PTE

About PTE

Pearson Test of English (PTE) is designed to test your English reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. The test takes approximately 3 hours to complete. This includes an un-timed introduction to the test and one optional scheduled break of up to 10 minutes.

During the three-hour test session there will be three main parts to the test: speaking and writing (together), listening and reading. There are twenty different question formats, ranging from multiple choice through to essay writing and interpreting information.

PTE Academic assesses real-life, academic content, so you will hear excerpts from lectures and view graphs and charts. You will hear a range of accents in the test, from British and American to non-native speakers, so you will be exposed to the type of accents you will encounter in everyday life.

Test Format

PART 1: SPEAKING & WRITING (77 – 93 minutes)

Personal Introduction
Read aloud
Repeat sentence
Describe image
Re-tell lecture
Answer short question
One sentence
Paragraph
Essay (20mins)

PART 2: READING (32 – 41 minutes)

Multiple choice questions (x2)
Re-order paragraphs
Fill in the blanks (x2)
A ten minute break is optional

PART 3: LISTENING (45 – 57 minutes)

Summarize spoken text
Multiple choice x2
Fill the blanks
Highlight the correct summary
Select missing word
Highlight incorrect words
Write from dictation

Score System

PTE Academic is scored against the Global Scale of English, a thermometer-style scale that gives you an accurate overview of your skills. The Global Scale of English aligns with a variety of popular tests and scales around the world. The PTE Academic Score Report includes your overall score, communicative skills scores and enabling skills scores. The overall score reflects your overall English language ability. The score is based on performance on all items in the test. The range for the overall score is 10-90 points.

Scores for communicative skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) are based on all test items that assess these skills, either as a single skill or together with other skills. The range for each communicative skill score is 10-90 points.

Scores for enabling skills (grammar, oral fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and written discourse) are based on all test items assessing one or more of these skills. The range for each enabling skill score is 10-90 points.