A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 5
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.
Water scarcity affects more than two billion people worldwide. Growing populations, polluted rivers and shifting rainfall patterns all increase the pressure on limited supplies. Solutions range from repairing leaking pipes to recycling wastewater and developing crops that need less irrigation.
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Model answer: Stress "more than two billion" and pronounce "scarcity" clearly. Pause after "worldwide" and after "patterns". In the last sentence, treat "repairing leaking pipes", "recycling wastewater" and "developing crops" as three balanced items, and fall on "irrigation".
Microplastics are tiny fragments less than five millimetres across, produced when larger items break down or when synthetic clothing is washed. They have been found in oceans, rivers, drinking water and even human blood. Although the health effects remain uncertain, researchers are calling for stricter limits on plastic production.
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Model answer: Pronounce "microplastics" and "synthetic" carefully. Pause after "across" and after "washed". List "oceans, rivers, drinking water and even human blood" with rising tone until "even", which deserves stress. Pause after "uncertain" and close on "plastic production" with a falling tone.
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Tickets for the graduation ceremony are limited to two per student.
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Model answer: Unemployment tends to rise when the economy slows down.
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Model answer: Please note that the cafeteria will close at four o'clock today.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
Social media — 35%
Television — 27%
News websites — 17%
Radio — 9%
Newspapers — 7%
Friends and family — 5%
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 adults' main source of news. Social media leads with 35 percent, ahead of television at 27 percent. News websites come third with 17 percent. Radio provides 9 percent, printed newspapers 7 percent and friends and family 5. Digital sources, social media and websites combined, are used by 52 percent, so more than half now rely on the internet.
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 minimum wage effects are debated and context-dependent. Simple theory predicts job losses when wages rise above market rates, but real-world comparisons often show smaller effects, possibly due to reduced turnover or employer pricing power. Most economists agree outcomes depend on the size of the increase, its pace, and the specific industry.
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 the drinking age should be lowered for consistency with voting and military age. Grace cites brain development research linking higher drinking ages to fewer alcohol-related accidents. Henry proposes a middle ground allowing supervised drinking earlier while keeping unsupervised purchase restricted. The group finds this graduated approach more defensible than a single fixed age either way.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: I really value our friendship, which is exactly why I want to bring this up honestly. You've cancelled on short notice three times this month, and it's started to make me feel like I'm not a priority. Is everything okay? I'd rather understand what's going on than just feel quietly hurt about it.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
In 1968, the ecologist Garrett Hardin published an essay describing a situation he called the tragedy of the commons. He imagined a pasture open to all herders. Each herder gains the full benefit from adding one more animal, whereas the cost of overgrazing is shared among everybody, so it is rational for each individual to keep enlarging the herd until the pasture is destroyed. Hardin concluded that shared resources inevitably collapse unless they are privatised or controlled by the state. The argument has been applied to overfished oceans, polluted air and the atmosphere's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. Yet the political scientist Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, challenged its universality. By studying communities that had managed forests, irrigation systems and fisheries for centuries, she found that many groups had devised their own rules without either private ownership or central control. Successful arrangements shared certain features: clear boundaries about who may use the resource, rules adapted to local conditions, mechanisms for monitoring behaviour, graduated penalties for those who cheat, and inexpensive ways of resolving disputes. Ostrom did not claim that cooperation always succeeds, and it becomes harder in large, anonymous groups such as those exploiting global resources. Nevertheless, her work showed that the tragedy is not inevitable, and that the design of institutions, rather than an assumption of human selfishness, often determines whether shared resources survive.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Hardin argued that shared resources are destined to be overused, but Ostrom demonstrated that many communities have preserved commons through locally designed rules, monitoring and penalties, showing that the outcome depends on how institutions are structured rather than on inevitable selfishness.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Genetically modified crops can increase food production and resist disease, but some people worry about their long-term effects on health and the environment. Discuss both views and give your opinion.
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Model answer: Genetic modification of crops remains one of the most contested topics in modern agriculture, provoking strong reactions on both sides.
