A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 34
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.
Space exploration has produced technologies that we now use every day, including satellite navigation, water purification systems and lightweight materials for sports equipment. Supporters argue that such benefits justify the enormous cost, though some taxpayers would prefer the money to be spent on problems here on Earth.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Pause after "day", "equipment" and "cost". Stress "every day" and "enormous cost". Take a short breath before "though" and lower your pitch slightly for the opposing view. End on "Earth" with a definite fall.
Democracy depends on citizens who are informed and willing to participate. Voting is only the most visible form of engagement; attending public meetings, joining civic groups and discussing issues with neighbours also shape the decisions that affect everyday life.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Stress "informed" and "willing to participate". Pause at the semicolon after "engagement". Keep the three activities as a parallel list and stress "also". Slow down on "everyday life" and fall on the last word.
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Wind turbines are most efficient in open areas with steady breezes.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Salt was once so valuable that soldiers were sometimes paid with it.
Show sample answer
Model answer: You can borrow up to ten books for a period of three weeks.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
OsloCairo
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.
Show sample answer
Model answer: The graph compares average temperatures in Oslo and Cairo across the year. Cairo is warmer in every month shown, ranging from 14 degrees in January to a peak of 29 in July. Oslo is much colder, starting at minus 4 in January and reaching only 17 in July. Both cities follow the same seasonal pattern, peaking in the summer, but the difference is greatest in winter, when Cairo is 18 degrees warmer.
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.
Show sample answer
Model answer: The lecture traces timekeeping from sundials and water clocks through thirteenth-century monastery mechanical clocks, mainly for prayer schedules and quite inaccurate, to the seventeenth-century pendulum clock and marine chronometers that solved the longitude problem at sea. Today's atomic clocks, based on cesium vibration frequency, stay accurate to within a second over millions of years.
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.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Frank favors continuous assessment for reflecting sustained effort rather than one high-pressure exam. Grace values exams for testing synthesis under pressure, mirroring real deadlines. Henry proposes a mixed model. The group agrees on a balanced weighting, such as sixty percent continuous work and forty percent exam, that could vary depending on the subject.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
Show sample answer
Model answer: I actually received a confirmation text just yesterday for this exact appointment, so this cancellation seems to be a system error on your end rather than something I did. This follow-up is fairly important for my treatment. Could you please fit me in briefly today, even between other appointments, or prioritize me for the very next available slot?
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
Wind and solar power now generate electricity more cheaply than coal in most parts of the world, but their output depends on the weather. On a still, cloudy day the grid may lack supply, while on a sunny, windy afternoon there may be more electricity than customers can use. Storing surplus energy for later is therefore one of the central challenges of the transition to renewables. Lithium-ion batteries, the same technology found in phones and electric cars, are the most widely deployed solution and are well suited to smoothing fluctuations over a few hours. Their costs have fallen by around ninety percent in a decade. However, they are less economical for storing energy over days or weeks, and they depend on minerals such as cobalt whose extraction raises ethical and environmental questions. Alternative technologies are therefore under development. Pumped hydropower, which uses surplus electricity to lift water to an upper reservoir and releases it through turbines when needed, already supplies most of the world's storage capacity, though it requires suitable geography. Other proposals include compressed air stored in underground caverns, heat stored in molten salt, and hydrogen produced by electrolysis. Because each option has different strengths, most analysts predict that future grids will rely on a mixture of them, together with better transmission lines and flexible demand, rather than a single breakthrough technology.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Since wind and solar output fluctuates, storage is essential to renewable power, and while lithium-ion batteries suit short-term needs, analysts expect future grids to combine them with pumped hydropower, hydrogen, thermal storage and other technologies, together with improved transmission and flexible demand.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Some famous actors and musicians use their public platforms to express opinions on political issues. Should celebrities avoid discussing politics, or is it appropriate for them to do so?
Show sample answer
Model answer: Whether celebrities should speak out on political issues divides public opinion sharply, and I believe they have every right to do so, though it is fair to scrutinise how they use that influence.
