A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 30
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.
Inflation occurs when the general level of prices rises over time, reducing the purchasing power of money. Central banks attempt to control it by adjusting interest rates. Higher rates make borrowing more expensive, which slows spending, but they can also hold back economic growth and increase unemployment.
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Model answer: Stress the key economic terms: "inflation", "purchasing power", "interest rates". Pause after "time" and after "rates". Keep "borrowing more expensive" as one smooth group. Take a short pause before "but", raise your energy on "hold back", and fall on "unemployment".
Public libraries have adapted to the digital age rather than disappearing. Alongside books, they now lend laptops, host coding workshops and provide quiet spaces for remote workers. For many communities, the library remains one of the few free places where anyone can learn and gather.
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Model answer: Keep a warm, positive tone. Stress "adapted" and "rather than disappearing". Pause after "Alongside books" and between the list items "laptops", "coding workshops" and "quiet spaces". Slow down on "one of the few free places" and fall on "gather".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: If it snows tonight, the morning lectures may be cancelled.
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Model answer: My roommate is studying architecture at the university across town.
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Model answer: Because the road was closed, we had to take a longer route.
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 graph shows the unemployment rate over eight years. It began at 8.1 percent in 2012 and rose to a peak of 8.6 in 2013. After that it fell every year: 8.0 in 2014, 7.2 in 2015, and 6.4 in 2016. The decline continued to 5.7, then 5.0, and finally 4.6 percent in 2019, the lowest point. Overall, unemployment nearly halved after the 2013 peak.
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 how young children worked dangerous, long shifts in early industrial mills and mines, valued for their small size and low cost. Growing public outrage over injuries and exhaustion led Britain to pass Factory Acts from the eighteen thirties, gradually raising minimum working age and limiting hours, marking early government regulation of working conditions.
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: Frank argues AI-generated news content should be clearly labeled so readers know if a human verified it. Grace notes AI is often used for smaller tasks, making blanket labeling impractical. Henry proposes a tiered labeling system reflecting the degree of AI involvement. They agree this gives readers more useful, proportional transparency than an all-or-nothing rule.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: That's a great point, and I'm glad we developed it further after I mentioned it to you last week during our chat about the project timeline. I think building on that early idea together really strengthened it. I'd love to keep collaborating on the next steps if that works for everyone.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
In April 1815, the volcano Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa erupted with a force that exceeded any event in recorded history. The explosion was heard almost two thousand kilometres away, ash fell on islands hundreds of kilometres distant, and tens of thousands of people died in the immediate aftermath from ash fall, pyroclastic flows and a tsunami. The longer-term consequences were felt across the globe. The eruption injected an enormous quantity of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it formed a veil of tiny droplets that reflected sunlight back into space. Global temperatures fell by about half a degree Celsius, which sounds small but was enough to disrupt weather patterns. The following year, 1816, became known as the Year Without a Summer. Frosts struck New England in June, torrential rain ruined harvests across Europe, and the monsoon in India was delayed and then arrived with unusual violence, an event some historians link to a cholera outbreak in Bengal. Crop failures caused food riots, rising prices and migration; many families left Europe and the eastern United States for the American interior. The gloomy weather even left a mark on culture, since it kept a group of English writers indoors beside Lake Geneva, where Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein. Modern scientists study Tambora as a natural experiment in how sudden atmospheric changes affect the climate and society.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: The 1815 eruption of Tambora not only killed thousands locally but also cooled the global climate through stratospheric sulphur particles, causing crop failures, disease and migration in 1816 and even influencing literature, and it is now studied as a natural experiment in climatic disruption.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Some companies have introduced a four-day working week with no reduction in pay. Do you think this is a positive development for employees and employers?
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Model answer: The idea that people could work four days a week for the same salary once seemed unrealistic, but trials in several countries have produced encouraging results. I believe the change can benefit both employees and employers, although it will not suit every industry.
