A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 48
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.
Jazz emerged in New Orleans at the beginning of the twentieth century, blending African rhythms, blues and European harmony. Its defining feature is improvisation: musicians invent melodies spontaneously, responding to one another in real time. No two performances of the same piece are ever identical.
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Model answer: Slow down on "twentieth century" and "improvisation". Pause after "Orleans", "harmony" and "improvisation". Stress "spontaneously" and "real time". Finish with a slightly slower, emphatic delivery of "ever identical", falling on the last word.
Honeybees communicate the location of food through a remarkable dance. A forager returns to the hive and moves in a figure of eight, and the angle of her waggle relative to vertical indicates the direction of the flowers. The length of the waggle tells her sisters how far they must fly.
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Model answer: Read at a steady, storytelling pace. Stress "remarkable" and "figure of eight". Pause after "hive" and after "vertical". Pronounce "waggle" and "relative" crisply. The last sentence should sound light and conclusive: emphasise "length" and "how far" and fall on "fly".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Medieval castles were designed primarily to defend against attack.
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Model answer: Researchers interviewed more than two hundred volunteers over eighteen months.
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Model answer: Learning a second language is easier for children than for adults.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
| Students | Academic staff | Research funding (million dollars) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physics | 420 | 38 | 12.5 |
| English | 510 | 32 | 1.1 |
| Economics | 890 | 45 | 3.4 |
| Nursing | 640 | 60 | 2.8 |
| Computing | 970 | 52 | 9.7 |
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 table shows students, staff and research funding in five university departments. Computing has the most students, 970, and Economics is second with 890. Physics is smaller, with 420 students, but it receives the largest research funding, 12.5 million dollars. English gets only 1.1 million, the least. Nursing has the most academic staff, 60, so it has the best staff-to-student ratio, roughly one teacher to eleven students.
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 thawing permafrost, which covers a quarter of Northern Hemisphere land, releases ancient organic carbon as microbes finally decompose it, producing carbon dioxide and potent methane. This creates a dangerous feedback loop where warming causes thawing, which causes further warming, while ground collapse also damages infrastructure built on previously frozen soil.
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: Ben wants zoos replaced by open sanctuaries for better animal welfare. Carla defends zoos' role in funding conservation research. Emma questions why sanctuaries couldn't do the same research with more space. They settle on a gradual transition where urban zoos partner with larger rural sanctuaries, preserving conservation funding while improving welfare over time.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: I know you're incredibly busy, but I've sent several emails over the past three weeks without a response, and my deadline is now under ten days away. Could we set aside even thirty minutes this week specifically for feedback? I really want to submit something you're comfortable with, but I need your input soon to make that possible.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
Public debate about social media and teenage mental health tends to swing between alarm and dismissal. Some commentators blame smartphones for rising rates of anxiety and depression among adolescents in many wealthy countries since around 2012, pointing to the coincidence of timing and to survey data showing that heavy users report lower wellbeing. Others respond that correlation is not causation: unhappy teenagers may simply spend more time online, and other influences, from academic pressure to economic uncertainty, could equally explain the trends. Large studies have generally found that the average association between screen time and wellbeing is small, comparable to the effect of regularly eating potatoes, as one memorable comparison put it. Yet averages can conceal important differences. How teenagers use social media appears to matter more than how long they use it. Passive scrolling and constant comparison with idealised images seem to be more damaging than messaging friends, and adolescents who are already vulnerable, or who experience cyberbullying, may be affected far more strongly than their peers. Researchers also note that rapid platform changes make it difficult for slow-moving academic studies to keep up. Given this uncertainty, many psychologists recommend a pragmatic approach: parents and schools should encourage healthy habits, such as keeping phones out of bedrooms at night, while researchers gain access to platform data to establish clearer evidence.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Although the average link between social media use and teenage unhappiness appears weak, the type of use and the individual's vulnerability seem to matter greatly, so psychologists advise practical precautions while calling for better data from platforms to clarify the evidence.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Nuclear power is often suggested as a solution to climate change, but it also raises concerns about safety and waste. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy and state your view.
