How to get 79+ in PTE Academic

79 in every section is the score most visa and university applications ask for, and it is very achievable — but not by practising everything equally. A few tasks carry far more weight than the rest, and a few mechanical rules can cap your score no matter how good your English is. Here is where to actually put your effort.

Start with the tasks that score twice

PTE scores are pooled: a single task can feed two different section scores. That makes a handful of tasks disproportionately valuable.

Read Aloud feeds both Speaking and Reading. Write from Dictation feeds both Listening and Writing. Retell Lecture feeds Speaking and Listening. If you are short on time, these three are where an hour of practice returns the most points.

• Read Aloud — speaking + reading
• Write from Dictation — listening + writing
• Retell Lecture — speaking + listening
• Summarize Written Text — reading + writing

Fix the mechanical rules before anything else

These are free marks, and they are the most common reason a strong candidate scores badly.

Your essay must fall between 200 and 300 words. Summarize Written Text must be ONE single sentence — if you write two, the Form score collapses regardless of how good the content is. Summarize Spoken Text needs roughly 50–70 words. None of this requires better English; it just requires knowing the rule.

Speaking: fluency beats sounding impressive

Speaking is scored by an automated engine, not a person. It measures content, oral fluency and pronunciation separately — and hesitation damages the fluency score more than a slightly slow, even pace does.

So do not stop, restart, or correct yourself mid-sentence. Keep a steady rhythm and finish before the microphone closes. In Read Aloud, use the preparation seconds to mark where you will pause, then read calmly to the final word without dropping your volume.

Writing: range plus proofreading

Once the word-count rules are safe, the score comes from grammatical range and accuracy. Mix simple and complex sentences rather than writing every sentence the same length, and use precise vocabulary instead of padding.

Spend the last two minutes proofreading articles (a/an/the), plurals and verb agreement. These small errors are individually tiny and collectively expensive.

Reading: speed and collocations

The two fill-in-the-blanks tasks carry the most marks in Reading, and both reward vocabulary that is learned in collocations — words that naturally go together — rather than as isolated definitions.

Do not get stuck. If a blank is not coming, move on and return to it. For Re-order Paragraphs, find the sentence that introduces the topic first, then follow pronouns and linking words to sequence the rest.

Listening: the two tasks that decide it

Write from Dictation and Summarize Spoken Text carry a large share of the Listening score. Write from Dictation is also the single best-value drill in the whole exam, because it simultaneously trains your spelling, grammar and listening.

Practise it daily: listen once, then write the entire sentence from memory. For the longer audio tasks, take keyword notes — five to seven content words — rather than trying to transcribe.

A realistic weekly plan

Twenty focused minutes a day beats a three-hour session once a week, because these are motor skills as much as knowledge.

A workable split: daily Write from Dictation, daily Read Aloud, then rotate through one writing task and one reading task. Score each attempt so you can see which specific tasks are dragging your average down, and spend your time there rather than on what you already do well.

Common questions

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