment, reducing crime and improving local services in neighbourhoods that had previously been neglected for decades. Researchers studying the phenomenon note that the effects of gentrification are rarely across an entire neighbourhood, since some long-term residents benefit from rising property values while renters without such assets are more likely to be displaced. City planners increasingly attempt to displacement through policies such as rent control or requirements for affordable housing in new developments.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Traditional satellite internet has historically relied on a small number of very large satellites positioned in a high, geostationary orbit, an arrangement that provides broad coverage over a large area but introduces a noticeable delay, since a signal must travel an extremely long distance to reach a satellite so far above the Earth's surface. Newer satellite internet systems instead deploy very large constellations consisting of thousands of considerably smaller satellites positioned in a much lower orbit, an arrangement that substantially reduces the physical signal delay by shortening the actual distance a signal must travel, while requiring many more individual satellites working together to provide comparable, continuous coverage across the same total geographic area. These low-orbit satellite constellations have proven particularly valuable for delivering genuinely usable, reasonably fast internet access to remote, rural or otherwise geographically difficult areas where laying traditional physical cables would prove prohibitively expensive or, in some especially remote or difficult terrain, practically or physically impossible altogether. Astronomers have raised significant concerns, however, that the sheer, rapidly growing number of these newer low-orbit satellites could meaningfully interfere with ground-based astronomical observation and could also further increase the already growing amount of potentially hazardous orbital debris steadily accumulating in low Earth orbit around the planet.
3. According to the passage, why do low-orbit satellite constellations reduce signal delay?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
In April eighteen fifteen, the Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted in the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history. It threw enormous amounts of ash and sulphur gases high into the atmosphere, where they spread around the globe and reflected sunlight back into space. The following year, eighteen sixteen, became known as the year without a summer. In Europe and North America, temperatures dropped sharply, snow fell in June in parts of New England, and harvests failed. Food prices rose, and there were riots and famine in several European countries. Some historians link the disaster to the migration of farmers westward in America. Interestingly, the gloomy weather even influenced culture, because Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein while confined indoors by rain in Switzerland. The episode shows how a single event on one island can disrupt the climate and societies far away.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: The 1815 Tambora eruption sent ash and gases into the atmosphere that blocked sunlight, causing the cold, failed harvests and famine of 1816, the year without a summer. It even influenced culture, as bad weather kept Mary Shelley indoors writing Frankenstein. The event shows that one eruption can affect climate and societies worldwide.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Before the sewing machine, every stitch in a garment was made by hand, a slow process that limited how much clothing a household or a small workshop could produce. Several inventors experimented with mechanical stitching devices in the early eighteen hundreds, but it was an American inventor in the eighteen forties who patented a practical design using a needle with an eye near its point, allowing thread to be looped mechanically far faster than any hand could manage. Early machines were expensive, so many families bought one on an instalment plan, paying a small amount regularly rather than the full price at once, which helped sewing machines spread into ordinary homes surprisingly quickly. Mass production later made clothing dramatically cheaper, changing how people dressed.
1. Which THREE statements are supported by the lecture?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Tidal energy captures the predictable rise and fall of ocean tides, caused mainly by the gravitational pull of the moon, usually by placing underwater turbines in fast-moving tidal . Unlike solar or wind power, tidal energy is highly predictable years in advance, since tide timings can be calculated with great , which helps grid operators plan ahead. However, suitable sites with strong enough currents are relatively , and underwater construction is expensive, so tidal power remains a much smaller contributor to renewable electricity than wind or . Researchers continue testing new turbine designs to reduce .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
For centuries, giant squid were known to science only through carcasses that occasionally washed ashore or turned up in the stomachs of sperm whales, along with sailors' folklore describing enormous sea monsters, since no scientist had ever observed a live giant squid in its natural deep-ocean habitat. It wasn't until two thousand and four that researchers using a baited camera rig captured the first photographs of a live giant squid in the wild, and it took until two thousand and twelve for a live giant squid to be filmed on video for the first time, deep in its natural habitat far below where sunlight penetrates. These difficult, decades-long efforts highlight just how much of the deep ocean, covering most of the planet's surface, remains genuinely unexplored, with entire large animals capable of evading direct scientific observation for a very long time.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Soluble coffee powder that dissolves instantly in hot water went through several attempts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though early versions often tasted noticeably worse than fresh coffee, since the drying processes used could damage delicate flavour compounds. A Swiss company significantly improved the process in the nineteen thirties after a South American country asked for help using its coffee surplus, developing spray-drying that preserved more flavour. Instant coffee became especially popular during wartime, when soldiers needed coffee that required no equipment and could be made quickly with only hot water.
3. Why did instant coffee become especially popular during wartime, according to the speaker?
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. A spinning top resists toppling over because of a property called angular momentum: a rapidly spinning object strongly resists any force trying to change its axis of rotation. As friction gradually slows the top down, this resistance weakens, and the top begins to sway visibly before eventually losing enough spin to fall over completely and come to rest.
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 17