A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 19
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.
Remote work has changed how companies think about offices. Many employees report higher productivity at home, yet managers worry about weaker team cohesion and fewer spontaneous conversations. As a result, hybrid arrangements, combining two or three office days with home working, have become increasingly common.
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Model answer: Sound confident and even. Stress "changed", "higher productivity" and "weaker team cohesion" to mark the contrast around "yet". Pause after "As a result". Say the numbers in "two or three" clearly, and finish with falling intonation on "common".
Plate tectonics explains why earthquakes and volcanoes are concentrated in particular regions. The Earth's outer shell is divided into rigid plates that move a few centimetres each year. Where two plates collide, slide past one another or pull apart, enormous stresses build up and are eventually released.
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Model answer: Pronounce "tectonics" with stress on the second syllable. Pause after "regions" and after "year". Give the three verbs "collide, slide past one another or pull apart" a rhythmic list pattern, then slow down for "enormous stresses" and end with a falling tone on "released".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Please remember that no food or drink is allowed in the computer room.
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Model answer: Please make sure that your answers are written in black ink.
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Model answer: The author argues that cities should have more parks and green spaces.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
| Men | Women | |
|---|---|---|
| Under 18 | 140 | 120 |
| 18-30 | 210 | 260 |
| 31-45 | 180 | 220 |
| 46-60 | 95 | 130 |
| Over 60 | 40 | 85 |
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 table shows membership of a sports club by age and gender. The largest group is women aged 18 to 30 with 260 members, followed by women aged 31 to 45 with 220. Men are in the majority only among the under-18s, 140 compared with 120. In every other age group women outnumber men, and the difference is greatest among the over-60s, where there are 85 women but only 40 men.
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 paper money to seventh-century Tang dynasty China, starting as merchant promissory notes later standardized and metal-backed by the Song government. Europe adopted paper currency much later due to counterfeiting and inflation fears. Today's fiat money relies purely on trust in governments rather than gold or silver backing.
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 colonial-era artifacts should be returned to their countries of origin. Anna raises concerns about preservation infrastructure in some origin countries. Ben suggests funding partnerships to build that infrastructure rather than delaying returns. They agree on transitional arrangements like shared custody, provided there's a clear, funded timeline toward full return, not indefinite postponement.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: The sleeves are noticeably too long, even though the measurements I gave you were correct, so something must have shifted during the alteration. I really need this fixed before tomorrow's wedding, since there's no other option ready. Is there any way you could adjust the sleeves quickly today, even if it means staying a bit later at the shop?
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
As freshwater supplies come under pressure from population growth and drought, more countries are turning to the sea. Desalination plants remove salt from seawater, producing drinking water in regions where rivers and aquifers are inadequate. Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates already obtain a large share of their supply this way, and cities such as Perth and San Diego have built plants as insurance against drought. The dominant technology, reverse osmosis, forces seawater at high pressure through membranes that allow water molecules to pass while blocking salt. Improvements in membranes and energy recovery devices have reduced the electricity needed to a fraction of what earlier thermal methods required, and the cost of desalinated water has fallen steadily. Nevertheless, the process remains more expensive and energy-intensive than drawing on rivers or recycling wastewater, which limits its use in poorer countries. It also produces a dense brine, containing salt and chemical residues, which is usually released back into the sea, where it can harm marine life near the outlet if not dispersed properly. Engineers are testing techniques for diluting the discharge, extracting valuable minerals from it, and powering plants with solar energy. Water specialists generally regard desalination as a valuable component of a diversified supply, but they emphasise that reducing leaks, pricing water fairly and reusing treated wastewater are cheaper first steps.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Desalination is increasingly used to secure drinking water in dry regions and has become cheaper through better membranes, but because it remains costly, energy-intensive and produces harmful brine, specialists see it as one part of a diversified supply after cheaper measures such as leak reduction and wastewater reuse.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Many people now get their news from social media instead of newspapers and television. Is this a positive or negative trend? Give reasons and examples.
