PTE Listening: How to do Summarise Spoken Text
03 March 2026
In the PTE Summarise Spoken Text task, you hear an audio recording and need to write a 50-70 word summary on what you heard. The prompt length is 60-90 seconds, and you only have 10 minutes to write your summary (including the audio time).
Summarise Spoken Text is scored on content, form, grammar, vocabulary and spelling with a total of 10 points. This question type affects the scoring of the following: listening; writing; grammar; spelling and vocabulary.
- Content:
We need to try to include as many keywords as possible. When you listen to the lecture, keep typing down things that you hear. Keywords can be nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Also, the speed of typing is faster than that of handwriting, so typing on the computer is recommended. - Form:
Your response needs to meet the length requirement of between 50 and 70 words. Bear in mind that if form is scored 0, the whole summary will be 0. - Grammar:
It’s important to have a few minutes at the end to check for grammatical mistakes. Double check if the word should be written in a singular or plural form and only use the grammatical structures you are confident using. - Vocabulary:
Try to get as many different keywords as you can from the lecture. There is no need to paraphrase, which means that we don’t have to write our own words. If you really want to paraphrase, just change some basic words. - Spelling:
Make sure that you only include keywords you know how to spell, otherwise spelling score will be affected. Moreover, if the computer can’t catch your keywords, content will be negatively affected as well.
Frequently Asked Questions for PTE Summarise Spoken Text
Q1.Do I need to have a conclusion?
It’s not compulsory in Summarise Spoken Text.
Q2.I don?t have many good keywords to include, what should I do?
If that’s the case, you might need to work on the listening skill or improve vocabulary. You can go through the transcript after the practice.
Q3.How many words should I write for my answer?
You can try to keep it between 65-70 words because this can ensure that you have enough keywords in the response.
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