A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 22
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.
Penguins are flightless birds perfectly adapted to life in cold water. Their dense feathers trap a layer of air for warmth, while their streamlined bodies and strong flippers allow them to swim at speeds of up to twenty-five kilometres an hour. On land, they huddle together to conserve heat.
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Model answer: Stress "flightless" and "perfectly adapted". Pause after "water", "warmth" and "hour". Say "twenty-five kilometres an hour" as one smooth phrase. The last sentence should sound lighter: emphasise "huddle" and fall on "heat".
Language is constantly evolving. New words appear through technology and popular culture, older words shift in meaning, and pronunciation changes from one generation to the next. What sounds incorrect to one speaker may be perfectly ordinary to another.
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Model answer: Open with emphasis on "constantly evolving". Pause after "culture" and after "meaning". Give "one generation to the next" a smooth rhythm. In the last sentence, contrast "incorrect" with "perfectly ordinary" and fall on "another".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Thunderstorms are common in this region during the summer months.
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Model answer: The old town hall was rebuilt after the great fire of sixteen sixty-six.
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Model answer: Please speak more slowly so that everyone can take notes.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
| Price (dollars) | Battery life (hours) | Weight (grams) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model A | 999 | 22 | 187 |
| Model B | 599 | 30 | 175 |
| Model C | 349 | 36 | 205 |
| Model D | 799 | 26 | 165 |
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 table compares four smartphones on price, battery life and weight. Model A is the most expensive, at 999 dollars, but its battery lasts only 22 hours, the shortest. Model C is cheapest at 349 dollars and has the longest battery life, 36 hours, although it is the heaviest at 205 grams. Model D is the lightest at 165 grams, and Model B offers a middle option at 599 dollars with 30 hours.
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 describes the urban heat island effect, where cities stay several degrees warmer than surrounding areas because concrete and asphalt absorb and slowly release heat, while buildings block cooling winds. Heat from vehicles and machines adds further warming. The lecturer notes this burden falls unevenly, with poorer neighborhoods lacking trees suffering more during heatwaves.
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 criticizes keystroke-tracking software as invasive and trust-damaging. Frank defends monitoring as ensuring remote employees work paid hours fairly. Grace distinguishes measuring output from tracking every activity. They agree focusing on transparent, output-based accountability, rather than granular surveillance, better balances fairness with employee trust and privacy.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: This is genuinely difficult news given how many people are relying on this event happening tomorrow as planned. I understand mistakes happen, but I really need your help finding a solution right now. Could you check if you have any other space available at your venue, or help me contact a similar nearby venue that might accommodate us on short notice.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
A blockchain is a shared digital ledger in which records, called blocks, are linked together in chronological order and copied across thousands of computers. Each block contains a mathematical fingerprint of the previous one, so altering any past entry would change every subsequent fingerprint and be instantly detectable by the other participants. Because no single organisation controls the ledger, users can in principle trust the record without needing to trust a bank or government. The technology first attracted attention as the foundation of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, but proponents have suggested applications ranging from tracking food shipments to registering land ownership and verifying academic certificates. Reality has been more modest than the promises. Many pilot projects were abandoned because a conventional database performed the same task more cheaply and quickly. The energy consumption of some blockchains, which rely on intensive computation to validate transactions, has also drawn criticism, though newer designs use far less power. Moreover, a blockchain guarantees only that a record has not been altered after being entered; it cannot verify that the original information was accurate, so a falsely labelled shipment remains false when written into an unchangeable ledger. Most experts therefore conclude that blockchain is valuable in a narrow set of circumstances, namely where several parties who do not trust one another need a common record, rather than being a universal solution to problems of trust.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: A blockchain is a tamper-evident shared ledger that removes the need for a central authority, but because it cannot ensure the accuracy of initial data and often proves costlier than ordinary databases, experts consider it useful only where mutually distrustful parties need a common record.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
In many countries, people are living longer and the proportion of elderly citizens is increasing. Some argue that the retirement age should be raised as a result. To what extent do you agree?
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Model answer: Longer lifespans and lower birth rates mean that fewer workers must support a growing number of pensioners. In these circumstances, I agree that the retirement age should be raised, but only if the change is introduced gradually and with proper safeguards.
