A2–C2 · PTE Academic
PTE Academic Practice Test 9
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.
Artificial intelligence systems learn patterns by analysing enormous quantities of data. Their usefulness depends on the quality of that data: if the examples contain errors or reflect historical prejudice, the system may reproduce those flaws. Careful testing and human oversight are therefore essential.
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Model answer: Stress "enormous quantities" and "quality". Pause after the colon-like break at "data" and after "prejudice". Say "reproduce those flaws" firmly. End with a confident falling tone on "essential", giving "therefore" a slight emphasis before it.
The Silk Road was not a single road but a network of trade routes linking China with the Mediterranean. Merchants carried silk, spices and paper westward, while gold, glass and horses travelled east. Ideas and religions moved along the same paths, connecting distant civilisations.
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Model answer: Stress "not a single road but a network". Pause after "Mediterranean" and after "westward". Contrast "westward" and "east". Keep the last sentence smooth, stress "distant civilisations", and fall on the final word.
Repeat Sentence
You will hear a sentence. Please repeat the sentence exactly as you hear it.
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Model answer: Would you mind opening the window a little?
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Model answer: I usually take my lunch break at half past twelve.
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Model answer: Some scientists believe that the universe is still expanding at an increasing speed.
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 chart shows what percentage of commuters in six cities cycle to work. Copenhagen is well ahead at 49 percent, with Amsterdam second at 38. Berlin comes third with 15 percent, and Paris follows on 11. London has only 5 percent, and Sydney is lowest at 3. In short, cycling is a mainstream commuting choice in the two northern cities but remains a minority option elsewhere.
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 monarch butterfly migration between North America and Mexico spans multiple generations, with each new generation navigating to unfamiliar sites using cues like sunlight and magnetic fields, still not fully understood. Populations have declined due to milkweed habitat loss, pesticides, and climate disruption, prompting conservation efforts to plant milkweed along migration routes.
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: Emma questions the value of space tourism given its cost and exclusivity. Frank compares it to early aviation, once exclusive but later widely affordable. Grace raises the environmental cost of rocket emissions. They converge on distinguishing scientific space exploration, which they support, from purely recreational tourist flights, which they view skeptically until launch technology becomes cleaner.
Respond to a Situation
Listen to the situation and respond as if you were in it.
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Model answer: My booking confirmation clearly states unlimited mileage included in this plan, and I have the email here showing that. I'm not willing to pay extra charges that contradict what I actually booked and paid for. Could you please honor the terms shown in my confirmation, or explain exactly why there's a discrepancy here.
Writing
Summarize Written Text
Read the passage and write a one-sentence summary.
The term Silk Road suggests a single highway, but historians now emphasise that it was really a shifting web of overland and maritime routes linking China, Central Asia, India, Persia and the Mediterranean from roughly the second century BCE. Very few traders travelled its entire length. Goods usually passed through many hands, with merchants buying from one community and selling to the next, so that a bolt of silk might change ownership a dozen times before reaching Rome. Cities such as Samarkand and Kashgar flourished as intermediaries, offering markets, lodging and financial services to caravans. Trade in luxury products, including silk, spices, glassware and horses, generated considerable wealth, but the routes also carried less tangible cargoes. Buddhism spread from India into China along them, Islam later moved eastwards, and technologies such as papermaking gradually reached the West. Unfortunately, so did disease: many scholars believe that the plague which devastated Europe in the fourteenth century travelled along trade networks from Central Asia. The overland routes declined as sea travel improved and as political fragmentation made caravan journeys more dangerous and expensive. Nevertheless, the concept of the Silk Road remains powerful today, inspiring modern infrastructure projects and reminding us that cultures have long influenced one another through commerce rather than conquest alone.
Read the passage and summarise it in ONE sentence of no more than 75 words.
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Model answer: The Silk Road was less a single route than a changing network through which goods passed between many intermediaries, and it carried religions, technologies and diseases across Eurasia until sea travel and political instability reduced its importance, although its legacy still inspires modern projects.
Write Essay
Write an essay of about 200-300 words on the topic.
Top professional footballers and other sports stars earn millions of pounds each year, far more than doctors or teachers. Is this fair? Discuss the reasons for this situation and give your opinion.
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Model answer: It seems paradoxical that a person who kicks a ball can earn in a week more than a nurse earns in a lifetime. While I can explain why this happens, I do not think it reflects the real value of these professions to society.
