A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 17
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.
Insulation is one of the most effective ways to reduce household energy use. By trapping heat inside during winter and keeping it out during summer, well-insulated homes require far less heating and cooling. The initial cost is usually recovered within a few years through lower bills.
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Model answer: Pronounce "insulation" and "initial" clearly. Pause after "use" and after "summer". Contrast "inside during winter" with "out during summer". Stress "far less" and "lower bills", ending on a firm falling tone.
Memory is not a perfect recording of the past. Each time we recall an event, the brain reconstructs it, sometimes adding details that were never there. This is why eyewitnesses who are entirely sincere can nevertheless give inaccurate accounts of what they saw.
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Model answer: Stress "not a perfect recording". Pause after "event" and after "there". Slow down on "reconstructs" and "eyewitnesses". In the last sentence, stress "entirely sincere" and "nevertheless", and finish on "saw" with a clear downward tone.
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Detailed maps of the seabed have only become available in recent decades.
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Model answer: The play was so moving that several people in the audience were crying.
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Model answer: She has been working as a translator since she graduated.
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 yearly salaries for seven professions in thousands of euros. Surgeons earn the most, 120 thousand, with lawyers next at 85 thousand and software engineers at 68 thousand. There is then a large drop to teachers at 38 thousand and nurses at 36 thousand. Chefs receive 29 thousand, and shop assistants earn the least at 22 thousand, less than one fifth of a surgeon's pay.
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 antibiotic resistance arises when bacteria evolve to survive drugs meant to kill them, a process accelerated by overprescription, incomplete treatment courses, and heavy antibiotic use in farming. Resistant bacteria can pass resistance genes to others, and the WHO warns this could make routine infections and surgeries dangerous again in the future.
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 questions prioritizing costly space exploration over urgent problems on Earth. David counters that space research produces practical spinoffs like GPS and weather forecasting. Emma points out space budgets are actually small relative to total government spending. Anna becomes more convinced, recognizing her objection rested on a misunderstanding of how much is actually spent.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: My internet has been dropping constantly for two weeks, right in the middle of work video calls, even though I'm paying for your premium plan with guaranteed uptime. I've already restarted the router several times as suggested online. Could you send a technician to check the line, and could I get a credit for the disruption this has caused?
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
In 1977, scientists exploring the seabed near the Galápagos Islands in a small submarine made a discovery that overturned a basic assumption of biology. Two and a half kilometres below the surface, where no sunlight penetrates, they found hot springs surrounded by dense communities of giant tube worms, clams and crabs. Until then, it was believed that virtually all life on Earth ultimately depended on energy from the sun, captured by plants and algae and passed up the food chain. The vent communities, however, rely on chemosynthesis. Bacteria living in and around the vents extract energy from hydrogen sulphide, a chemical that would be poisonous to most organisms, and the larger animals either eat the bacteria or house them inside their bodies in a mutually beneficial partnership. The vents form where seawater seeps through cracks in the crust, is heated by magma and re-emerges laden with minerals. They are among the most extreme environments known, with temperatures of up to four hundred degrees Celsius alongside near-freezing seawater. Their discovery has influenced ideas about the origin of life, since some researchers suggest that similar conditions on the early Earth could have provided the chemical energy needed for the first living cells. It has also encouraged astronomers to consider that oceans beneath the icy crusts of moons such as Europa might harbour life independent of sunlight.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: The discovery of animal communities around deep-sea vents that live on chemical rather than solar energy overturned a fundamental biological assumption and has influenced both theories about the origin of life on Earth and the search for life on other worlds.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Some educators argue that final written exams do not accurately measure a student's true ability and should be replaced by continuous assessment throughout the year. Do you agree?
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Model answer: Whether a single final exam or ongoing assessment better reflects a student's ability is a long-running debate in education, and I believe a combination of both methods serves students better than relying on either alone.
