PTE exam pattern 2026: all 22 tasks, timings and question counts

The PTE exam pattern at a glance

Three parts, fixed order, no going back once a part ends. The timings below are the ranges Pearson publishes, and they vary between test versions because different papers are balanced for total length.

The whole test is a maximum of two hours fifteen minutes. Notice that the part ranges do not add up to that figure, and Pearson says so explicitly: no candidate receives every maximum or every minimum, because papers are balanced for overall length rather than section by section. Plan for the full two and a quarter hours.

Part 1: Speaking and Writing

The longest part by a wide margin, and the one that decides most candidates' outcome. It opens with an unscored Personal Introduction, then runs the seven speaking tasks before the two writing ones.

Two things in that table surprise people. Repeat Sentence is the highest-volume task in the whole exam, at up to 12 questions, and it feeds two skills at once, so it moves your score more than anything else you will do. And Answer Short Question scores Listening, not Speaking, even though you answer it out loud, because what is being judged is whether you understood the question and chose the right word.

Two tasks carry their own published time limits inside this part: Summarize Written Text gives you 10 minutes per item, and Write Essay gives you 20. Those clocks are per question and you cannot bank unused time.

Part 2: Reading

The shortest part, and the one where pacing matters most, because there is no per-question clock. You get one budget for the whole section and you spend it as you like.

The two Fill in the Blanks variants are the bulk of the section at up to 11 questions between them, and both are pure vocabulary and collocation work. Reorder Paragraphs is the one most people over-spend on: it is worth one mark per correctly ordered adjacent pair, so a near-miss still scores, and it is rarely worth five minutes of staring.

Part 3: Listening

Eight task types, more than any other part, and every one plays its audio exactly once. There is no replay button anywhere in this section.

Write from Dictation is the best value in the section: up to four questions, marked one point per word you spell correctly, feeding both Listening and Writing. There is no deduction, so type every word you can recall even when you are sure the sentence is incomplete.

Why one question can move two scores

Some tasks are integrated, meaning they assess two communicative skills at the same time, and the result counts toward both. Pearson names the combinations that exist: Listening and Speaking, Reading and Writing, Listening and Writing, and Listening and Reading.

This is the single most useful thing to understand about the pattern, because it tells you where practice pays twice. Repeat Sentence, Retell Lecture and Summarize Group Discussion all feed Listening and Speaking. Write from Dictation and Summarize Spoken Text feed Listening and Writing. Highlight Incorrect Words and Highlight Correct Summary feed Listening and Reading.

Notice how often Listening appears. It is the skill most tasks touch, which is why a weak Listening score tends to drag several numbers down at once, and why fixing it lifts more than any other single change. Our Listening section covers the tasks in order.

One correction worth making, because a great deal of older advice still repeats it: Read Aloud scores Speaking only. It fed Reading under the pre-2025 model. If you are practising Read Aloud to lift a weak Reading score, you are practising the wrong task.

How the pattern turns into a score

Every question contributes to your overall score and to the skill or skills it measures. The report you receive shows one overall number and four communicative skills, Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing, all on the same 10 to 90 scale.

The overall is not an average of the four skills. Pearson states that directly, and it matters: you cannot work out your overall by adding your four scores and dividing by four, and any calculator that claims to do so is guessing. The overall is built from your performance across all the questions in the test.

Marking comes in two shapes. Some questions are simply correct or incorrect, worth one mark or nothing. Others are partial credit, where a partly correct answer earns some of the marks available. And on the three tasks flagged in the tables above, an incorrect selection subtracts a mark, which our guide to PTE negative marking explains in full.

The PTE score chart maps those bands to CEFR levels and to the cut scores institutions and visa programmes actually ask for. How long that score stays usable is a separate question, covered in PTE score validity.

What changed in the 2025 pattern update

Pearson revised PTE Academic in August 2025, and a lot of the advice online still describes the older test. Three changes matter for anyone planning study time.

Two task types were added to Part 1. Summarize Group Discussion asks you to summarise a conversation between three speakers, and Respond to a Situation gives you a scenario and asks for an appropriate spoken reply. Both are speaking tasks, and both are unfamiliar territory for anyone using older practice material.

Part 1 got longer. Speaking and Writing now runs about 76 to 84 minutes, up from roughly 54 to 67 before, partly because of the new tasks.

Which tasks feed which skills changed. The integrated pairs were rebalanced, which is where the Read Aloud confusion comes from. If a source still tells you Read Aloud lifts your Reading score, it is describing the pre-2025 test.

How to use the pattern when you plan

Question counts are the closest thing you have to a weighting, so read them as a priority list rather than a syllabus. Repeat Sentence at up to 12 questions and Read Aloud at up to 7 dominate Part 1. The two Fill in the Blanks variants dominate Part 2. Write from Dictation and the multiple choice tasks dominate Part 3.

A reasonable first pass: spend your practice time in proportion to question count, weighted up for anything integrated. That puts Repeat Sentence, Write from Dictation and the Fill in the Blanks family at the top for most people, which is exactly where the fastest score movement tends to come from.

Then sit a full-length mock test under the real timings before you book. The pattern on paper and the pattern at 90 minutes of concentration are different things, and the second one is what you are actually training for.

Quick reference: PTE exam pattern at a glance