Question type
Every PTE Academic question type, explained
Twenty question types across four skills. Each one has its own timing, its own scoring, and its own way of going wrong.
Speaking & Writing
7- 40s Read Aloud A short passage appears and you read it aloud. It scores your pronunciation, fluency and how faithfully you read what is on the screen — not how well you understood it.
- 15s Repeat Sentence You hear a sentence once and repeat it. Short, unforgiving, and worth more than its length suggests: it feeds both speaking and listening.
- 40s Describe Image An image appears and you describe it. The examiner is listening for fluent, structured speech, not for art criticism.
- 40s Re-tell Lecture You hear a lecture, then retell it in your own words. It rewards note-taking and structure more than memory.
- 10s Answer Short Question A question is asked and you answer in a word or two. It tests general knowledge and quick recall, not fluency.
- 600s Summarize Written Text You read a passage and summarise it in a single sentence. The one-sentence rule is a hard constraint, and breaking it costs the mark outright.
- 1200s Write Essay You argue a position in an essay. Structure and development matter as much as grammar.
Reading
5- — Reading & Writing: Fill in the Blanks A passage with gaps, each offering a dropdown of choices. It scores reading and writing together, which makes it unusually valuable.
- — Reading: Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers A passage with more than one correct answer. Wrong selections subtract, so guessing everything scores zero rather than everything.
- — Re-order Paragraphs Scrambled paragraphs to restore to their original order. It is scored on adjacent pairs, so one misplaced paragraph rarely destroys the whole answer.
- — Reading: Fill in the Blanks A passage with gaps and a shared bank of words, some of which fit nowhere. It rewards collocation more than vocabulary size.
- — Reading: Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer A passage with a single correct answer. No negative marking, so an educated guess costs nothing.
Listening
8- 600s Summarize Spoken Text You hear a recording and summarise it in writing. Notes taken while listening are the whole task.
- — Listening: Multiple Choice, Choose Multiple Answers A recording with more than one correct answer, and wrong selections subtract. The audio plays once.
- — Listening: Fill in the Blanks A transcript with gaps that you fill while the recording plays. Spelling counts.
- — Highlight Correct Summary You hear a recording and pick the summary that matches it. The distractors are usually true but incomplete.
- — Listening: Multiple Choice, Choose Single Answer A recording with a single correct answer. No negative marking here.
- — Select Missing Word A recording stops before its last word and you choose what it was. It rewards following the argument, not the vocabulary.
- — Highlight Incorrect Words A transcript that differs from the audio in places, and you mark the differences. Wrong marks subtract.
- — Write from Dictation You hear a sentence and type it exactly. It feeds both listening and writing, and it is the highest-value item per second in the exam.