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PTEPTE Prep

Part 1 · Speaking & Writing · RS

Repeat Sentence: Speaking & Writing PTE question type

You hear a sentence read aloud, then repeat it back as closely as you can. The recording plays once only.

There is no preparation time and no visual text, so you are working purely from what you heard. The item is short but it appears ten to twelve times, which makes it the highest-volume speaking item on the test.

Scoring

How Repeat Sentence is scored

Content is scored 0 to 3: 3 for all words in the correct sequence, 2 for at least half, 1 for less than half, 0 for almost nothing. Crucially, hesitations, filled and unfilled pauses, and leading or trailing material are explicitly ignored, so a hesitant but nearly complete repetition outscores a fluent wrong one.

Skills scored
Listening — contributes to your Listening scoreSpeaking — contributes to your Speaking score
Questions per test
10–12 in Speaking & Writing
Traits Pearson rates
Content · Pronunciation · Oral Fluency

This is an integrated item: it counts towards 2 different skill scores at once, which is why its weighting in a full test is higher than a single-skill item.

Watch out

Common Repeat Sentence mistakes

  1. 1Stopping when you lose the thread, when continuing from memory of the start still earns more.
  2. 2Regrouping on meaning instead of rhythm, which costs more words than any other choice.
  3. 3Starting to speak before the audio ends and clipping the opening words.

Strategy

Chunk the sentence into three-to-five-word groups and shadow the audio. Hesitations and pauses are ignored, so keep going even if you lose a word.
Practice Repeat SentenceSit a full mock

Questions

Repeat Sentence questions, answered

How many Repeat Sentence questions are on the PTE Academic?

A PTE Academic has 10–12 Repeat Sentence items in the Speaking & Writing section. Each one is an integrated item, so it counts towards both your Listening and Speaking scores.

How is Repeat Sentence scored?

Content is scored 0 to 3: 3 for all words in the correct sequence, 2 for at least half, 1 for less than half, 0 for almost nothing. Crucially, hesitations, filled and unfilled pauses, and leading or trailing material are explicitly ignored, so a hesitant but nearly complete repetition outscores a fluent wrong one.

What goes wrong most often on Repeat Sentence?

Stopping when you lose the thread, when continuing from memory of the start still earns more.

Keep going

Related speaking & writing question types

All Speaking & Writing question types · tips for all 22 types · full test format · how PTE scores work.

Scoring figures on this page follow the current PTE Academic official guide. This is an independent practice site and is not affiliated with Pearson.