Critics of final exams argue convincingly that a student's performance on one stressful day, memorising material for a few hours of testing, may say more about their ability to manage anxiety than about their genuine understanding of a subject. Students who struggle with exam conditions, despite working consistently well throughout a course, are unfairly penalised, while material learned only for the test is often quickly forgotten afterwards.
Supporters of continuous assessment argue that essays, projects and smaller tests spread across a term give a fuller and fairer picture of a student's abilities and encourage steady effort rather than last-minute cramming. However, continuous assessment brings its own problems. It can disadvantage students facing difficulties early in a course who have no chance to recover, and it raises questions about consistency, since coursework can be influenced by unequal access to help from parents, tutors or even, increasingly, artificial intelligence tools, making it harder to guarantee that the work reflects a student's own ability.
I therefore believe that a mixture of coursework, tested under reasonable supervision, and a final exam covering the whole course provides the most balanced and reliable measure, rewarding sustained effort while still confirming that a student can apply their knowledge independently under exam conditions.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Along certain stretches of the deep ocean floor, mineral-rich water heated by volcanic activity below the seabed through openings known as hydrothermal vents. Because sunlight cannot penetrate to these depths, the organisms living around vents cannot rely on photosynthesis and instead depend on bacteria that chemicals such as hydrogen sulphide into usable energy, a process called chemosynthesis. These bacteria form the base of a food chain that supports unusual creatures, including giant tube worms that have no mouth or digestive system and instead on bacteria living within their own tissue. Because vent ecosystems exist in near-total darkness under extreme pressure, their discovery in the 1970s surprised biologists, who had previously assumed that all life ultimately energy from the sun. Similar ecosystems may exist beneath the icy surfaces of certain moons, a possibility that has interest in the search for life elsewhere in the solar system.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Cognitive load theory proposes that a learner's working memory, the mental workspace used to consciously process new information, can hold and manipulate only a limited amount of material at any one time, and that instruction is more effective when it is designed with this limitation in mind. According to the theory, learning is hindered when instructional materials impose unnecessary mental effort unrelated to the actual content being taught, such as requiring students to search a page for relevant information or mentally combine text and diagrams that are presented far apart from one another. Based on this reasoning, researchers recommend integrating related text and images closely together, removing redundant information that duplicates what a diagram already shows clearly, and gradually reducing step-by-step guidance as a learner gains expertise in a topic, since heavily detailed guidance that benefits a complete beginner can actually slow down a more advanced learner. Critics of the theory note that working memory limitations, while real, are difficult to measure precisely in a classroom setting, and that some recommended techniques have produced inconsistent results across different subjects and age groups, suggesting the theory may need to be applied with more nuance than its simplest form implies.
1. According to the passage, which TWO 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.
Translators of literary works face a persistent tension between remaining as faithful as possible to a source text's precise wording and producing a translation that reads naturally in the target language, since an overly literal rendering can sometimes meaning that would have been immediately clear to a reader of the original. Some translation theorists argue that a translator's primary duty is to the distinct rhythm, tone and cultural texture of the original text, even where this occasionally produces slightly unfamiliar phrasing for readers of the translation. Others contend that a translation should instead read as though it had been written directly in the target language from the outset, prioritising smooth, natural style over strict word-for-word accuracy. Because certain wordplay, cultural references or poetic devices frequently cannot be with complete accuracy in another language, translators must often make deliberate creative choices, effectively producing new text that captures an equivalent overall effect rather than an exact literal match. This ongoing debate has no single resolution, since different literary works and audiences different translation strategies.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Comets are often described as dirty snowballs, a simplified but broadly accurate description of objects composed of a mixture of ice, dust and small rocky particles left over from the formation of the solar system billions of years ago. For most of their long orbits, comets remain frozen and largely inactive far from the sun, but as a comet's orbit carries it closer to the sun's heat, its icy surface begins to vaporise, releasing gas and dust that form a glowing surrounding cloud known as a coma. Solar radiation and the constant outward flow of charged particles from the sun, called the solar wind, then push some of this released material into a long, faintly glowing tail that always points away from the sun regardless of the comet's direction of travel. Because comets have remained largely unchanged since the very early solar system, scientists view them as valuable, well-preserved time capsules, and several space missions have been specifically designed to collect actual physical samples directly from a comet in order to study this ancient, largely unaltered material firsthand.
