PTE Practice Test 1: Listening
Part 3 of 3. Eight task types. You will need one other person to read the scripts aloud. Allow about 35 minutes.
Unofficial original RCF practice material
Not an official PTE test and not a past paper. Every transcript and question below was written by RCF English, following the published format of PTE Academic. Not produced, approved or endorsed by Pearson.
You cannot sit this part alone
In the real test every task here begins with a recording. The scripts are printed in the last section of this page so a teacher, parent or study partner can read them aloud.
Candidate: print or cover the last section before you start. If you read the scripts first, this part measures nothing.
Partner: read each script once only, at a normal speaking speed. No repeats. Two tasks need care - the instructions for L6 and L7 are in the script section, so read those before you begin.
L1. Summarize Spoken Text
Your partner reads a short talk once. Write a summary of 50 to 70 words. 10 minutes.
Take notes while you listen. You are marked on content, form, grammar, vocabulary and spelling, so a summary that is accurate but under 50 or over 70 words loses marks for form alone.
L2. Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers
Your partner reads the talk once. More than one answer is correct, and a wrong choice cancels out a right one.
L2. Which statements match the talk?
- A - The speaker says handwriting is no longer taught in most schools.
- B - Writing by hand appears to help people remember what they wrote.
- C - Typing is faster, and that speed is part of the problem.
- D - The speaker recommends banning laptops from lectures.
- E - Students who typed recorded more of the lecture word for word.
L3. Fill in the Blanks
The transcript appears with gaps. Your partner reads the full version once. Type the missing words as you hear them.
Antarctica is the only continent with no (L3a) ________ population. Everyone there is a visitor, and almost everyone is there to do (L3b) ________ of some kind. The treaty that governs it sets the whole continent aside for peaceful use and suspends every territorial (L3c) ________ made before it was signed. It is an unusual arrangement, and it has held for longer than most people (L3d) ________ it would.
L4. Highlight Correct Summary
Your partner reads a talk once. Choose the paragraph that best summarises it.
L4. Which summary is correct?
- A - Bees navigate using landmarks alone, which is why removing a hedge can leave a colony unable to find its hive.
- B - Bees use the sun as a compass and correct for its movement across the sky, which means they must also track the passing of time.
- C - Bees communicate the location of food by dancing, and the speed of the dance indicates the quality of the flowers.
- D - Bees fly in straight lines between hive and flowers, and the shortest route is learned by trial and error over several days.
L5. Multiple Choice, Single Answer
Your partner reads a short talk once. One answer only.
L5. What is the speaker's main point?
- A - Tidal power is cheaper than other renewable sources.
- B - Tidal power is predictable in a way that wind and solar are not.
- C - Tidal power has no environmental consequences.
- D - Tidal power will replace most other forms of generation.
L6. Select Missing Word
Your partner reads a short passage and stops before the final words. Choose what completes it.
L6. What completes the passage?
- A - before the invention of the clock.
- B - until the railways forced them to agree.
- C - because the sun was easier to read.
- D - once the telegraph had been abandoned.
L7. Highlight Incorrect Words
The transcript below differs from what your partner will read. Mark every word that does not match. There are five.
Paper was made in China for a thousand years before the technique reached Europe, and it arrived slowly, moving west along trade routes rather than spreading quickly. The earliest European mills were built in Spain and Italy, where water power was abundant and the climate dried the sheets rapidly. Parchment remained cheaper for important documents long afterwards, so paper was first used for ordinary writing rather than for anything intended to last.
L8. Write from Dictation
Your partner reads each sentence once. Write it exactly, including spelling and word order.
L8a, L8b and L8c - three sentences.
Write everything you caught, even if it is incomplete. Marking is word by word, so a partial sentence still scores.
For your partner only - scripts to read aloud
Candidate: stop here. Reading this section makes the whole part worthless.
Partner: read each script once only, at a normal speaking speed. L6 and L7 have special instructions - read them before you start.