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Model answer: A growing number of people, especially the young, first learn about world events from a scrolling feed rather than from a bulletin or newspaper. In my opinion, this trend is more negative than positive, although social media has some real strengths.
On the positive side, news now travels faster and reaches people who never bought a paper. Eyewitnesses can share video within seconds, as happened during many protests and natural disasters, and citizens in countries with restricted media can bypass censorship. Readers can also follow a wide range of sources rather than depending on a few large organisations.
The drawbacks, however, are serious. Social platforms are designed to maximise attention, so posts that provoke anger or fear spread faster than careful reporting, and false stories often travel further than corrections. Algorithms tend to show users material that matches their existing opinions, creating bubbles where people rarely encounter opposing views, which deepens political division. Because most users read only headlines, complex subjects are reduced to slogans, and traditional journalism, which employs trained reporters and editors, loses the income needed to investigate properly.
Rather than abandoning social media, readers should learn to check the source of information, compare several outlets before sharing a story, and pay for reliable journalism. Schools also have a role in teaching media literacy. Used critically, social media can supplement good news coverage, but it is a poor replacement for it.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Ancient civilisations developed calendars primarily to track the passage of seasons, since knowing when to plant and harvest crops heavily on the timing of predictable events such as the flooding of a river or the changing length of daylight. Many early calendars were based on the visible cycle of the moon, which repeats roughly every twenty-nine days, although a purely lunar calendar gradually out of alignment with the solar year unless extra days or months are periodically inserted. The calendar widely used today descends from a Roman system that was later refined to correct a small but steadily accumulating error had caused the calendar to drift noticeably out of step with the actual seasons over many centuries. Even after this correction, the calendar still requires an extra day approximately every four years, a leap year, it accurately aligned with the time the Earth actually takes to orbit the sun. Some historians argue that calendar reform remains one of the most underappreciated administrative achievements the ancient and early modern world.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
The telescope is often associated with Galileo, but he did not invent the device; rather, a Dutch spectacle maker applied for a patent on a simple magnifying instrument several years before Galileo built his own improved version. What distinguished Galileo's contribution was not the basic idea but his systematic refinement of the lenses and his decision to point the instrument at the night sky rather than using it only for terrestrial viewing, as earlier versions had mostly been used. Through his telescope, Galileo observed mountains and craters on the moon, four moons orbiting Jupiter, and the phases of Venus, observations that directly challenged the prevailing belief that all heavenly bodies were perfect, unchanging spheres orbiting a stationary Earth. His findings provided strong observational support for the theory that the Earth orbits the sun, a view that brought him into serious conflict with religious authorities of the time. Although Galileo's telescope was primitive by modern standards, magnifying objects only a few dozen times compared with the thousands of times achieved by today's instruments, his willingness to trust and publish what he observed marked a significant turning point in the history of astronomy.
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.
Baroque composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries frequently expected performers to a written melody with additional notes, trills and flourishes that were not always fully notated on the page. This practice, known as ornamentation, allowed skilled musicians to their individual technical skill and personal taste within a performance, since two musicians playing from the identical score might add quite different decorative flourishes. Composers generally trusted performers to apply ornamentation with good taste, though some also wrote out detailed models to less experienced players unfamiliar with the expected style. Modern musicians attempting historically informed performance must therefore study contemporary treatises and surviving written examples to a plausible approximation of period-appropriate ornamentation, since much of this once-common performance knowledge was passed down through direct teaching rather than detailed written instruction.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Break-even analysis is a financial calculation businesses use to determine the specific point at which total revenue from sales exactly equals total costs, meaning the business is neither making a profit nor incurring a loss at that particular level of sales activity. To calculate this point, a business must first separate its costs into two broad categories: fixed costs, such as rent or insurance, which remain essentially constant regardless of how many units are actually produced or sold, and variable costs, such as raw materials or hourly production labour, which rise or fall roughly in direct proportion to the specific quantity produced. Once a business knows its fixed costs, its variable cost per individual unit, and the price it charges per unit, it can calculate precisely how many units it must sell to fully cover all of its combined costs, with any additional sales beyond that specific break-even point then contributing directly toward the business's overall profit. This analysis proves particularly valuable when a business is considering a significant new investment or evaluating a proposed price change, since it allows managers to clearly see, in advance, exactly how a specific change in either price or underlying cost structure would directly affect the minimum sales volume genuinely required for that particular venture to remain financially viable.