The reasons are economic. Elite sport is a global entertainment industry, and a top player can attract millions of viewers, sell shirts and increase the value of sponsorship deals. Television companies and advertisers pay enormous sums to reach these audiences, and clubs pass on part of that revenue to the few individuals who are able to draw the crowds. Moreover, careers are short, and only a tiny number of athletes reach the highest level, so the market rewards rare talent heavily.
However, being paid according to market demand is not the same as being fair. Doctors, teachers and firefighters contribute directly to people's health, education and safety, yet their salaries are set by public budgets rather than by audience size. If society genuinely values these roles, it would reward them better.
I would not suggest limiting what sports clubs pay, since they use private money and offer people pleasure. What governments can do is tax very high incomes more heavily and invest the revenue in public services. That would recognise that market success and social importance are different things, without punishing athletes for their talent.
Reading
Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks
Select the best word for each blank.
When prices across an economy rise persistently, reducing the purchasing power of money, economists describe the situation as inflation. Central banks typically respond by interest rates, making borrowing more expensive and saving more attractive, which tends to slow spending and cool demand. If interest rates are raised too aggressively, however, businesses may reduce investment and lay off workers, a broader economic slowdown. Central banks therefore attempt to strike a careful balance, adjusting rates gradually while monitoring a wide range of economic data. Because changes in interest rates take many months to affect the wider economy, policymakers must often act the full effects of inflation become obvious. Persistent disagreement remains among economists about exactly how quickly and how far rates should move in response rising prices.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Read the text and select all the correct answers.
Vertical farms grow crops in stacked layers within controlled indoor environments, often inside repurposed warehouses or purpose-built facilities located within or near major cities, using artificial lighting and carefully regulated temperature, humidity and nutrient delivery rather than relying on natural sunlight and soil. Proponents argue that this approach can produce food using a small fraction of the land and water required by conventional outdoor farming, since crops can be grown in densely stacked layers year-round regardless of external weather conditions, and delivered to nearby urban markets with minimal transport distance and associated spoilage. However, vertical farms depend heavily on artificial lighting and climate control systems that consume substantial amounts of electricity, and critics argue that unless this electricity comes from genuinely low-carbon sources, the resulting carbon emissions can partly or entirely offset the environmental benefits gained from reduced land use and transport. The technology has so far proven most economically viable for fast-growing, high-value crops such as leafy greens and herbs, while staple crops such as wheat or rice, which require far more space and generate comparatively low revenue per square metre, remain largely impractical to grow this way at current costs.
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.
Gene therapy aims to treat or prevent disease by directly correcting a fault in a patient's own genetic material, rather than simply managing the resulting symptoms with medication in the way conventional treatment typically does. In some approaches, doctors use a modified, harmless virus to a corrected copy of a faulty gene directly into a patient's own cells, effectively hijacking the virus's natural ability to enter cells for a genuinely therapeutic purpose. Early gene therapy trials during the 1990s produced several serious safety setbacks that considerably scientific and public enthusiasm for the emerging field for well over a decade afterward. More recent advances in genetic engineering precision have allowed researchers to develop several gene therapies that have since received formal regulatory approval, successfully treating certain rare inherited conditions that previously had no other effective treatment option whatsoever. Because gene therapies are often individually tailored and require extremely complex, costly manufacturing processes, they currently far more expensive than most other conventional forms of medical treatment, raising difficult and largely unresolved questions about who should ultimately pay for such expensive but potentially life-changing treatments.
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Read the text and choose the best answer.
Scholars of comparative mythology have long noted that creation myths from cultures around the world, despite having developed entirely independently of one another across vast distances and long stretches of time, frequently share certain recurring structural elements, even while differing considerably in their specific characters, imagery and cultural details. A striking number of traditions, for example, describe the world emerging from an initial state of formless chaos or undifferentiated darkness, gradually organised into recognisable order through the deliberate action of one or more divine or supernatural beings. Other creation myths instead describe the world being formed from the body, or the remains, of a primordial being, sometimes one deliberately sacrificed or defeated specifically to bring the ordered world into existence through that very act. Anthropologists debate the underlying reasons for these cross-cultural similarities, with some suggesting they reflect universal features of human psychology and shared patterns of storytelling more broadly, while others caution that focusing too heavily on such structural similarities risks overlooking the genuinely distinct cultural meaning, function and specific significance that a particular creation myth held for the specific community that originally told and preserved it.
