A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 3
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 Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the late eighteenth century. Steam-powered machinery replaced manual labour in textile factories, and cities grew rapidly as workers moved from the countryside. While productivity soared, living conditions for many families were crowded, unhealthy and dangerous.
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Model answer: Say "eighteenth century" with a clear "th" sound. Pause after "Britain", "factories" and "countryside". Stress the contrast between "productivity soared" and the three adjectives at the end. Give each adjective, "crowded, unhealthy and dangerous", equal weight, with a firm falling tone on the last.
Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, yet they support roughly a quarter of all marine species. Rising sea temperatures cause corals to expel the algae that feed them, a process known as bleaching. If the water cools quickly enough, the coral can recover; prolonged heat, however, usually proves fatal.
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Model answer: Pause briefly after "ocean floor" and after "marine species". Stress "less than one percent" and "quarter". Slow down slightly on the technical term "bleaching", then speed up naturally through the last clause. Give "however" a short pause on each side and drop your voice on the final word, "fatal".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Students are encouraged to use the free tutoring service.
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Model answer: The seminar was so interesting that nobody wanted to leave.
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Model answer: Our flight was delayed by two hours because of fog.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
Apartments — 46%
Detached houses — 39%
Terraced houses — 8%
Student housing — 3%
Other — 4%
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 pie chart shows the types of home Swedish households live in. Nearly half, 46 percent, live in apartments, and detached houses come next at 39 percent. Terraced houses account for 8 percent, student housing for 3 and other kinds of home for 4. Together, apartments and detached houses house 85 percent of the population, so these two types are overwhelmingly the norm.
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 highlights octopus intelligence, noting their tool use and jar-opening ability despite lacking a backbone. Unusually, about two-thirds of their neurons sit in their arms, allowing semi-independent reaction alongside coordination with the brain. While debate continues over how this compares to true intelligence, learning and memory experiments suggest genuine problem-solving skill.
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: David argues social media harms teen self-esteem through constant comparison. Emma counters that it helps isolated teens find community. Frank reframes the problem as addictive algorithm design rather than the platforms themselves. They converge on regulating addictive features like infinite scroll and autoplay, combined with stronger content moderation, rather than banning teen use outright.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: We booked a table for six for a birthday celebration, and although one guest hasn't arrived yet, all six of us will definitely be here shortly. A table for four won't work for us tonight. Could you either combine two smaller tables together or let us know how long we'd need to wait for the right table.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
Many of the world's major museums hold objects acquired during the colonial era, sometimes through purchase or excavation agreements, but often through military conquest or coercion. Demands for their return have intensified. Nigeria has pressed for the restitution of bronzes taken from the Kingdom of Benin in 1897, Greece has long requested the Parthenon sculptures held in London, and several indigenous communities in North America and Australia have secured the repatriation of ancestral remains and sacred items. Museums have traditionally defended their collections on three grounds: that objects are safer in institutions with expert conservation, that free public access in major cities lets people from many nations encounter world cultures, and that legal transfers cannot easily be reversed centuries later. Critics reply that these arguments echo the same paternalism that justified the original acquisition, that improved museums now exist in the countries of origin, and that display far from its cultural setting strips objects of meaning. Recently, the debate has moved from confrontation towards negotiation. Some institutions have agreed to return specific items, while others propose long-term loans, shared curatorship or digital access. Legal barriers remain, since national laws in some countries prevent museums from deaccessioning their holdings. Whatever compromises emerge, the discussion has already changed practice, as museums increasingly research the provenance of their collections and acknowledge the circumstances in which objects were obtained.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Although museums defend colonial-era collections by citing conservation, public access and legal difficulty, source communities argue for restitution, and the debate is shifting towards negotiated solutions such as returns, loans and shared curation while institutions increasingly investigate how their objects were acquired.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
The fashion industry produces a huge amount of waste because many people now buy cheap clothes and discard them after wearing them only a few times. What can be done to address this problem?
