Updated PTE Speaking Test: Key Changes for 2025

The PTE (Pearson Test of English) Speaking test underwent several changes in 2025 to enhance the assessment process and provide a more accurate evaluation of test-takers’ speaking abilities. Here are the key updates:

1. New Prompts: The Speaking section now includes new prompts designed to assess fluency and pronunciation more effectively. These prompts focus on real-world scenarios and practical communication skills.
2. Human Checking: Significant updates were made in July and November 2024, including the introduction of human checking for speaking responses. This change aims to ensure that genuine content is assessed and to discourage reliance on templates.
3. Focus on Genuine Content: The emphasis has shifted to assessing genuine content rather than relying on repetitive phrases or templates. Test-takers are encouraged to provide trends, comparisons, and analysis in their responses.
4. Describe Image: Templates that involve repeating phrases like “I can see” without providing meaningful analysis are now flagged. Test-takers are expected to highlight trends, such as increases, decreases, maximums, and minimums, and use sentences that show analysis.
5. Re-tell Lecture: Templates relying on single keywords are now discouraged. Test-takers are encouraged to use phrases with 3-4 words or combine smaller phrases to create meaningful sentences.

These changes aim to provide a more comprehensive and accurate assessment of test-takers’ speaking abilities, ensuring that their responses reflect genuine communication skills and practical language use.

Check out some of my free practice sentences at this link. I am not including an AI generated score because 1) it’s about fluency practice 2) all online scores given at the likes of ApeUni, are very misleading as they are just harnessing not-fit-for-purpose general AI tech. (This tech is made to learn your accent so might give you false confidence). Use them to practice fluency and understanding.

Let me know what you think.