The financial reasoning is difficult to deny. State pension systems in many countries were designed when people typically lived only a few years after retiring, whereas today they may receive payments for twenty or thirty years. If nothing changes, taxes on the working population would have to increase sharply, or pensions would have to be cut. Encouraging people to work a little longer helps to maintain both the economy and the value of pensions. Many older people are also healthy and willing to continue, and their experience is valuable to employers.
However, an increase in the retirement age is unfair to certain groups. Someone who has spent forty years in physically demanding work, such as construction or nursing, may be exhausted at sixty-five, and people in poorer areas tend to have shorter life expectancy. Some employers are also reluctant to hire older workers.
Therefore, reforms should be phased in over many years, allow early retirement with reduced benefits for those in strenuous occupations, and be accompanied by measures against age discrimination and by opportunities for retraining. Under those conditions, raising the retirement age is a sensible response to demographic change.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Plants that grow in deserts have evolved a range of strategies to survive long periods with little or no rainfall. Cacti, for instance, store water in thick, fleshy stems and have their leaves to spines, which minimises the surface area through which moisture can evaporate. Some desert plants instead complete their entire life cycle within a few weeks after rare rainfall, seeds that can then lie dormant in the soil for years, waiting for the next opportunity to grow. Others send roots remarkably deep into the ground in search of underground water that remains reach for most other vegetation. Because competition for scarce water is intense, desert plants are often spaced far apart, which explains why deserts, despite their harsh conditions, are entirely lifeless.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
The practice of isolating people suspected of carrying a contagious disease has ancient roots, but the term quarantine originates from a specific policy adopted by Mediterranean port cities during the fourteenth century, which required ships arriving from plague-affected regions to wait at anchor, typically for around forty days, before passengers and crew were permitted to come ashore. Officials at the time did not understand the biological mechanism behind disease transmission, since the existence of bacteria and viruses would not be scientifically established for centuries, but they had observed empirically that isolating new arrivals for a sufficient period reduced the spread of disease into a city, even without understanding precisely why the approach worked. As scientific understanding of infectious disease advanced considerably in later centuries, quarantine practices became more precisely targeted, informed by specific knowledge of how a particular disease spreads and how long its incubation period typically lasts, rather than relying on a single fixed waiting period applied uniformly to any suspected illness. Modern public health authorities continue to use quarantine and isolation measures during disease outbreaks, though the practice remains ethically and politically controversial, since it necessarily restricts individual freedom of movement in order to protect the wider public from a health risk that any particular isolated individual may or may not actually pose.
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.
The Global Positioning System determines a receiver's precise location by measuring the exact time it takes for signals broadcast from several orbiting satellites to the receiving device on the ground, a process that depends on extraordinarily precise atomic clocks carried aboard each satellite. Because these signals travel at the speed of light, even an extremely small timing error can a significant error in the calculated location, which is why GPS satellites require such precise timekeeping equipment. A receiver typically needs to detect signals from at least four different satellites simultaneously to its position accurately in three dimensions, including altitude as well as horizontal location. Interestingly, the effects of Einstein's theory of relativity, including the fact that time passes very slightly differently for a satellite in orbit compared with a receiver on the ground, must be carefully accounted for in the system's calculations, since even this exceedingly small discrepancy would otherwise into significant positioning errors within just a single day. Engineers therefore designed the system's atomic clocks to compensate for this relativistic effect from the very outset.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
An epistolary novel tells its story entirely, or almost entirely, through a series of documents, most commonly letters exchanged between characters, though some examples instead rely on diary entries, newspaper clippings or, in more recent examples, emails and text messages. This distinctive format offers a novelist a particular narrative advantage: because each letter is written directly by a specific character addressing another, readers gain especially intimate, unfiltered access to that character's own private thoughts, feelings and personal biases, without any single, seemingly neutral outside narrator mediating or filtering the story on the reader's behalf. The format also allows an author to present the very same significant event from multiple, sometimes sharply conflicting character perspectives, since different letter-writers describing an identical event may notice, emphasise or even deliberately misrepresent quite different details depending on their own individual personality, motives or level of genuine self-awareness. Early epistolary novels, popular particularly during the eighteenth century, sometimes struggled to plausibly explain why characters would conveniently write such long, detailed letters about events the reader needed to know, a structural challenge later authors addressed through increasingly creative narrative devices. Despite these practical challenges, the format has continued to be adapted successfully by later writers, including in some contemporary novels composed partly or entirely from text messages and emails.