Supporters emphasise the practical benefits. Modified varieties can be engineered to resist insects, drought and disease, reducing the need for chemical pesticides and helping farmers maintain yields as the climate becomes less predictable. In countries facing chronic food shortages, crops that produce more per hectare, or that carry extra nutrients, as with vitamin-enriched rice, can save lives. Decades of consumption in several countries have not produced convincing evidence that approved modified foods are unsafe to eat.
Opponents raise different concerns. They worry that modified genes might spread to wild relatives through cross-pollination, altering ecosystems in unpredictable ways, and that reliance on a small number of patented seed varieties concentrates power in the hands of a few large corporations, threatening the independence of small farmers. Some also object on principle to altering an organism's genetic material, regardless of the scientific evidence on safety.
In my view, genetic modification should be judged case by case rather than accepted or rejected wholesale. Rigorous, independent safety testing, transparent labelling so that consumers can choose, and support for a diversity of seed suppliers would address the most legitimate concerns while allowing the technology's genuine benefits, particularly for food security in vulnerable regions, to be realised.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Economists use the concepts of supply and demand to explain how prices are in a competitive market. When demand for a product rises while supply stays constant, the price typically increases, since buyers for a limited quantity of goods. Conversely, when supply increases faster than demand, sellers often lower prices in order to excess stock. Prices, in this sense, act as a signal, informing producers whether to expand or reduce output without any central authority needing to instructions. Real markets, however, rarely behave exactly as the simple model predicts, since factors such as government regulation, monopoly power and consumer habits can prevent prices from adjusting as as the theory suggests.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
When a species is introduced, whether accidentally or deliberately, into an ecosystem where it did not previously exist, it can sometimes spread rapidly and cause serious harm to native wildlife. Because the new arrival often has no natural predators or competitors in its new environment, populations can grow largely unchecked, allowing an invasive species to outcompete native plants or animals for food, light or nesting space. Some invasive species were introduced by accident, travelling in ship ballast water or shipping containers, while others were brought deliberately, such as plants imported for gardens that later escaped into the wild and spread aggressively across natural habitats. Once an invasive species becomes established across a wide area, eradication is often extremely difficult and expensive, so many conservation programmes focus instead on preventing new introductions through stricter biosecurity checks at borders and ports. In some documented cases, however, the removal of a single invasive predator from an island has allowed native bird populations to recover within just a few years, demonstrating that intervention can succeed when undertaken early, before a species becomes too widely established to control.
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.
Most plants use a photosynthetic process that becomes noticeably less efficient in hot, dry conditions, but a smaller group of species, including maize and sugarcane, have evolved an alternative pathway that far better with heat and limited water. This adaptation, known as C4 photosynthesis, allows a plant to carbon dioxide within specialised cells before converting it into sugar, reducing the amount of water lost through the plant's leaf pores in the process. As a result, C4 plants can high growth rates even in conditions that would severely limit an ordinary plant. Agricultural scientists have long been interested in this trait into staple crops such as rice, which currently lack it, in the hope of improving yields in regions increasingly affected by drought. Progress has been slow, however, since the pathway a complex set of coordinated changes rather than a single simple gene.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Stoicism, a school of philosophy that originated in ancient Greece before flourishing further in ancient Rome, teaches that a genuinely good, virtuous life is achieved primarily through cultivating rational self-control and maintaining a considered, calm acceptance of events that lie entirely outside a person's own direct control. Central to Stoic teaching is a clear distinction between things a person can genuinely control, such as their own judgements, deliberate choices and voluntary actions, and things they fundamentally cannot control, such as other people's opinions, unpredictable external events, or the ultimate, inevitable fact of their own mortality. Stoic philosophers argued that genuine, lasting distress typically arises not directly from external events themselves, but rather from a person's own internal judgements and reactions to those events, meaning that a person can achieve meaningful inner peace by deliberately learning to focus their attention and effort exclusively on their own responses rather than on ultimately uncontrollable external circumstances. Although Stoicism originated in the specific philosophical and cultural context of the ancient world, its core practical ideas have experienced a notable resurgence of popular interest in recent years, particularly among people seeking practical guidance for coping constructively with modern stress and considerable personal or professional uncertainty.