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Model answer: The rise of inexpensive, rapidly changing fashion has transformed clothing into a disposable product, and addressing the resulting waste requires action from consumers, companies and governments together.
The scale of the problem is striking. Vast quantities of textiles are discarded every year, much of it synthetic material that takes decades to decompose or that sheds microplastic fibres when washed. Cheap manufacturing is often associated with poor working conditions and heavy water and chemical use in producing dyes and fabrics, so the environmental and human costs extend well beyond the landfill.
Consumers can help by buying fewer, better-made garments, choosing natural or recycled fabrics, and using repair or resale services instead of discarding clothes after only a few wears. However, individual choices alone cannot solve a problem driven by business models built on constant new releases and artificially low prices.
For that reason, I believe governments should require clothing companies to disclose their environmental impact, fund the collection and recycling of used textiles, and consider taxing garments that cannot be recycled or repaired. Fashion companies, meanwhile, should be encouraged, through regulation if necessary, to design clothes that last longer and to take financial responsibility for the waste their products eventually create. Only a combination of informed consumers, responsible companies and firm government policy is likely to slow the growth of textile waste significantly.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Game theory studies how individuals make decisions when the outcome for each person the choices made by others. In a classic scenario known as the prisoner's dilemma, two individuals would each benefit most by cooperating, yet each also has a strong incentive to betray the other, since betrayal offers a better outcome what the other person chooses. When the same two people interact repeatedly rather than only once, researchers have found that cooperation often naturally, since betrayal in one round can be punished in the next. This insight has been applied well beyond abstract puzzles, helping to explain patterns of cooperation and conflict business competition, international relations and even animal behaviour. Economists continue to refine these models to capture situations trust must be built gradually over repeated encounters.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Although procrastination is often dismissed as simple laziness, psychologists increasingly view it as a more complex problem related to emotional regulation rather than a lack of willpower or time-management skill. According to this view, people delay tasks not because they do not know what needs to be done, but because starting the task triggers uncomfortable emotions, such as anxiety about failure or boredom with an unrewarding activity, and postponing it offers immediate, if temporary, relief from that discomfort. This explains why procrastination frequently affects tasks that matter most to a person, such as an important exam or a significant work project, since the emotional stakes, and therefore the discomfort involved in starting, tend to be higher. Popular strategies such as strict scheduling or productivity apps often fail for chronic procrastinators because they address the symptom, disorganised time, rather than the underlying emotional avoidance driving the behaviour. Researchers have found that techniques aimed at reducing the emotional discomfort associated with a task, such as breaking it into smaller, less intimidating steps or practising self-compassion rather than harsh self-criticism after a delay, tend to be considerably more effective at reducing procrastination over the long term.
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.
Just-in-time inventory management is a manufacturing strategy in which companies aim to receive materials and components only shortly before they are actually needed in production, rather than storing large quantities of stock in advance. This approach can substantially the costs associated with warehousing and storing unused inventory, while also minimising waste from materials that might otherwise become damaged, obsolete or unused before they are ever required. However, the strategy depends heavily on a highly reliable and well-coordinated supply chain, since even a brief delay in receiving a single critical component can an entire production line that has little or no buffer stock available to compensate. This vulnerability was highlighted dramatically during recent global disruptions, when unexpected supply chain interruptions left some manufacturers unable to essential parts for extended periods, forcing several major companies to reconsider how heavily they should rely on just-in-time methods for their most critical components. Some manufacturers have since begun maintaining small reserve stocks of their most essential parts specifically to similar disruptions occurring again in the future.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he collected specimens of small birds later known as Darwin's finches, whose beaks vary strikingly in shape and size from one island to another. On islands where seeds are the dominant food source, finches tend to have short, powerful beaks well suited to cracking tough outer shells, while on islands where insects or nectar are more readily available, finches typically have longer, narrower beaks better adapted to reaching food that a stout beak could not access. Subsequent research has confirmed that these differences arose because finches that happened to have a beak shape well suited to the available food on a particular island survived and reproduced more successfully than others, gradually shaping the population's beak shape over many generations. Because scientists have documented beak measurements across some finch populations for decades, researchers have even observed beak shape shifting measurably within a single population after a severe drought altered which seeds remained available, providing rare direct evidence of natural selection acting within an observable human timeframe.
