A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 21
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.
The Amazon rainforest produces a significant portion of the world's oxygen and stores billions of tonnes of carbon. Deforestation, driven largely by cattle ranching and agriculture, threatens this balance. Scientists warn that if the forest loses too much of its canopy, it could shift from a carbon sink to a carbon source.
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Model answer: Say "significant" and "billions of tonnes" with clear stress. Pause after "carbon" and after "agriculture". Do not swallow the ending of "deforestation". In the last sentence, stress "too much", pause after "canopy", and contrast "sink" with "source" using a rising then falling tone.
A balanced diet includes a variety of foods from each main group: vegetables and fruit, whole grains, protein and dairy. Nutritionists caution that no single food supplies every nutrient, and that occasional treats need not spoil an otherwise healthy pattern of eating.
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Model answer: Pause after "group" and after the colon, then list the four items with rising tone and a falling tone on "dairy". Stress "no single food" and "occasional treats". Say "nutritionists" and "nutrient" clearly. Close on "eating" with a falling tone.
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Please read the safety instructions before using the equipment.
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Model answer: Most of the research was carried out during the summer holidays.
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Model answer: The delivery driver left the parcel with the neighbours.
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 line graph shows worldwide electric car sales from 2015 to 2022. Sales began modestly at half a million in 2015 and more than doubled to reach 1.2 million by 2017. Growth continued to 2.2 million in 2019 and 3 million in 2020. Then the line rises steeply, hitting 6.6 million in 2021 and 10.5 million in 2022. The market has therefore grown twentyfold in eight years, most dramatically in the last two.
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 urban air pollution from traffic, industry, and construction produces fine particulates that penetrate lungs and blood, causing respiratory and cardiovascular disease and possibly affecting cognitive development. Poorer neighborhoods near highways face greater exposure, making pollution a social equity issue. Cities are responding with low-emission zones and expanded public transit.
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: Emma argues eating meat is ethically hard to justify given industrial farming's suffering and environmental cost. Ben distinguishes factory farming from smaller-scale methods, resisting a blanket condemnation. Carla adds that even humane farming has heavier environmental costs than plant-based food. They converge on encouraging reduced meat consumption rather than demanding complete elimination.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: I reserved this book weeks ago specifically for an assignment due tomorrow, and I understand it was accidentally given to someone else. Is there any way to recall it quickly, check if another copy exists at a nearby branch, or point me toward the same material in a different format so I can still finish my work in time?
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
Stoicism, a philosophy founded in Athens around 300 BCE and later practised by figures as different as the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and the former slave Epictetus, has enjoyed a striking revival. Its central idea is a distinction between what is within our control and what is not. Our opinions, intentions and actions are ours to govern; other people's behaviour, the weather, our reputation and the outcome of our efforts are not. The Stoics taught that distress arises when we invest our peace of mind in things we cannot command, and that a calm, rational character can be cultivated through daily practice. Their exercises included imagining possible misfortunes in advance so that they would seem less shocking, and reviewing one's conduct each evening. Modern readers often encounter Stoicism as a practical guide to resilience, and it has influenced cognitive behavioural therapy, which similarly encourages people to examine the beliefs that shape their emotions. Yet some scholars complain that popular versions reduce a demanding ethical system to a toolkit for personal productivity. The ancient Stoics were not seeking mere calm; they believed that virtue, meaning wisdom, justice, courage and self-discipline, was the only true good, and they insisted on duties to the wider human community. To treat their teaching as a technique for coping with a stressful job, critics say, is to miss most of its purpose.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Stoicism, which teaches that peace comes from focusing only on what we control and has influenced modern therapy, is now popular as a self-help technique, but critics argue that this overlooks its original emphasis on virtue and duty to the community.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Military forces in several countries are developing autonomous weapons systems that can select and attack targets without direct human control. Should such weapons be banned internationally?
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Model answer: The development of weapons capable of identifying and attacking targets without a human making the final decision raises questions that existing laws of war were never designed to answer, and I believe an international ban, or at minimum very strict limits, is necessary.