3. According to Stoic teaching, what is the primary source of genuine distress?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
In the nineteen twenties, researchers at the Hawthorne factory near Chicago wanted to know whether better lighting would make workers more productive. They raised the lighting, and output went up. Then, puzzlingly, they lowered it again, and output went up once more. Eventually the researchers concluded that the lighting wasn't the important factor. What mattered was that the workers knew they were being observed and felt that someone cared about their work. This became known as the Hawthorne effect, the tendency of people to change their behaviour simply because they are being studied. Later scholars have questioned the original data, and some think the effect was smaller than first reported. Still, the idea remains influential. Researchers designing experiments on people must always consider whether the act of measuring is itself changing the results they are trying to measure.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: At the Hawthorne factory, productivity rose whether lighting was increased or decreased, which suggested that workers performed better simply because they were being observed. Although later scholars doubt the original data, the Hawthorne effect still reminds researchers that the act of measuring people can itself change the behaviour they are trying to study.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Scientists drill deep into the Antarctic ice sheet to pull out cylinders called ice cores, and each one is like a diary of the climate. Snow falls every year and compresses into layers, trapping tiny bubbles of the air that existed at the time. By measuring the gases in those bubbles, researchers can work out how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere hundreds of thousands of years ago. The deepest cores recovered so far reach back about eight hundred thousand years. Dust and ash layers also help, because they can be matched to known volcanic eruptions, giving an exact date for that depth. The record shows that carbon dioxide levels today are far higher than at any point in that entire period, which is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that current warming is not part of a natural cycle.
1. Which THREE statements about ice cores are true according to the lecture?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
The Inca Empire built a huge network of roads across the Andes, connecting the capital, Cusco, with distant regions despite extremely difficult mountainous . Because the Inca had no wheeled vehicles or horses, the roads suited walking and llama caravans, often carved as narrow stone stairways up steep . Relay runners called chasquis carried messages along the network, passing news between stationed runners fast enough to reach the empire's edge within . Suspension bridges made from woven plant fibre let the roads cross deep gorges that would otherwise block , a remarkable feat of .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Reindeer herding has been practised by indigenous peoples across the Arctic, including the Sámi in northern Scandinavia, for many centuries, traditionally following the animals' own seasonal migrations between winter and summer pastures across vast, often harsh terrain. Herders historically travelled with the reindeer on skis or sleds, using deep knowledge of snow conditions, grazing lichen availability and predator patterns passed down across generations. Modern herding has adapted considerably, now often using snowmobiles and even satellite tracking collars, while still relying heavily on traditional ecological knowledge that formal weather forecasts alone cannot replace. Climate change is now creating serious new challenges, since warmer winters can cause rain to fall on snow and then refreeze into an ice layer that reindeer cannot break through to reach the lichen beneath.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Beneath a healthy forest floor, thread-like fungal structures called mycorrhizal networks connect the roots of many different trees, forming an underground web researchers sometimes nickname the wood wide web. Trees exchange more than water and nutrients through this network; studies suggest a large, established tree can sometimes send stored carbon to a smaller, struggling seedling nearby through shared fungal connections, though how deliberate this transfer actually is remains genuinely debated among scientists. The fungi benefit too, receiving sugars the trees produce through photosynthesis in exchange for helping trees access water and nutrients from a wider area of soil.
3. What do the fungi gain from their relationship with trees in a mycorrhizal network, 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. A violin's curved, hourglass-like body shape isn't purely decorative; the curves allow a bow to access the outer strings without the body getting in the way, while the enclosed air inside the hollow wooden body resonates and boosts the sound produced by the vibrating strings. Skilled violin makers also carefully vary the thickness of the wood across the body to shape the instrument's overall tone.
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 6