3. What is the break-even point, according to the passage?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
New Zealand introduced one of the world's first national minimum wage laws in eighteen ninety-four, aiming to stop employers undercutting each other by pushing wages below what workers needed to live on. Economists have debated the policy's effects ever since. Traditional theory predicted that setting wages above the market rate would simply reduce the number of jobs available, since employers would hire fewer workers at the higher cost. However, several large studies comparing neighbouring regions with different minimum wage levels found surprisingly small effects on employment, sparking a rethink. One explanation is that employers hold some market power over local wages, so a moderate minimum wage increase can raise pay without necessarily cutting jobs, particularly in industries where switching employers is costly or inconvenient for workers. Economists broadly agree, though, that a minimum wage set far above local market wages would eventually reduce employment noticeably.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: New Zealand introduced an early minimum wage in 1894 to stop wages being pushed below subsistence level. Classical theory predicted job losses, but studies comparing regions with different minimum wages often found only small employment effects, suggesting employers hold some wage-setting power locally. Economists agree, however, that a minimum wage set far above market rates would eventually reduce employment.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Keeping honeybee hives on city rooftops has become popular in the last two decades, promoted as a way to help pollinators and produce local honey. Cities can actually suit bees quite well, since parks, gardens and even weeds along pavements provide a longer, more varied flowering season than some monoculture farmland. However, ecologists have raised a concern: in areas with limited flowers, a boom in managed honeybee colonies can crowd out wild bees and other native pollinators, which are already struggling and, unlike honeybees, cannot be moved to richer feeding grounds when food runs short. Experts increasingly suggest that planting more flowers and reducing pesticide use benefits pollinators more broadly than adding hives alone. Some cities now require beekeepers to register their hives, partly to monitor disease and partly to track how many colonies a given area can reasonably support.
1. Which of the following does the speaker mention?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Before the eighteen forties, sending a letter usually meant the recipient, not the sender, paid postage on delivery, a system that often left unpaid, refused piling up at post offices. In eighteen forty, a British reformer introduced the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage , letting senders prepay a fixed low price regardless of distance. The idea spread to other countries within a , each issuing its own stamps, often featuring a monarch's . Stamp collecting became a popular hobby, and rare early stamps with printing errors now sell for enormous at auction.
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Glass had been shaped for thousands of years before glassblowing was developed, but earlier techniques, such as pouring molten glass into a mould or slowly building up layers around a core, were slow and limited to fairly simple shapes. Glassblowing, developed by Syrian craftsmen around the first century BCE, involves gathering molten glass on the end of a hollow metal tube and blowing air through it to inflate a bubble that can then be shaped, stretched and cut while still soft, allowing far more complex and thin-walled vessels to be produced much faster than before. The technique spread rapidly through the Roman Empire, dramatically reducing the cost of glass vessels and making glass containers common household items for the first time, rather than rare luxury objects reserved almost exclusively for the wealthy.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
A thin soap film can support surprisingly heavy objects placed carefully on its surface, not because the film is strong like a solid sheet, but because of surface tension, a liquid's tendency to act like a stretched elastic skin. Soap molecules reduce water's surface tension just enough to let a film stretch into a stable shape without collapsing, while holding together far better than pure water alone. Scientists studying minimal surfaces, shapes using the least possible area to span a frame, often use soap films as physical models, since a film naturally settles into that efficient shape.
3. Why do scientists use soap films to study minimal surfaces?
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. An early roller skate design, patented in the mid-eighteenth century by a Belgian inventor, reportedly used small metal wheels arranged in a single straight line, an arrangement that made cornering extremely difficult and famously led to an embarrassing public demonstration. Later inventors eventually solved the steering problem by arranging four wheels in two side-by-side pairs, a practical change that made smooth turning possible.
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
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