PTE Practice Test 1: Answers
Every answer, with the reason behind it. Model answers for the writing tasks, and a checklist for judging your own speaking.
Unofficial original RCF practice material
Not an official PTE test and not a past paper. Every answer and model answer below was written by RCF English. Not produced, approved or endorsed by Pearson.
Mark by skill, not by total
PTE reports four skill scores, not one. A total out of thirty tells you very little; knowing that you lost most of your marks in listening tells you what to do on Monday.
Count your marks separately for reading and listening, and judge the writing tasks against the marking points rather than against a feeling.
Reading: answer key
| Q | Answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| R1 | spread | Disease spreads. Sprawl is used of cities, not infection. |
| R2 | based | Based on evidence is the fixed phrase. Raised on and laid on do not collocate with evidence. |
| R3 | beneficial | The sentence contrasts a mistaken theory with a good outcome, so the gap must be positive. Superficial and artificial reverse the sense. |
| R4 | essential | The activity is essential to forming memory. The other three are all negative or irrelevant. |
| R5 | forgo | Forgo means to go without. Forget sleep would not contrast with revising for the same hours. |
| R6 | A, C and E | A is the second sentence; C is shaped by the question it was made to answer; E is the warning about mistaking absence of information for absence of anything. B invents a reason the passage never gives, and D is contradicted by neither is dishonest. |
| R7 | B, D, A, C, E | Follow the link words: That meant after B, The result was after D, Railways changed this after A, Since then after C. |
| R8 | B, D, E, A, C | B introduces the attitude, D expands it, E states the gap, A marks the turn with Only later, C gives the answer. |
| R9 | loss | Without loss in quality - the only noun that fits after without. |
| R10 | separated | Colours are separated once mixed; combined reverses the meaning. |
| R11 | ruin | A single wrong item can ruin a batch - the sentence needs a damaging verb. |
| R12 | yield | Systems yield usable material. Gather would need an object like bottles, not material. |
| R13 | practical | The sentence contrasts with ceremonial, so the gap needs its opposite. |
| R14 | B | The passage says the distinction survives translation but the obligation to make it does not, and names the obligation as the hardest thing to recover. |
Listening: answer key
| Q | Answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| L2 | B, C and E | The talk says hand note-takers remember more, that typing speed is the problem, and that typists record considerably more word for word. A is never mentioned, and D is explicitly rejected - I am not arguing for that. |
| L3 | permanent, research, claim, expected | Four gaps in order. |
| L4 | B | The talk is about bees reporting direction as an angle to the sun and correcting for the sun's movement, which requires tracking time. The dance is mentioned nowhere. |
| L5 | B | The speaker opens by conceding cost and environmental concerns, then argues the value is predictability. |
| L6 | B | The passage explains that nothing travelled fast enough for the difference to matter - railways are what changed that. |
| L7 | quickly, abundant, rapidly, cheaper, last | Five words. The spoken version had rapidly, plentiful, quickly, dearer and endure. Note that two of the five are real words in the right place, just not the ones spoken - that is what makes this task type hard. |
| L8a | The committee will publish its findings at the end of the academic year. | Marked word by word. Write everything you caught. |
| L8b | Several departments share the same laboratory facilities during the summer. | Marked word by word. |
| L8c | Applicants must provide evidence of their previous qualifications. | Marked word by word. |
L1. Summarize Spoken Text - model answer
50 to 70 words. This one is 61.
Dictionaries record only language that has been written down, which is an uneven sample of what people actually say, so vocabulary invented by particular trades or generations often never appears, or arrives long after it was new. A dictionary therefore describes what has settled rather than what is happening now, and no speaker should assume a word is wrong simply because it is unlisted.
Marking points for L1
Content - dictionaries record written language only; that sample is uneven; new vocabulary is late or absent; the conclusion about not judging speech as incorrect.
Form - between 50 and 70 words. Outside that range the form mark goes, however good the content.
The commonest failure is copying the speaker's phrasing. Mark yourself down for any run of more than four words lifted whole.
W1. Summarize Written Text - model answer
One sentence, no more than 75 words. This one is 59.
Although twentieth-century street lighting was designed on the assumption that brighter was always better, evidence that excessive brightness creates glare and deep shadow, and that artificial light disturbs wildlife according to its colour as much as its intensity, suggests the useful questions are where light falls and what colour it is rather than simply how much of it there is.