3. According to the passage, why do scientists consider comets scientifically valuable?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
A common misconception is that sign language is just a set of gestures that mimic spoken language, or that there's one universal version. Neither is true. Sign languages are full languages with their own grammar, vocabulary and regional variation. British Sign Language and American Sign Language, for instance, are completely different and can't be understood by each other's users, even though the hearing communities in both countries speak English. Grammar in signed languages uses space and movement. A signer might place a person in one area of space and then point to that area to refer to them again. Facial expressions carry grammatical information too, such as marking a question. Research shows that deaf children who learn sign language early develop language normally, which is a strong argument for giving them access to it from birth, alongside any other support they receive.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Sign languages are complete languages with their own grammar and regional differences, not universal gestures; British and American Sign Language are mutually unintelligible. They use space, movement and facial expression to convey meaning, and deaf children exposed to them early develop language normally, so access from birth is very important.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Cognitive load theory starts from the fact that working memory is very limited. We can only hold a few pieces of new information in mind at once. If a lesson overloads that capacity, learning suffers. Researchers distinguish between load that's unavoidable because the material is difficult, and load created by poor teaching, such as confusing diagrams or unnecessary decoration. One practical finding is that novices learn better from worked examples than from being thrown into problems immediately. Another is that presenting words and pictures together helps, as long as the words aren't simply a copy of the text on the screen read aloud. As learners gain expertise, the guidance can be reduced, because their long-term memory already contains organised knowledge that lightens the load.
1. Which TWO recommendations are given for teaching?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Hydrogen is sometimes called the fuel of the future because burning it, or using it in a fuel cell, produces only , with no carbon dioxide released. The catch is that hydrogen doesn't exist freely in useful amounts; it must be produced, usually by splitting using electricity, in a process that only counts as clean if that electricity comes from renewable . Today, most commercial hydrogen is still made from natural gas, which releases carbon dioxide, so truly hydrogen depends on scaling up cheap renewable first.
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
The kaleidoscope was patented in eighteen sixteen by a Scottish physicist studying light and optics, who arranged two or three angled mirrors inside a tube along with loose, small pieces of coloured glass at one end, so that light reflecting repeatedly between the mirrors multiplied a single small, random arrangement into a strikingly symmetrical pattern. The toy became an immediate popular sensation across Britain and America within months of its release, with hundreds of thousands of units reportedly sold in London alone in a very short period, though the inventor's patent was poorly drafted and widely copied by other manufacturers, meaning he earned relatively little from an invention that had become a genuine craze. The basic mirror-and-tube principle has changed very little since, and kaleidoscopes remain popular as both children's toys and, in more elaborate versions, collectible art objects.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Sunlight looks white but contains all colours of the visible spectrum, and as it passes through Earth's atmosphere, it collides with tiny gas molecules far smaller than the light's wavelength. This collision scatters shorter wavelengths, toward the blue end of the spectrum, far more strongly and in far more directions than longer, redder wavelengths, a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. Because blue light is scattered so much more than other colours, it reaches our eyes from all directions across the sky rather than only directly from the sun, which is why the sky appears blue overall.
3. Why does the sky appear blue overall, 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 cold window fogs up when warm, relatively humid indoor air touches the significantly colder glass surface, cooling that thin layer of air rapidly below the temperature at which it can retain all its water vapour. The excess moisture then forms as countless tiny water droplets directly on the glass, bending light in a way that makes the surface look cloudy rather than clear.
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 18