L1. Summarize Spoken Text - read once
The idea that a language has a fixed number of words is comfortable but wrong. Dictionaries record what has been written down, and what has been written down is a small and uneven sample of what people actually say.
Every trade and every generation invents vocabulary that works perfectly well for years without ever appearing in print. Some of it eventually arrives in a dictionary, usually long after it stopped being new, and by then the people who coined it have often moved on to something else.
So a dictionary is best read as a record of a language's past rather than a description of its present. It tells you what has settled, not what is happening. The useful consequence is that nobody should feel they are speaking incorrectly simply because a word they have used all their life is not listed.
L2. Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers - read once
There is a consistent finding in studies of note-taking that surprises people. Students who take notes by hand tend to remember more of a lecture than students who type, even though the typists record considerably more of it.
The usual explanation is speed. Typing is fast enough to let you take down what the speaker said almost word for word, and that turns out to be the problem. Writing by hand is too slow for transcription, so you are forced to decide what matters and put it in your own words. That deciding is the learning.
I should be careful here. This does not mean laptops should be banned, and I am not arguing for that. It means that a typed note taken as dictation is doing less for you than it appears to be. If you type, the fix is to summarise rather than transcribe.
L3. Fill in the Blanks - read the full version once
Antarctica is the only continent with no permanent population. Everyone there is a visitor, and almost everyone is there to do research of some kind. The treaty that governs it sets the whole continent aside for peaceful use and suspends every territorial claim made before it was signed. It is an unusual arrangement, and it has held for longer than most people expected it would.
L4. Highlight Correct Summary - read once
A foraging bee that finds flowers some distance from the hive has to tell the others where they are, and the way it does so is remarkable.
It uses the sun as a reference point, and reports the direction of the food as an angle relative to the sun's position. The difficulty is that the sun moves. An angle that is correct at nine in the morning is wrong by noon.
Bees solve this by compensating for the movement. A bee that has been inside the hive for some hours will adjust the angle it reports to allow for how far the sun has travelled while it was in the dark. That means it is not only using the sun as a compass - it is keeping track of elapsed time well enough to correct for it.
L5. Multiple Choice, Single Answer - read once
The argument for tidal power does not rest on cost. It is expensive to build and the engineering is difficult, and there are real environmental questions about what a barrage does to an estuary.
What tides have is predictability. Wind and solar vary with weather, which can be forecast a few days ahead at best. Tides are driven by the positions of the moon and the sun, so a tidal station's output in March of next year can be calculated now, to the minute.
For an electricity system, that is worth a great deal. Most of the difficulty with renewable generation is not the total produced but not knowing when it will arrive. Tidal power is the one renewable source that answers that question in advance.
L6. Select Missing Word - read this and STOP where marked
Partner: read the passage below and stop dead at the word 'kept'. Do not read any further - the missing words are the answer.
Before the nineteenth century, every town kept its own time, set by the sun at noon in that particular place. A clock in one city might be several minutes different from a clock sixty miles away, and nobody minded, because nothing travelled fast enough for the difference to matter. Towns went on keeping their own time [STOP HERE]
L7. Highlight Incorrect Words - read the CORRECT version once
Partner: read this version aloud. It differs from the one the candidate can see in five places.
Paper was made in China for a thousand years before the technique reached Europe, and it arrived slowly, moving west along trade routes rather than spreading rapidly. The earliest European mills were built in Spain and Italy, where water power was plentiful and the climate dried the sheets quickly. Parchment remained dearer for important documents long afterwards, so paper was first used for ordinary writing rather than for anything intended to endure.
L8. Write from Dictation - read each sentence once
L8a - The committee will publish its findings at the end of the academic year.
L8b - Several departments share the same laboratory facilities during the summer.
L8c - Applicants must provide evidence of their previous qualifications.
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Answer key and model answers
Every answer explained, with model summaries for L1 and the writing tasks.
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