Those who think celebrities should stay silent argue that fame in acting, sport or music does not qualify someone as an expert on complex political questions, and that using a platform built through entertainment to promote a particular view can unfairly sway audiences who may give a celebrity's opinion more weight than it deserves simply because they admire that person's work. There is also a risk that outspoken celebrities alienate part of their audience, reducing entertainment to another arena of political division.
However, celebrities are citizens too, entitled to the same freedom of expression as anyone else, and their platforms can bring welcome attention to important causes, from disaster relief to public health campaigns, that might otherwise struggle to reach a wide audience. Historically, prominent public figures have played meaningful roles in civil rights and other social movements precisely because their visibility amplified messages that might otherwise have gone unheard.
I therefore believe celebrities should feel free to express political views if they choose to, but audiences should evaluate those opinions on their merits rather than accepting them uncritically because of who is speaking. Genuine engagement, informed by research or personal experience, deserves more respect than a passing comment made only to appear fashionable or relevant.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Before mechanical refrigeration became widespread, households and shops relied on blocks of ice, often cut from frozen lakes and stored underground, to food cool during warmer months. In the nineteenth century, engineers developed machines that could compress and expand certain gases in a repeating cycle, a process that heat from an enclosed space and releases it elsewhere. This breakthrough eventually made it possible to preserve food safely for far longer periods, reducing the enormous waste that had previously spoilage. Refrigerated transport, including specially fitted ships and railway carriages, then allowed perishable goods such as meat and dairy to be moved across vast distances spoiling before reaching distant markets. Today, refrigeration is considered so essential to modern food systems that its sudden absence would supply chains almost immediately.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
When the body detects an infection, immune cells release chemical signals that travel to a region of the brain responsible for regulating temperature, effectively resetting the body's internal thermostat to a higher target level. In response, the body generates additional heat through shivering and reduces heat loss by narrowing blood vessels near the skin, gradually raising body temperature until it reaches this new, elevated target, a state commonly experienced as fever. Although a high temperature can feel unpleasant, moderate fever is now understood to serve a genuinely useful purpose, since many disease-causing microorganisms reproduce less efficiently at higher temperatures, while several components of the immune system, including certain white blood cells, appear to function more effectively when body temperature rises somewhat above its normal baseline. For this reason, some doctors now caution against automatically suppressing a mild fever with medication in an otherwise healthy adult, since aggressively lowering body temperature may, in some circumstances, slightly prolong the underlying infection. Very high fevers remain dangerous and require prompt medical attention, particularly in young children, since excessively elevated body temperature can, above a certain threshold, cause seizures or other serious complications rather than continuing to provide any protective benefit.
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.
An avalanche occurs when a mass of snow on a slope suddenly breaks away and slides downhill, often triggered by a weak layer buried beneath more recent snowfall that cannot the weight above it. Certain conditions make a slope particularly dangerous, including a steep angle, a recent heavy snowfall, and rapid temperature changes that prevent layers of snow from bonding to one another. Even a small disturbance, such as the weight of a single skier, can sometimes be enough to a slide if the underlying snowpack is already unstable. Avalanche forecasters study snow layers, weather patterns and slope angles to which areas pose the greatest risk on a given day, issuing warnings that can close ski areas or mountain roads entirely. Despite considerable improvements in forecasting, avalanches remain difficult to with complete certainty, since the exact point of failure within a snowpack cannot always be identified in advance.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Augmented reality refers to technology that overlays computer-generated digital images, information or sound directly onto a user's real-world view, typically viewed through a smartphone camera, dedicated headset or specialised glasses, distinguishing it clearly from fully immersive virtual reality, which instead replaces a user's entire visual environment with a completely artificial, computer-generated one. Retailers have increasingly adopted augmented reality to allow customers to virtually preview how a specific piece of furniture might look within their own actual living room, or how a particular pair of glasses might genuinely look on their own real face, before deciding whether to actually commit to a purchase. In industrial and technical settings, augmented reality can overlay clear, precise step-by-step repair instructions directly onto a technician's own real-world view of a genuinely complex piece of physical machinery, potentially reducing training time and meaningfully lowering the overall error rate compared with a technician instead having to repeatedly consult a separate printed manual. Although consumer adoption of dedicated augmented reality hardware has so far proceeded more slowly than many early industry predictions had confidently suggested, smartphone-based augmented reality applications have already achieved considerably broader, more mainstream everyday adoption, particularly for straightforward retail and entertainment purposes that require no specialised additional hardware beyond a phone.
