The five speaking tasks, side by side
- Format and timing
- What the scoring listens for
- Original practice material
Every task at a glance
Read Aloud
- Timing
- About 30 to 40 seconds to prepare, then roughly 35 to 40 seconds to read.
- Scored on
- Content, Oral fluency, Pronunciation
- Practice here
- 12 original passages
Repeat Sentence
- Timing
- No preparation. The microphone opens immediately after the audio and records for about 15 seconds.
- Scored on
- Content, Oral fluency, Pronunciation
- Practice here
- 20 sentences
Describe Image
- Timing
- 25 seconds to prepare, then 40 seconds to speak.
- Scored on
- Content, Oral fluency, Pronunciation
- Practice here
- 8 chart prompts
Retell Lecture
- Timing
- About 10 seconds to prepare after the audio ends, then 40 seconds to speak.
- Scored on
- Content, Oral fluency, Pronunciation
- Practice here
- 6 lecture summaries
Answer Short Question
- Timing
- No preparation. Answer within about 10 seconds of the question ending.
- Scored on
- Content, Pronunciation and fluency
- Practice here
- 30 questions
If you only have a week
- 1Read Aloud, because there are six or seven of them and each one also feeds your reading score. It is the highest return per minute of practice in the whole section.
- 2Repeat Sentence, because it is scored on both speaking and listening and because partial credit means a half-remembered sentence is still worth saying.
- 3Describe Image, because the fluency mark is lost by stopping at twenty seconds, and a fixed opening sentence fixes that in one sitting.
- 4Answer Short Question, which takes ten minutes to get right: one or two words, said immediately and clearly.
- 5Retell Lecture last, because it is the hardest to improve quickly and there are only one or two in a test.
Straight answers
How long is the PTE speaking section?
Roughly 30 to 35 minutes, depending on how many of each task type your test contains. The tasks arrive in a fixed order, starting with a short unscored introduction and then Read Aloud.
Which tasks count towards other scores?
Read Aloud and Answer Short Question also feed reading and listening respectively, and Repeat Sentence and Retell Lecture feed listening. Only Describe Image is speaking alone, which is worth knowing when you decide what to practise.
Does the microphone stop if I pause?
Yes. Three seconds of silence ends the recording on most tasks, which is the single most expensive thing to learn during a real test rather than before it. Start speaking promptly and do not leave a long gap mid-answer.
Start with the task that is worth the most
Twelve original Read Aloud passages, the real clock, and a per-sound breakdown of your own recording. Free, no card.