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Model answer: As countries search for ways to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear power has returned to the debate. In my opinion, it deserves a place in the energy mix, provided that strict safeguards are in place.
The principal advantage is that nuclear plants generate large quantities of electricity without emitting carbon dioxide during operation. Unlike wind and solar power, they produce steadily regardless of the weather, so they can provide the reliable base supply that a modern grid requires. Countries such as France have shown that a nuclear-based system can achieve very low emissions.
The disadvantages, however, are significant. Accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima demonstrated that failures, though rare, can have devastating and long-lasting consequences. Radioactive waste remains dangerous for thousands of years, and although several countries have built or are building permanent underground repositories, the problem of long-term storage has not been fully resolved. New plants are also very expensive and often take more than a decade to complete, which is a serious drawback when emissions must be cut quickly.
Balancing these factors, I believe that existing reactors should be kept running as long as they are safe, and that new ones may be justified where renewable energy alone cannot meet demand. Nevertheless, the priority should remain the rapid expansion of renewables, energy storage and efficiency, with nuclear playing a supporting rather than a leading role.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Jazz emerged in the early twentieth century in cities such as New Orleans, where musicians African rhythmic traditions with European harmony and instrumentation. Unlike much classical music of the period, jazz placed great value on improvisation, allowing performers to depart from a written melody and new variations in the moment. The music spread rapidly along railway lines and rivers as musicians travelled between cities work, and it was later carried further afield through recordings and radio broadcasts. Because it originated largely among African American communities during a period of severe racial segregation, jazz also became closely broader struggles for cultural recognition and civil rights. Today it is widely regarded as one of the most influential musical traditions to have from the twentieth century.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
The human digestive tract hosts trillions of bacteria, collectively known as the gut microbiome, which help digest food, produce certain vitamins, and, according to a growing body of research, may also influence mood and mental health. Scientists have identified a communication pathway, sometimes called the gut-brain axis, through which signals travel between digestive bacteria and the nervous system, partly via a large nerve that connects the gut directly to the brain. Some gut bacteria produce compounds chemically similar to those the brain uses to regulate mood, and animal studies have shown that transferring gut bacteria from anxious mice into calm mice can alter the calm mice's behaviour, suggesting a genuine causal link rather than mere correlation. Human studies remain more limited, since researchers cannot ethically manipulate a person's gut bacteria as freely as they can with animals, and diet, stress and medication all affect the microbiome simultaneously, making it difficult to isolate a single cause. Nonetheless, several clinical trials are now testing whether specific probiotic supplements can meaningfully reduce symptoms of anxiety or depression, though results so far have been mixed and inconsistent across different studies.
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 aurora borealis, or northern lights, occurs when charged particles streaming from the sun collide with gases in the Earth's upper atmosphere, causing them to light in shifting bands of green, pink and violet. These particles are guided toward the polar regions by the Earth's magnetic field, which explains why the aurora is most commonly at high latitudes rather than near the equator. The colour of the light produced depends largely on which atmospheric gas the particles collide with and at what altitude, with oxygen typically producing green or red light and nitrogen contributing blue or purple tones. Because the phenomenon depends on solar activity, auroras become noticeably more frequent and intense during periods when the sun is particularly , a cycle that repeats roughly every eleven years. Many polar tourism operators now closely monitor solar activity forecasts to the best nights for visitors hoping to witness the display.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
In a series of experiments conducted in the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch investigated how readily individuals would conform to an obviously incorrect group consensus rather than trust their own clear, direct perception. Participants were asked to judge which of several lines matched a reference line in length, a task with an objectively obvious correct answer, but unknown to the genuine participant, most other people in the room were actually confederates instructed in advance to deliberately give an identical, incorrect answer. Asch found that a substantial proportion of genuine participants, despite the answer's obvious incorrectness, nonetheless conformed to the confederates' wrong answer at least once during the course of repeated trials, even though most participants privately reported afterward that they had known perfectly well the group's answer was objectively wrong. When participants were instead permitted to write their answer privately, rather than announcing it aloud in front of the group, conformity to the incorrect answer dropped considerably, suggesting that social pressure to avoid open disagreement, rather than any genuine uncertainty about the correct answer, was the primary driving force behind the conformity Asch had originally observed.