3. How does augmented reality differ from virtual reality, according to the passage?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
When a city suffers from traffic jams, the obvious response seems to be building more or wider roads. Yet transport researchers have observed a puzzling pattern. New road capacity often fills up with traffic within a few years, leaving congestion as bad as before. This is called induced demand. When a road becomes faster, more people decide to drive, people who used to take the train switch, and businesses and homes are built farther out, which creates even more trips. The additional road hasn't solved the problem. It has changed behaviour. So what actually reduces congestion? Cities that succeeded have usually improved public transport, built safe cycling routes, or introduced charges for driving into the centre. None of these measures is popular at first, but experience from places such as London and Stockholm shows that support tends to grow once residents see less traffic.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
Show sample answer
Model answer: Adding road capacity often fails to reduce congestion because faster roads encourage more driving, attract people from public transport and promote development farther out, a process called induced demand. Cities that reduced traffic improved public transport, built cycling routes or introduced congestion charges, which gained public support once results became visible.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Every autumn, millions of monarch butterflies in North America fly south to spend the winter in the mountain forests of central Mexico. The journey can exceed four thousand kilometres, and what's astonishing is that no individual butterfly makes the round trip. The generation that flies south, sometimes called the super generation, lives for months, whereas the summer generations live only a few weeks. In spring, the survivors fly north and lay eggs, and it takes several generations to reach Canada again. How do they find a place they've never seen? Scientists believe they use the sun as a compass, corrected by an internal clock, and possibly the Earth's magnetic field. Sadly, monarch numbers have dropped, mostly because of the loss of milkweed, the only plant their caterpillars eat.
1. Which of the following does the speaker mention?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Through spring and summer, leaves look green because of chlorophyll, the pigment that captures sunlight, and it's so abundant that it other pigments already present. As days shorten in autumn, deciduous trees break down chlorophyll and reabsorb its before dropping their leaves, since keeping leaves through winter would waste more energy than they could . As the green fades, yellow and orange pigments called carotenoids become visible, while reds come from a pigment some trees actively make in to bright, cool autumn .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Louis Braille lost his sight as a young child after an accident, and while attending a school for blind students in Paris, he encountered an existing system of raised dots developed for military use at night, intended to be read by touch without needing light. Braille adapted and simplified this system throughout his teenage years, reducing it to a compact six-dot cell that could represent letters, numbers and punctuation efficiently enough to be read quickly by a trained finger. Remarkably, the system Braille invented as a teenager wasn't officially adopted by his own school until after his death, since sighted educators were initially resistant to a system they themselves couldn't easily read, but it eventually spread worldwide and remains the standard today.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Fountain pens, common before the ballpoint, relied on liquid ink that flowed by gravity and capillary action, which meant they smudged easily and leaked if held at the wrong angle or exposed to pressure changes, a real problem for pilots writing at high altitude. A Hungarian journalist developed a pen using a small rotating ball at the tip and a much thicker, quick-drying ink that the ball could evenly apply to paper without the flow and leaking problems of a fountain pen. Early ballpoint pens were still unreliable and expensive, and it took further refinement over subsequent decades before they became the cheap, dependable writing tool now sold almost everywhere.
3. What problem with fountain pens did the ballpoint pen address, 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. The small plastic or metal cap fitted to the end of a shoelace, called an aglet, primarily prevents the lace's woven fibres from fraying and loosening over time. Without an aglet, threading a lace through a shoe's narrow eyelets would be considerably harder, since the soft fabric tip would fold awkwardly rather than passing through smoothly and cleanly.
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 35