3. According to the passage, what particular narrative advantage does the epistolary format offer?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
Stoicism began in ancient Athens around three hundred B.C. and later flourished in Rome, where thinkers like Seneca and the emperor Marcus Aurelius practised it. The Stoics argued that we can't control external events, such as other people's opinions, illness or misfortune, but we can control our own judgments and responses. Happiness, they said, comes from living according to reason and virtue rather than chasing wealth or status. They developed practical exercises, like imagining the worst that could happen, so that it loses its power to frighten us, and reviewing each evening how we behaved during the day. Interestingly, Stoic ideas have had a modern revival. Cognitive behavioural therapy, for example, is built on the observation that our beliefs about events, not the events themselves, shape our emotions. Many people find Stoic advice useful for managing stress.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Stoicism taught that people cannot control external events but can control their judgments, so happiness comes from reason and virtue rather than wealth or status. Its exercises, such as imagining the worst and reviewing one's day, remain popular, and its emphasis on beliefs shaping emotions influenced modern cognitive behavioural therapy.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Hydropower supplies about sixteen percent of the world's electricity, and it's one of the cheapest sources once a dam has been built. Dams also store water, which helps with irrigation and flood control, and their output can be adjusted quickly to match demand. However, large dams have serious costs. Building a reservoir floods valleys, which can force thousands of people to leave their homes, and it destroys habitats. Dams block the movement of fish such as salmon, and they trap sediment that would otherwise fertilise land downstream. In warm climates, the rotting vegetation in reservoirs can release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Because of these problems, many countries are now favouring smaller schemes or fitting fish ladders to existing dams, rather than constructing enormous new ones.
1. Which of the following are mentioned as advantages or disadvantages of large dams?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Volcanic ash is made of tiny, extremely hard particles of rock, and although it looks like smoke from a distance, it poses a serious danger to . When a plane flies through an ash cloud, the abrasive particles can scratch windows, clog sensors, and even melt inside a jet engine's hot core before resolidifying on cooler further back, which can stall the engine. Several aircraft have suffered engine failure this way after flying into ash from a distant , though pilots restarted the engines and landed safely. Authorities now track ash clouds far more using satellite .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Plain concrete is strong when compressed but weak when stretched or bent, meaning a concrete beam under load can crack and fail on its underside long before the material as a whole reaches its compressive limit. In the mid-nineteenth century, several inventors experimented with embedding iron or steel rods within concrete before it set, since steel is excellent at resisting exactly the stretching forces concrete struggles with, and the two materials bond together as the concrete cures around the rods. This combination, reinforced concrete, allowed engineers to build far longer, thinner beams and slabs than plain concrete alone could safely support, and it became one of the foundational technologies behind twentieth-century construction, from bridges and dams to the skeletons of modern skyscrapers.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
A whistling kettle produces its sound through a small opening in the spout fitted with a specially shaped whistle mechanism, and as water boils, steam rushes rapidly through this narrow opening, creating turbulence that generates a rhythmic, high-pitched sound in a manner similar to how blowing across the top of a bottle produces a note. As the water continues boiling and steam pressure builds and escapes more forcefully, the pitch and volume of the whistle typically increase, which is precisely why the sound serves as a clear, useful signal that the water has reached a full boil and the kettle should be removed from the heat source.
3. What causes the sound produced by a whistling kettle, 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. An elephant's trunk contains no bones at all, relying instead on an estimated forty thousand individual muscles that allow extraordinarily precise and flexible movement. African elephants use two small fingerlike extensions at the trunk's tip to pick a single blade of grass with remarkable delicacy, while the same trunk can easily apply enough force to uproot an entire small tree when needed.
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 23