Supporters of the technology argue that autonomous systems could react faster and more consistently than a human operator under stress, potentially reducing errors in split-second decisions, and that some degree of automation, such as defensive systems intercepting incoming missiles, is already widely accepted and has saved lives.
Nevertheless, allowing a machine to decide whether a human being lives or dies, without a person directly responsible for that specific decision, is deeply troubling. Accountability becomes unclear when an algorithm makes a fatal mistake, since it is difficult to say whether the fault lies with the programmer, the manufacturer or the military commander who deployed the system. There is also a serious risk that autonomous weapons could lower the threshold for starting conflicts, since sending machines rather than soldiers into danger reduces the domestic political cost of going to war, and that such systems could malfunction or be hacked with catastrophic consequences.
For these reasons, I believe fully autonomous weapons that select and engage human targets without meaningful human control should be prohibited by international treaty, similar to existing bans on chemical and biological weapons, while defensive and clearly supervised systems could continue to be used under strict oversight.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
In 2015, physicists announced that they had directly gravitational waves, tiny ripples in space itself predicted a century earlier by Einstein's theory of general relativity. The signal had been produced by two black holes colliding more than a billion light years away, an event so distant that the resulting ripple, by the time it Earth, stretched space by an almost immeasurably small amount. To detect such a faint signal, researchers built enormous instruments capable of measuring changes in distance far smaller the width of a single proton. Because the detectors must be sensitive to such tiny disturbances, engineers had to eliminate nearly every source of vibration, including distant traffic and even the movement of ocean waves, could otherwise overwhelm the signal. The discovery opened an entirely new way of observing the universe, one that does not light at all.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Rice was independently domesticated from wild grasses in at least two separate regions of Asia thousands of years ago, a process that involved gradually selecting plants with traits more useful to farmers, such as seeds that stayed attached to the plant until harvest rather than scattering naturally. Wild rice varieties shed their seeds readily, an effective strategy for spreading in the wild but a serious inconvenience for early farmers trying to gather a harvest, so plants that retained their seeds longer were, whether deliberately or accidentally, favoured and replanted more often. Over many generations of cultivation, domesticated rice diverged significantly from its wild ancestors, developing larger seeds, more reliable germination and higher yields under managed farming conditions. The spread of rice cultivation supported the growth of dense populations across much of Asia, since a single field of rice can feed far more people than an equivalent area of land used for hunting or gathering wild food. Today, thousands of distinct rice varieties exist, adapted to conditions ranging from flooded paddies to dry upland fields, reflecting the crop's long history of continuous selection by farmers across many different environments.
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.
As roads, farmland and urban development increasingly fragment natural habitats into smaller, isolated patches, conservationists have promoted the creation of wildlife corridors, strips of protected natural habitat that separate patches of habitat and allow animals to move safely between them. These corridors can take many different forms, ranging from a relatively narrow strip of forest planted deliberately along a riverbank to a large, specially constructed overpass or underpass specifically intended to allow animals to cross safely beneath or above a busy highway. Without such connections, isolated populations of animals confined to a single small habitat patch can become genetically from other populations of the same species, a situation that can gradually reduce genetic diversity within that isolated group and, over the long term, increase its vulnerability to disease or environmental change. Wildlife corridors have proven particularly valuable for large mammals that naturally require extensive territory or seasonal migration routes to survive, such as elk, wolves or certain big cats, species that cannot practically survive long-term when confined to a single small, isolated protected area. Researchers evaluating corridor projects generally recommend carefully monitoring animal movement using tracking collars or motion-activated cameras to confidently that a newly created corridor is actually being used as intended by the specific target species it was designed for.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Retailers frequently price products just below a round number, such as setting a price at $9.99 rather than an even $10.00, a common pricing strategy researchers refer to as charm pricing. Studies examining consumer behaviour suggest that shoppers often perceive a price ending in .99 as meaningfully cheaper than the corresponding round number, even though the actual difference in price amounts to only a single cent, an effect researchers attribute partly to a natural tendency to focus disproportionately on the leftmost digit of a price when quickly processing and comparing numerical information. Some researchers further argue that a price ending specifically in nine or a similarly incomplete-looking number can subtly signal to a shopper that a genuine bargain or discount is being offered, even in cases where no actual discount from a product's usual price has genuinely been applied at all. Retail researchers have found that this pricing effect tends to be considerably stronger for relatively inexpensive, more impulsively purchased everyday items than for large, carefully considered purchases such as houses or cars, where buyers generally engage in more careful, deliberate calculation before ultimately committing to a purchase decision. Despite extensive academic study of the underlying psychological mechanism, charm pricing remains remarkably widespread across retail environments today, suggesting that most retailers continue to regard it as a genuinely effective and simple pricing strategy.