For employees, the advantages are obvious. A longer weekend allows more time for family, exercise and rest, which reduces stress and prevents burnout. Participants in pilot schemes have reported better health and greater satisfaction with their lives. Workers may also save money on commuting and childcare.
Employers, perhaps surprisingly, often benefit too. Productivity tends to stay the same or even rise because staff concentrate better, avoid unnecessary meetings and are less likely to take sick leave. A shorter week can also help a company attract and keep talented people, reducing the costs of recruitment and training.
Nevertheless, there are limitations. Hospitals, restaurants and customer service departments must remain open every day, so a shorter week requires hiring additional staff or arranging complicated shifts, which could increase costs. In some jobs, compressing five days of work into four longer days may simply lead to exhaustion.
Overall, I think a four-day week is a positive development where the work can be organised efficiently. Companies should be free to experiment, measure the results carefully and adjust their approach accordingly rather than being required to adopt a uniform pattern.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
In medieval European towns, skilled workers such as weavers, carpenters and goldsmiths typically organised themselves into guilds, associations that training, quality standards and prices within a particular trade. A young person wishing to learn a craft usually became an apprentice, working for several years under a master craftsman before to practise independently. Guilds also functioned as a form of mutual support, sometimes providing financial assistance to members who ill or died, and helping to care for their families. Because guilds could restrict who was allowed to produce and sell goods within a town, they held considerable influence local economic life, and disputes between rival guilds were common. As large-scale factory production developed in later centuries, the traditional guild system gradually , though its legacy survives in some modern professional associations.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Fast fashion retailers have built their business models around rapidly translating current trends into inexpensive clothing, often taking only a few weeks from initial design to store shelves, compared with the many months traditional fashion houses typically required. This speed is achieved through tightly coordinated supply chains, frequent small-batch production runs that can be adjusted quickly based on early sales data, and manufacturing concentrated in countries where labour costs remain relatively low. While this model has made fashionable clothing far more affordable and accessible to a much wider range of consumers than in previous decades, it has also drawn sustained criticism over working conditions in some factories, where investigations have occasionally revealed unsafe buildings, excessive hours and wages below a reasonable living standard. Environmental campaigners further argue that the sheer volume of clothing produced and discarded under this model generates enormous textile waste, since garments are often designed to be worn only a handful of times before being replaced by the next trend. In response to mounting criticism, some fast fashion companies have introduced recycling programmes or pledged to use more sustainable materials, though critics argue that these initiatives address only a small fraction of the industry's overall environmental footprint.
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.
A black hole forms when a massive star collapses under its own gravity after exhausting the nuclear fuel that once its outward pressure. The resulting object is so dense that its gravitational pull becomes strong enough to anything, including light, that strays too close. Astronomers cannot observe a black hole directly, so they instead its presence from the way nearby stars and gas orbit an apparently empty point in space. In 2019, scientists released the first image showing the glowing ring of matter a black hole's dark centre, a technical achievement many had thought impossible. Researchers continue to study black holes partly because they offer an extreme testing ground for Einstein's theory of general relativity under conditions that cannot be reproduced in any laboratory.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Troubadours were lyric poets and composers active primarily in southern France during the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, celebrated for developing and popularising a poetic tradition centred heavily on themes of courtly love, in which a poet typically expressed intense devotion, often unrequited, toward an idealised, frequently unattainable noblewoman. Unlike many earlier poetic traditions that had been composed primarily in Latin, the scholarly and religious language of medieval Europe, troubadours composed and performed their work in the local vernacular language, making their poetry considerably more accessible to the wider, non-scholarly courtly audiences who attended their performances. Troubadour poetry typically followed intricate formal conventions governing rhyme, metre and musical structure, and troubadours frequently performed their own compositions personally, often accompanying themselves on a stringed instrument during court gatherings and other social occasions. Historians consider the troubadour tradition significant partly because it substantially influenced the subsequent development of secular love poetry throughout medieval and later European literature, and some scholars argue that troubadour poetry's characteristic elevation and idealisation of a beloved figure helped shape enduring later European conventions of romantic love that persist in literature to this day.
