PTE Academic cheat sheet

Read Aloud: content score depends on reproducing the exact printed words; oral fluency and pronunciation are scored separately, so a smooth delivery with a small omission can outscore a hesitant exact reading.

Repeat Sentence: scoring rewards at least 50% of words in correct order; chunk the sentence into 3-4 word groups and reproduce them in sequence rather than word-by-word.

Describe Image: 25 seconds preparation, 40 seconds speaking; a fixed frame (title, largest trend, two data points, conclusion) covers content, oral fluency, and pronunciation in one pass.

Retell Lecture: notes should capture nouns, numbers, and arrows between ideas; 10 seconds preparation, 40 seconds speaking, and content is judged on key ideas, not verbatim wording.

Answer Short Question: one or two words suffice; a wrong extra word does not erase a correct one, so always attempt an answer rather than staying silent.

Summarize Written Text: one single sentence of 5-75 words; going under 5 or over 75 words scores zero on form, and the sentence must be grammatically complete with one full stop.

Write Essay: 200-300 words in 20 minutes; below 200 words loses form marks, and the score covers content, form, development/coherence, grammar, and vocabulary range.

Enabling skills (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, discourse) are scored from writing tasks and feed the overall score, so spelling errors reduce more than the writing section alone.

Reading is a single timed block of roughly 32-40 minutes covering 5 task types; the timer is shared across all items, so time spent on one task reduces time for the rest.

Multiple Choice, Multiple Answer: each correct option adds a point and each incorrect option subtracts one, with a floor of zero; select only options you can justify from the text.

Re-order Paragraphs: score is based on the number of correctly ordered adjacent pairs, so securing the first sentence and any obvious pronoun-reference links earns partial credit.

Reading and Writing: Fill in the Blanks is a dropdown task drawing on collocation and grammar; each blank is scored independently, so a guess on one blank does not harm others.

Fill in the Blanks (drag-and-drop) offers more options than blanks; unused distractors mean elimination by part of speech and collocation is the primary strategy.

Summarize Spoken Text and Write from Dictation are listening tasks that also contribute to reading and writing scores, so reading performance is not isolated to the reading block.

Multiple Choice, Single Answer is scored 1 or 0 with no penalty for guessing, so every item should be answered before the block timer expires.

Summarize Spoken Text: 10 minutes to write 50-70 words; content, form, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling are each scored, and word count outside 50-70 loses form marks.

Multiple Choice, Multiple Answer carries negative marking (one point per correct, minus one per incorrect, floor zero); single-answer items carry no penalty.

Fill in the Blanks: each blank is worth one point and spelling must be exact; a correctly heard word spelled wrongly scores zero for that blank.

Highlight Correct Summary and Highlight Incorrect Words test gist and detail respectively; Highlight Incorrect Words is negatively marked per wrong selection.

Select Missing Word: the final word or phrase is replaced by a beep; predicting from the topic and grammar before the audio ends improves accuracy.

Write from Dictation: each correct word in the right position earns a point, and it contributes to both listening and writing scores; partial sentences still score.

Listening audio plays once only and cannot be paused or replayed; note-taking during the audio is the only way to retain detail for later questions.

The overall score is 10-90 and is built from communicative skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing) plus enabling skills (grammar, oral fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, written discourse).

Several tasks contribute to two skills at once: Read Aloud feeds reading and speaking; Write from Dictation feeds listening and writing; Summarize Spoken Text feeds listening and writing.

Enabling skills are not separate tasks-they are derived from performance across tasks, so a single repeated weakness such as spelling lowers multiple section scores.

Scores are reported against the Global Scale of English; a target band maps to a GSE range rather than a fixed percentage of correct answers.

The test is machine-scored, so intelligible pronunciation and consistent spelling matter more than accent or stylistic elegance.

Total test time is about 2 hours 15 minutes across three parts: Speaking & Writing (approx. 54-67 min), Reading (approx. 29-30 min), and Listening (approx. 30-43 min).

Speaking and Writing is the first part and is taken in one sitting; the optional 10-minute break falls between Reading and Listening.

A single timer governs each part; individual task timers within a part do not pause the overall section clock except where a task has its own fixed limit.

Personal Introduction is unscored; it is the only speaking task that does not affect the result.

Scores are typically available online within 5 business days, and the score report shows both an overall score and section scores.