3. According to the passage, why might charm pricing appear cheaper to shoppers?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
Dyslexia is one of the most common learning differences, affecting perhaps one in ten people, yet it's frequently misunderstood. It has nothing to do with intelligence, and it isn't caused by poor teaching or lack of effort. Brain imaging shows that people with dyslexia process the sounds of language differently, which makes it harder to link letters to sounds and to spell accurately. Reading is therefore slow and tiring, and children may hide their difficulty by avoiding reading aloud. The good news is that early support makes a big difference. Structured programmes that teach the connections between letters and sounds explicitly, in small steps with plenty of repetition, help most children. Many people with dyslexia also have notable strengths in creativity, visual thinking and problem solving. Schools can help by giving extra time and allowing the use of audio books and software.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Dyslexia affects about one in ten people and is unrelated to intelligence or effort; it arises from differences in processing language sounds, making reading and spelling difficult. Early, structured teaching of letter-sound links helps greatly, and schools can offer extra time and audio resources, while recognising that many dyslexic people have strengths in creativity and problem solving.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
The magnetic compass was first developed in China, where by around the second century BCE, naturally magnetised iron ore known as lodestone had already been noticed to align itself in a particular direction. Early versions were used for divination and geomancy rather than travel, arranged on flat boards marked with astrological symbols. It wasn't until several centuries later, around the eleventh century, that Chinese texts describe compasses being used for navigation at sea, floating a magnetised needle on water or balancing it on a pivot. The technology reached Europe and the Arab world by around the twelfth century, likely through trade contacts, and it transformed long-distance sailing, allowing ships to hold a course even when clouds hid the stars and coastlines were out of sight. Without it, many of the long ocean voyages of the following centuries would have been far riskier.
1. Which THREE statements are true according to the lecture?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
As the ocean absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans release, a chemical reaction slowly lowers the water's , a process called ocean acidification. This matters for creatures such as oysters and corals, which build shells from carbonate, a mineral that dissolves more easily in acidic water. Some fish larvae also show a disrupted sense of in more acidic water, making it harder to detect . Because the change is happening faster than past natural shifts, many species may lack enough to adapt through evolution alone.
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
For most of history, people ate with their hands, a knife, or a spoon, and the fork was regarded with suspicion for centuries after it first appeared. Byzantine nobility used forks earlier than most of Europe, but when a Byzantine princess brought the utensil to Venice in the eleventh century, it was reportedly seen as a sign of excessive delicacy, even sinful vanity, since fingers were considered God-given tools for eating. Forks spread slowly across Italy over the following centuries and only reached northern Europe and England widely by the seventeenth century, often mocked as an affectation copied from the French. It took a long social process before the fork became the ordinary, unremarkable utensil we consider it today.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
While the mechanism of interlocking teeth pulled together by a sliding tab existed since the early twentieth century, the small pull tab itself, the part a user actually grips, went through considerable redesign over subsequent decades to improve grip and reduce snagging on fabric. Manufacturers tried different shapes, including rings, flat tabs and small loops, eventually finding a slightly curved, easily gripped tab reduced the chance of the slider catching on nearby fabric while remaining simple and cheap to manufacture at scale. Some modern jackets now use oversized pull tabs designed to be operated easily even while wearing thick gloves.
3. Why did manufacturers redesign the small pull tab on a zipper slider, 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. Simple woven mats placed outside a doorway to remove dirt and mud from shoes have been used for centuries, though manufactured coir doormats made from coconut husk fibre only became commonly available in the nineteenth century. The rough, bristly fibre proved remarkably effective at scraping mud loose, and its natural toughness against constant foot traffic quickly made it the standard material for decades.
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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