Marking points for W1
Form first, and it is pass or fail. One sentence, one capital letter, one full stop, 5 to 75 words. Two sentences score zero for form no matter how accurate the content.
Content - the old assumption, both of the findings that unsettled it, and the shift in the question. A summary that gives only the glare point has missed half the text.
Technique - Although at the start does a lot of work here: it lets one sentence carry the old view and the correction without splitting.
W2. Write Essay - model answer
200 to 300 words in 20 minutes. This one is 268.
Whether every student should study a second language for the whole of their schooling divides opinion sharply, and both positions rest on a reasonable idea of what education is for.
Those who would cut it make a practical case. School time is finite, and a subject that most pupils abandon the moment they are allowed to has a weak claim on it. In a country where one language dominates public life, a student may genuinely complete a career without needing another, and the hours spent on irregular verbs might have gone to mathematics or to a technical skill with obvious employment value. Put that way, the argument is hard to dismiss.
The opposing case is that this measures the subject by the wrong test. Learning a second language teaches something that outlasts the vocabulary: that meaning can be carried in more than one structure, and that one's own language is a set of choices rather than the natural shape of thought. Students who have learned another language tend to handle their first with more care, because they have been forced to notice how it works.
My own view is that the practical argument is right about the cost and wrong about the benefit. The difficulty is not that languages are taught, but that they are often taught for years in a way that produces neither fluency nor that insight - a long low-intensity exposure that leaves a pupil able to conjugate and unable to speak.
I would therefore keep the subject and change the delivery, concentrating the same hours into fewer, more intensive years. The choice as usually posed, between all this teaching and none of it, is a false one.
Marking points for W2
The prompt has three parts - both views and your own opinion. An essay that argues one side brilliantly and ignores the other loses content marks however well written it is.
Length is scored. Under 200 or over 300 words costs you. The model above is 268, which is a safe place to aim.
Structure - an introduction, one paragraph per view, your position, and a conclusion. Machine scoring rewards clear paragraphing because it can detect it.
What it does not reward - rare vocabulary used clumsily, or a memorised opening that does not fit the prompt. Both are common and both show up as errors rather than range.
Speaking: how to mark your own recordings
There is no answer key for speaking, and anyone offering you one is guessing. What you can do is listen to your recordings against the things the scoring actually measures. Be harder on yourself than feels comfortable.
Fluency - listen for the gaps, not the words
Play the recording and count every pause longer than about a second, every restart, and every um. Fluency is scored on the smoothness of the whole response, and a candidate with excellent English who restarts three times will score below one with simpler English delivered evenly.
If you hear yourself hesitating to find a better word, that is costing you more than the better word gains. Say the ordinary word and keep going.
Pronunciation - can a stranger follow it at speed?
You are not marked on having a particular accent. You are marked on whether the sounds are clear enough to be recognised without effort.
Listen for word endings especially - plural s, past tense ed. These disappear first under pressure, and a machine notices.
Content - did you answer the actual task?
Read Aloud (S2) - every word present, no words added, no sentence restarted.
Describe Image (S4) - did you say what the chart is, the overall pattern, and the highest and lowest with their figures? Castermill at 210 and Elmford at 76 are the two that matter.
Retell Lecture (S5) - the main claim plus two supporting points, in your own words. If you only said the speaker talked about cities being hot, that is a content failure.
Summarize Group Discussion (S7) - did you report each speaker's position and where they disagreed? Priya wanted the rooms kept open, Tom questioned the cost per user, Dana argued the low usage was caused by the early closing. They settled on a trial, and they disagreed about how long it should run.
Respond to a Situation (S8) - did you do the social thing as well as give the information? Apologise or explain, then say what you will do.
Timing - did you fill the time without running over?
Check each recording against the limit. Stopping at 20 seconds when you had 40 wastes half the opportunity to show fluency; being cut off mid-sentence costs content.
Aim to finish a complete sentence just before the limit. That takes practice, which is exactly what this is for.
Where to go next
PTE Academic overview
The format, the three different PTE tests, how the 10 to 90 score works, and PTE compared with IELTS.
Back to Practice Test 1
Sit another part, or run the whole test again under time.
IELTS
Full IELTS practice tests, if you are preparing for both or still deciding.