3. What is the main point of the passage?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
Libraries have existed for thousands of years, but for most of that time they served only priests, scholars and the wealthy. The idea of a free library open to everyone is fairly recent. In Britain, the Public Libraries Act of eighteen fifty allowed towns to use local taxes to fund libraries, and in the United States, the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie paid for more than two thousand library buildings. The reasoning was that self-education would help ordinary people improve their lives and become better citizens. Over time, libraries expanded their role to include children's story times, newspapers, and later computers and internet access. Today, many people wonder whether libraries are necessary when information is online. Yet usage figures suggest otherwise. Libraries now offer free workshops, job search help and quiet places to study, which is especially important for people without reliable internet or space at home.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Free public libraries emerged in the nineteenth century, funded by local taxes in Britain and by Andrew Carnegie in the United States, on the belief that self-education improves lives. Although information is now online, libraries remain well used because they offer internet access, workshops, job help and quiet study space, particularly for people who lack these at home.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
We take zero for granted, but it took humanity a very long time to treat it as a number. Several ancient cultures used a symbol as a placeholder to show an empty position, so that, for instance, you could tell twelve from one hundred and two. The Babylonians did this. But it was Indian mathematicians, notably Brahmagupta in the seventh century, who set out rules for calculating with zero as a number in its own right, including addition and subtraction. Arab scholars then carried the Indian numerals to the Islamic world, and from there they reached Europe through books such as those of Fibonacci in the thirteenth century. Some Europeans resisted, fearing that the new numerals were easier to forge than Roman ones.
1. Which THREE statements are consistent with the lecture?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
As cities expand, natural habitats fragment into small, isolated patches, cutting animal populations off from one another and reducing genetic over time. Wildlife corridors are strips of green space, sometimes just a row of gardens or a strip beneath a , designed to let animals move safely between larger habitat patches. Some cities have built overpasses specifically for wildlife, letting species such as deer cross busy highways . Studies show even modest corridors can raise the range of species able to survive within a fragmented urban , though maintaining them needs long-term .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Lightning results from a build-up of electrical charge inside storm clouds, caused by collisions between ice crystals and hail as they're tossed around by strong updrafts, which separates positive and negative charges into different parts of the cloud. When the charge difference between the cloud and the ground, or between different parts of the cloud, grows large enough to overcome the insulating resistance of the air, a rapid discharge occurs: a strike of lightning, which superheats the surrounding air to temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun for a fraction of a second, causing that air to expand explosively and produce the sound we hear as thunder. Because light travels far faster than sound, counting the seconds between seeing a flash and hearing its thunder gives a rough estimate of how many kilometres away the strike occurred.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Some companies now manufacture packaging from mycelium, the thread-like root structure of fungi, grown around agricultural waste such as corn husks inside a mould shaped like the final product. Over several days, the mycelium threads bind the waste into a solid, lightweight block that can replace polystyrene foam for cushioning fragile items, and once used, the material is fully compostable, breaking down in a home compost bin within weeks rather than persisting in landfill for centuries as polystyrene does. The main limitation is production time, since growing the packaging takes days, far longer than manufacturing polystyrene.
3. What is described as a current limitation of mycelium-based packaging, 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. Sea otters are among the few mammals known to use tools regularly in the wild, often floating on their backs while using a flat stone balanced on their chest to break open a hard-shelled clam or mussel. Some otters reportedly keep a favourite stone tucked under a loose flap of skin, keeping it for future meals rather than choosing a fresh stone each time.
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 4