3. What made troubadour poetry notably different from many earlier poetic traditions?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
Today I'd like to look at why some Roman buildings are still standing after two thousand years, while modern concrete can crumble in fifty. The Romans mixed volcanic ash with lime and seawater to build harbours, and the recipe turned out to be remarkably clever. When seawater seeped into the structures, it triggered chemical reactions that grew new crystals inside tiny cracks. In other words, the material slowly repaired itself. Modern engineers use Portland cement, which is stronger at first but doesn't have this healing property, and steel reinforcement inside it eventually rusts and breaks the concrete apart. Some researchers are now experimenting with Roman-style mixtures for coastal defences. It won't replace modern cement everywhere, of course, because it hardens slowly, but for structures that must last for centuries it looks very promising.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Roman harbour concrete, made from volcanic ash, lime and seawater, has lasted two thousand years because seawater triggers crystal growth that heals small cracks. Modern cement is initially stronger but lacks this ability, and its steel reinforcement rusts. Engineers are therefore testing Roman-style mixtures for long-lasting coastal structures, even though the material hardens slowly.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Coins made of metal had circulated for centuries before anyone trusted a piece of paper to represent value, but China again led the way, with merchants in the seventh century issuing private promissory notes to avoid carrying heavy strings of coins on long journeys. By the eleventh century, the government had taken over issuing paper currency directly, backed by reserves of coins held in treasuries. The system eventually broke down when authorities printed far more notes than they could back, causing severe inflation, a lesson that would repeat in other countries centuries later. Paper money didn't reach Europe until the seventeenth century, introduced partly by banks in Sweden facing a shortage of the metal used for coins. Today, most money isn't physical at all; it exists as digital entries in bank computer systems, meaning even paper currency itself has become a relatively small share of the total money supply.
1. Which THREE statements match the lecture?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Whales are mammals, descended from land-dwelling ancestors that gradually returned to the water over millions of years, a journey supported by an unusually complete record. Early transitional species had four legs and looked more like a large otter, but over generations their hind legs and disappeared, their nostrils migrated toward the top of the skull to become a blowhole, and their tails became powerful, flattened . Remarkably, whales are most closely related to hippos among living land mammals, a link confirmed through both fossil evidence and modern analysis, which surprised scientists expecting a different entirely.
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
An echo occurs when sound waves travel outward, strike a distant hard surface, and reflect back toward the listener with enough of a time delay to be heard as a distinct, separate repetition rather than blending into the original sound. Canyons and large open spaces with hard rock walls produce particularly clear, sometimes repeated echoes because sound has a long, largely uninterrupted path to travel before hitting a reflective surface, and multiple walls at different distances can bounce the same sound back more than once, creating a series of gradually fading repetitions. Soft, irregular surfaces such as thick vegetation or snow absorb much of the sound energy instead of reflecting it cleanly, which is why a forest or a snow-covered landscape produces far weaker echoes than a bare rock canyon of a similar size.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Silk production in ancient China depended on carefully cultivating silkworms, the caterpillars of a particular moth species, feeding them exclusively on mulberry leaves before they spun a cocoon made of a single, extraordinarily long continuous thread that could be carefully unwound and combined with other threads to produce silk fabric. For centuries, the Chinese government treated the production techniques as closely guarded state secrets, reportedly imposing severe penalties on anyone caught smuggling silkworm eggs or revealing the methods to outsiders, letting China dominate the lucrative silk trade for a very long time. The secret eventually spread, reportedly smuggled out hidden inside a hollow container, ending China's long monopoly.
3. How does the lecture say the secret of silk production eventually left China?
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. Red foxes have adapted remarkably well to city life, scavenging discarded food from bins and gardens rather than exclusively hunting wild prey as their rural relatives typically do. Urban foxes have been observed shifting their nocturnal activity patterns to avoid busy daytime streets, and studies suggest some city foxes now have noticeably shorter territories than countryside foxes, since food is far easier to find.
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 31