A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 8
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 human heart beats about one hundred thousand times a day, pumping blood through a network of vessels that would stretch over ninety thousand kilometres if laid end to end. Regular exercise strengthens the heart muscle, allowing it to pump more blood with each beat and lowering the resting pulse.
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Model answer: Say the numbers clearly: "one hundred thousand" and "ninety thousand kilometres". Pause after "day" and after "vessels". Stress "laid end to end" as a fixed phrase. In the second sentence, emphasise "strengthens" and "lowering" and fall on "pulse".
Renaissance artists revolutionised painting by mastering linear perspective. By making parallel lines converge toward a single vanishing point, they created the illusion of depth on a flat surface. Leonardo da Vinci went further, using subtle gradations of light and shadow to give his figures a lifelike, three-dimensional quality.
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Model answer: Stress "revolutionised" and "linear perspective". Pause after "perspective" and after "point". Say "illusion" and "gradations" slowly. The final sentence is long, so group it as "Leonardo da Vinci went further" and then "using subtle gradations of light and shadow", before finishing on "lifelike, three-dimensional quality".
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Coffee is grown mainly in tropical countries at high altitudes.
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Model answer: Trade between neighbouring countries tends to increase after borders are opened.
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Model answer: Many species of frogs are disappearing because their habitats are being destroyed.
Describe Image
Describe the image in detail.
Agriculture — 70%
Industry — 19%
Households — 11%
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 divides worldwide freshwater use into three sectors. Agriculture is by far the biggest user, taking 70 percent. Industry accounts for 19 percent and households only 11. So farming uses more than three times as much water as factories and about six times as much as homes. The chart shows that reducing agricultural waste would save the most water.
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 memory is reconstructed each time it's recalled, rather than replayed unchanged, so memories can shift over time. Long-term memory depends on consolidation, which largely occurs during sleep, explaining why sleep deprivation harms learning even with more study time. Emotional experiences tend to be remembered more vividly due to close brain interactions.
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: Carla argues renewable investment is too slow given climate urgency. David counters that costs have fallen dramatically, showing real progress. Emma distinguishes cheaper generation from actual deployment speed, citing grid and permitting bottlenecks. They agree policy should prioritize streamlining permitting and upgrading grid infrastructure, since deployment speed, not generation cost, is now the bigger obstacle.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: This invoice includes a vaccination that I specifically told the vet before the appointment I didn't want given today. Could you check with the vet whether this was actually administered or just added by mistake to the bill? Either way, I'd like this charge removed since I never approved it for today's visit.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
Linguists estimate that around seven thousand languages are spoken today, but roughly forty percent of them are endangered, and on average one disappears every few weeks. The pattern is remarkably uneven: half of the world's population speaks just twenty-three languages, while thousands of others are used by fewer than ten thousand people each. Languages seldom vanish because they are forbidden, although historical policies of suppressing indigenous tongues in schools have played a part. More often, speakers gradually shift to a dominant language that offers better economic opportunities, and their children grow up understanding the heritage language but no longer using it. Once the last fluent speakers die, a distinctive way of describing the world may be lost, along with knowledge encoded in vocabulary, such as the names of local plants, weather patterns and medicinal remedies. Efforts at revitalisation have achieved notable results in some places. Māori language nests, in which young children are immersed in the language from infancy, have helped increase the number of speakers in New Zealand, and Welsh is now taught throughout the education system in Wales. Digital tools, including dictionaries, keyboards and social media groups, are also being used to encourage younger people to speak endangered languages. Success, researchers emphasise, depends less on academic documentation than on creating everyday situations in which the language is genuinely useful and valued.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: Many of the world's languages are disappearing mainly because speakers shift to dominant languages for economic reasons, but immersion schooling and digital tools have revived some, suggesting that survival depends on giving a language genuine everyday use and value rather than merely recording it.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
More and more students take a year off between school and university to travel or work. Do you think this is a good idea? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages.
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Model answer: Taking a gap year has become increasingly popular, and I think that it can be a valuable experience for students who plan it well, although it is not right for everyone.