3. According to the passage, what is one recurring element found across many creation myths?
Listening
Summarize Spoken Text
Listen to the recording, then write a summary.
Transcript (available after checking)
Microplastics are pieces of plastic smaller than five millimetres, and researchers have now found them almost everywhere, from Arctic snow and deep ocean trenches to drinking water and even human blood. They come from two main sources. Primary microplastics are made small on purpose, like the beads once used in face scrubs. Secondary microplastics form when larger items, such as bottles, fishing nets and synthetic clothing, break down. Washing a single load of polyester clothes can release hundreds of thousands of fibres. Marine animals swallow the particles, and they can also carry harmful chemicals. What this means for human health is still uncertain, since studies are at an early stage. Nevertheless, scientists advise a precautionary approach. Reducing single-use plastic, fitting filters to washing machines and improving waste collection are all measures that can limit the amount that reaches the environment.
Write a summary of the lecture in 50–70 words.
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Model answer: Microplastics, either manufactured small or formed as larger plastic items and synthetic clothing break down, have been found nearly everywhere, including drinking water and human blood. Their health effects are uncertain, but scientists recommend precaution, such as reducing single-use plastic, filtering washing machine water and improving waste collection so that less plastic reaches the environment.
Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers
Listen and select all the correct answers.
Transcript (available after checking)
Cities are noisy places, and birds have to compete with traffic to be heard. Researchers who recorded great tits in urban and rural areas found that city birds sing at a higher pitch, since low-frequency notes get drowned out by the rumble of engines. Some species also sing louder or change the timing of their songs, for example singing earlier in the morning before rush hour begins. This matters because birdsong attracts mates and defends territories. Studies during the lockdowns of two thousand and twenty showed how quickly birds respond. When traffic fell, birds in San Francisco sang more softly and their songs became more effective at communicating. So reducing noise can help wildlife almost immediately.
1. What does the lecture say about urban birds?
Fill in the Blanks
Listen to the recording and type the missing words.
Alexander Graham Bell is usually credited with inventing the telephone, patenting his design in eighteen seventy-six, though another inventor, Elisha Gray, was working on a remarkably similar at almost exactly the same time. Bell's telephone worked by converting sound waves into a fluctuating electrical using a thin vibrating membrane, then reversing the process at the receiving end to reproduce the . Early telephone networks required an operator to physically connect each call by plugging wires into a , a system that persisted for decades before automatic switching made human operators .
Highlight Correct Summary
Listen and choose the paragraph that best summarises the recording.
Transcript (available after checking)
Termite mounds, some rising several metres above the ground, are far more than simple piles of dirt; they function as sophisticated climate-control structures that keep the underground nest at a stable temperature and humidity despite extreme swings in outside conditions between day and night. Many mounds contain an internal network of tunnels and chimneys that promote natural airflow, drawing warm air upward and out through the structure while pulling cooler air in near the base, a passive ventilation system that requires no active pumping and has inspired architects designing energy-efficient buildings in hot climates. The termites continuously repair and adjust the mound's structure in response to changing conditions, effectively functioning as a colony-wide, self-regulating construction crew rather than following one single, unchanging blueprint.
2. Which paragraph best summarises the recording?
Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer
Listen and choose the best answer.
Transcript (available after checking)
Water boils when its vapour pressure equals the surrounding atmospheric pressure, and because pressure drops as altitude increases, water boils at a lower temperature on a high mountain than at sea level. This might sound like an advantage for cooking, since water reaches boiling point faster, but it actually makes cooking slower, because the water is boiling at a lower temperature and transferring less heat into the food over the same time. This is why some recipes give separate high-altitude cooking times, and why mountaineering expeditions sometimes carry pressure cookers to compensate for the lower effective temperature.
3. Why is cooking slower at high altitude, 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. Before satellite navigation existed, travellers relied heavily on large paper maps that had to be folded along a specific pattern to fit into a pocket or glove compartment. Cartographers experimented with various folding systems carefully designed to prevent tears along the frequently used creases, and some recent folding patterns are specifically designed so the map can be fully refolded to any single panel without unfolding the entire sheet.
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 10