PTE Academic common mistakes
PTE Academic · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In Read Aloud, reading the passage at a fast conversational pace and rushing through pauses and punctuation, so the recording loses rhythm and chunking.
Candidates transfer normal silent-reading speed to an oral task and focus on finishing rather than on clear phrasing, and time pressure in the prep window pushes them to start before planning intonation.
What to do instead
Use the 30–40 second prep time to mark slash breaks at commas, full stops and clause boundaries, then read aloud at a measured pace with a brief pause at each mark; practise with a timer and record yourself to confirm you finish with 5–10 seconds to spare rather than sprinting.
In Repeat Sentence, trying to write the sentence down or memorise every word verbatim before speaking, which causes a long silence and a fragmented delivery.
Candidates treat it as a dictation and memory test, panic when words slip, and freeze instead of producing partial content fluently.
What to do instead
Practise chunking: hold the sentence as 2–4 meaning groups in working memory and speak immediately after the audio ends; if a word is lost, keep going with fluent grammar rather than stopping. Drill with 8–12 word sentences and score yourself on fluency and word order, not exact recall.
In Describe Image, spending prep time writing full sentences and then delivering a memorised script that ignores the actual chart, or listing every data point with no structure.
Candidates believe more content equals a higher score and lack a repeatable template, so they either over-script or ramble without an overview.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed four-part frame (what the image shows, the main trend or highest/lowest, two supporting figures, a one-line conclusion) and rehearse it on varied chart types so the structure, not the content, is memorised. In prep, note only 5–6 keywords and speak from them.
In Write Essay, producing a memorised template essay that only loosely addresses the prompt, with a thin or missing position statement and examples that do not support the question asked.
Candidates prepare generic templates to save time under the 20-minute limit and under-practise analysing the prompt type (opinion, discussion, problem–solution).
What to do instead
Practise a 2-minute planning step: identify the task type, write a one-sentence thesis answering it directly, and two topic sentences. Keep a template for structure only (introduction, two body paragraphs, conclusion) and fill it with prompt-specific content; time full essays at 20 minutes weekly.
In Summarise Written Text, copying long phrases verbatim from the passage or writing two disconnected sentences instead of one coherent 5–75 word summary.
Candidates fear grammar errors and default to copying, and they misjudge the single-sentence requirement and the word limit.
What to do instead
Practise paraphrasing with synonym and word-class swaps, and build the summary as one sentence using a connector (although, while, because). Count words in practice and aim for 30–50 words; check that the sentence has one main clause and captures the passage's central claim, not supporting detail.
In Reading: Fill in the Blanks, choosing options by how familiar or natural each word sounds in isolation rather than by the grammatical slot and collocation in the sentence.
Candidates read the gap in isolation, skip the sentence-level grammar cues (articles, prepositions, subject–verb agreement) and run out of time, so they guess quickly.
What to do instead
Read the whole sentence around each gap first and predict the part of speech and meaning before looking at the options; eliminate options that fail grammar even if they sound plausible. Practise with a strict per-blank time budget and review errors by category (collocation, grammar, meaning).
In Reading: Multiple Choice, reading the options first and then hunting for matching words in the passage, which leads to selecting a distractor that repeats passage vocabulary.
Keyword-matching feels efficient under time pressure, and distractors are deliberately written to reuse the passage's wording while reversing or distorting the meaning.
What to do instead
Skim the question stem, then read the relevant passage section for meaning before evaluating options; reject any option that merely repeats words without matching the claim. Practise identifying the paraphrase relationship between correct answers and the text, and mark evidence in the passage for each choice.
In Re-order Paragraphs, arranging sentences by trying to build a story from the first sentence read rather than finding cohesive devices (pronouns, demonstratives, connectors, definite articles) that link sentences.
Candidates rely on content intuition and topic familiarity instead of grammatical cohesion, and they do not check the whole sequence for consistency.
What to do instead
Hunt for the topic sentence with no anaphoric reference, then chain sentences using pronoun referents (this, these, it), discourse markers (however, therefore, for example) and article shifts (a → the). Verify the final order by reading it through and confirming every pronoun has a preceding referent.
In Listening: Write from Dictation, writing only the first few words heard, or delaying writing to rehearse the sentence mentally, so words are lost before they are recorded.
The sentence is played once at natural speed and candidates try to hold it all in memory before writing, underestimating how quickly working memory decays.
What to do instead
Write continuously while listening, using abbreviations and partial words, then reconstruct the full sentence in the 1–2 minutes after the audio. Train with short dictations at natural speed, focusing on function words and word endings (articles, plurals, tense) that carry scoring weight.
In Listening: Fill in the Blanks, missing answers because attention drops while waiting for the next gap, and writing an ungrammatical or wrongly spelled form of the heard word.
Candidates listen passively for whole words rather than tracking the text, and they do not apply grammar checks to what they write, so singular/plural and tense errors persist.
What to do instead
Read ahead during the 10-second preview to predict the word class at each gap, follow the transcript with a finger or cursor, and after the audio check each answer for grammar, spelling and word form against the surrounding sentence.