The main advantage is personal development. After twelve years of continuous study, many eighteen-year-olds feel tired and uncertain about their future, and time away allows them to recharge and reflect on what they really want to study. Travelling or working in an unfamiliar place teaches independence, adaptability and communication skills, while a job or volunteering placement can provide practical experience that impresses future employers. Students who return to education after a gap year often show greater motivation and maturity.
On the other hand, there are risks. Some young people find it hard to return to a study routine after a long break, and those who spend the year doing nothing in particular may lose momentum and confidence. Travel is also expensive, so the opportunity may be available mainly to students from wealthier families, which increases inequality. In addition, friends who go straight to university will be a year ahead when the student graduates.
In conclusion, a gap year is worthwhile provided that it has a clear purpose, such as earning money, learning a language or gaining experience in a chosen field. Schools and universities should encourage students to plan carefully, and to secure a university place before departing, so that the year becomes an asset rather than a delay.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
Around three thousand years ago, Phoenician traders operating across the Mediterranean developed a writing system that individual consonant sounds using a small set of simple symbols. This was a significant departure from earlier scripts, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, which relied on hundreds of complex signs that took years fully. Because the Phoenician alphabet was so much simpler, merchants and their apprentices could learn to read and write far than scribes trained in more elaborate systems. As Phoenician traders travelled and settled across the region, the alphabet spread widely and was gradually adapted by other cultures, including the Greeks, who symbols for vowel sounds that the original script had lacked. Nearly every alphabet used in Europe and the Middle East today can trace its origins, directly or indirectly, this early innovation.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Researchers mapping surface temperatures across cities have consistently found that low-income neighbourhoods, which often contain fewer parks and street trees along with a higher concentration of dark asphalt and densely packed buildings, can be several degrees hotter during heat waves than wealthier districts in the very same city. This pattern is frequently linked to historical planning and investment decisions made decades earlier, since neighbourhoods that received less public investment in green infrastructure at the time have generally retained that disadvantage, with heat differences persisting and in some cases even widening over subsequent decades. The consequences extend well beyond simple discomfort, since heat-related illness and death rates tend to be measurably higher in these hotter districts, particularly among elderly residents and those without reliable access to air conditioning. In response, a number of city governments have begun using detailed heat-mapping data to prioritise investment in shade, green space and reflective surfaces specifically in the districts identified as hottest, rather than distributing new green infrastructure spending evenly across an entire city regardless of local need. Some researchers caution, however, that mapping alone accomplishes little without sustained funding and long-term political commitment to implement the resulting recommendations.
1. Which TWO statements are supported by the passage?
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.
Scholars of comparative mythology have observed that stories from vastly different cultures around the world often follow a broadly similar narrative pattern, in which an ordinary individual is called away from their familiar world to a difficult and transformative journey. Along the way, the hero typically encounters a series of trials and obstacles designed to test their courage, resourcefulness or moral character, often with the guidance of a wiser mentor figure who helps them for the challenges that lie ahead. After overcoming a decisive, climactic ordeal, the hero generally returns transformed, bringing back some form of benefit, whether wisdom, an object of value, or restored order, that ultimately their original community. Some scholars argue that this recurring pattern reflects deep, shared aspects of human psychology, while others caution against the similarities between stories that arose independently within very different cultural and historical contexts.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Psychologists studying decision-making have identified a pattern known as moral licensing, in which a person who has recently done something they consider virtuous becomes subsequently more likely to indulge in behaviour they would normally consider excessive, unhealthy or otherwise questionable. In one frequently cited example, shoppers who purchased environmentally friendly products in an experimental setting were subsequently found to behave slightly less honestly in an unrelated task than shoppers who had purchased conventional, non-eco-friendly products, suggesting that the earlier virtuous purchase had granted participants an unconscious sense of moral credit to draw upon. Researchers propose that this effect occurs because people unconsciously maintain something resembling a mental ledger of their own recent moral behaviour, and a sufficiently large virtuous deposit into that ledger can seem, to the person themselves, to justify a subsequent withdrawal in the form of some smaller, more indulgent or ethically questionable behaviour. This research has practical implications for public health and environmental campaigns, since encouraging a single virtuous action in isolation, without also reinforcing a broader pattern of consistent behaviour, may in some circumstances inadvertently enable a subsequent lapse rather than reliably encouraging further genuinely positive behaviour.