3. What did Asch's experiments suggest was the primary cause of participants' conformity?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
Microfinance began with a simple idea: very poor people can run small businesses if someone lends them a little money. Traditional banks refused these customers because they had no property to offer as security. In the nineteen seventies, an economist in Bangladesh started lending tiny sums to groups of women, who guaranteed each other's repayments. Repayment rates turned out to be remarkably high, and the model spread across the world. Now, the picture is more mixed than early enthusiasts claimed. Later studies found that microloans helped many families manage risk and smooth their spending, but they didn't lift most borrowers out of poverty on their own. Some borrowers also fell into debt when they took loans to repay other loans. Today, experts suggest that microfinance works best alongside training, savings services and insurance rather than as a stand-alone cure.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Microfinance started in Bangladesh, where group lending to poor women achieved high repayment and spread worldwide. Later research showed it helps families manage risk but rarely ends poverty by itself, and some borrowers became over-indebted. Experts now recommend combining loans with training, savings services and insurance, rather than treating microfinance as a stand-alone cure.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Octopuses have no bones and can squeeze through gaps barely wider than one of their eyes, but what fascinates researchers most is their intelligence. Their skin contains thousands of pigment cells that can change colour and pattern in under a second, letting them vanish against coral, sand or rock. Remarkably, many octopuses can do this even though evidence suggests they don't see colour the way we do; some researchers think their skin may sense light directly. In laboratories, octopuses have learned to open jars to reach food, and some have been observed using coconut shells as portable armour. Because most species live for only one or two years and don't form social groups, scientists are puzzled about where such intelligence comes from, since it evolved along a completely different path from the intelligence of mammals and birds.
1. Which of the following does the speaker mention?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Far from sunlight on the ocean floor, cold seeps are places where methane leaks slowly from beneath the seabed, supporting life much like hydrothermal vents but without the extreme . The food web there depends on bacteria that convert methane into usable , sustaining clams and unusual worms living above the seep. Because seepage is slow and steady rather than explosive, some communities appear extraordinarily long-lived, with mussel beds estimated to persist for centuries at the same . Researchers study cold seeps partly to understand how life can survive using instead of .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
A soap bubble's thin wall consists of a layer of water sandwiched between two layers of soap molecules, and the soap is essential because pure water alone forms a film with too much surface tension to stretch into a stable, long-lasting bubble; soap molecules reduce that surface tension and also help the film resist breaking as it stretches and thins. The shifting, swirling colours visible on a bubble's surface come from light waves reflecting off the front and back of the extremely thin soap film and interfering with each other, a phenomenon called thin-film interference, and the exact colours seen shift constantly as the film's thickness changes while water slowly drains downward within it. A bubble eventually pops once its wall becomes thin enough at some point for the water layer to break, which is also why bubbles tend to pop from the top first.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Congestion pricing charges drivers a fee for entering a busy part of a city during peak hours, an approach several major cities have adopted specifically to reduce traffic jams and encourage more people to use public transport, cycle, or travel outside the busiest times of day instead. Economists generally support the idea because it treats road space as a scarce resource during rush hour, similar to a popular restaurant charging more for a table at its busiest times, and revenue is often reinvested into public transport. Critics, however, argue the fee can disproportionately burden lower-income drivers with fewer affordable alternatives for reaching the same destination.
3. What criticism of congestion pricing does the speaker mention?
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. Decorative glass paperweights, often containing a colourful pattern of embedded glass flowers or bubbles, became especially popular in mid-nineteenth-century France, where several factories competed to produce the most intricate designs. Beyond their obvious useful purpose of holding loose papers still on a desk, paperweights quickly became collectible ornaments in their own right, and well-preserved antique examples can now sell for remarkably high prices at auction.
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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