3. What does the passage suggest moral licensing might inadvertently cause?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
If you've ever noticed that city centres feel hotter than the countryside at night, you've experienced the urban heat island effect. Cities can be several degrees warmer than surrounding areas for three main reasons. First, dark surfaces like asphalt and roofs absorb sunlight during the day and release it slowly after sunset. Second, there's very little vegetation, and plants normally cool the air by releasing water vapour. Third, air conditioners, cars and factories all produce waste heat. The consequences are serious, particularly during heatwaves, when hot nights prevent people's bodies from recovering. Planners are responding in several ways. They're planting street trees, building green roofs, and painting roofs white or using reflective materials. Some cities are even designing streets to channel breezes through neighbourhoods. None of these measures is expensive, and together they can lower temperatures noticeably.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Cities are warmer than the countryside because dark surfaces store heat, there is little vegetation to cool the air, and machines produce waste heat. This makes heatwaves dangerous. Planners respond with street trees, green roofs and reflective materials, which are inexpensive and, used together, can noticeably reduce temperatures in built-up areas during hot weather.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Wealthy Romans enjoyed an effective form of central heating called the hypocaust, a system of hollow spaces built beneath a floor and inside walls. A furnace, tended outside the main rooms, burned wood or charcoal, and the hot air it produced circulated through these hidden spaces before escaping through flues, warming the floor and walls evenly without smoke filling the living areas. The system heated grand villas but also public bathhouses, keeping pools and changing rooms comfortable even in cold weather. Maintaining a hypocaust required a constant fuel supply and someone dedicated to feeding the furnace, so reliable warmth was mainly available to the wealthy or to shared public buildings rather than ordinary homes.
1. Which of the following does the speaker say about the hypocaust?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Stretching more than two thousand kilometres along the coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet, built over thousands of years by tiny coral depositing calcium carbonate skeletons. It supports an extraordinary variety of , from fish species to sea turtles passing through on migration. In recent decades, repeated marine heatwaves have caused severe coral , and rising ocean temperatures threaten the reef's long-term . Conservationists are testing heat-resistant coral strains, but most agree that cutting global emissions remains the only lasting .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
On steep hillsides, rainfall can wash away topsoil rapidly if the land is farmed without care, gradually stripping fields of the fertile layer crops depend on and carrying valuable nutrients downstream where they're lost to farming entirely. Terracing, cutting a slope into a series of flat, stepped platforms, is a farming technique used for thousands of years across regions from the Andes to Southeast Asia specifically to slow this process, since each flat terrace catches rainwater and sediment rather than letting them rush straight downhill. Terraces also make steep land usable for crops such as rice that require standing water, effectively turning otherwise unfarmable mountainsides into productive fields, though building and maintaining the stone or earth walls that support each terrace requires significant ongoing labour.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Paper drinking straws actually predate plastic ones, having been patented in the United States in the eighteen eighties as an improvement over the natural rye grass stalks people had previously used, which tended to disintegrate unpleasantly and add an odd flavour to a drink. Plastic straws became dominant through the mid-twentieth century because they were cheaper to mass-produce and didn't get soggy as quickly. In recent years, growing concern about ocean plastic pollution has driven a partial return to paper straws in many cafes, even though modern versions still sometimes soften before a drink is finished, a problem manufacturers keep trying to solve.
3. What does the speaker say about the historical relationship between paper and plastic straws?
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. Although octopuses usually prefer crawling along the seafloor using their flexible arms, they can swim surprisingly quickly when threatened by forcefully expelling a jet of water from a muscular tube called a siphon. This sudden burst of water propels the octopus rapidly away from danger, often while it simultaneously releases a cloud of ink to further distract a chasing predator, momentarily buying precious 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 9