The PTE Academic test is introducing two new speaking tasks in August 2025: “Respond to a Situation” and “Summarize a Group Discussion,” which will assess real-world communication skills.
Reasons for the changes
Pearsons have been responding to feedback from immigration departments, employers and universities that their high scoring candidates often do not have real life skills.
One reason for this is templates that have been used to game the system. Pearsons are looking at other test types and scoring methods that can reduce the amount of success a template user can have in the test. They are trying to jump ahead of those who learn systems and not real-life skills.
New PTE Test Question Type 1. “Respond to a Situation” – responding to a text-based scenario.
This seems to be similar to the speaking task in Cambridge CAE test whereby the candidate is given an image and must speculate and give opinions on it. However, in PTE you will be given a written text.
For certain test-takers it will allow them to demonstrate a high level of English usability and flexibility. For those with existing creativity, spontaneity and critical thinking skills, this will be an easy one to adapt to.
However, for a different category of test-taker, perhaps those who chose a computer-based test because they are analytical in their approach to language or nervous when put on the spot, it will be a challenge.
New PTE Test Question Type 2. “Summarize a Group Discussion” – summarizing a 3-minute audio discussion.
This task is similar to part 3 in the IELTS listening, except you will give a spoken overview of the key agreements and disagreements, and the outcome of the conversation, rather than answer written questions.
The goal of this kind of exercise from the listening perspective is to check a general understanding and the ability to following context. Rather than focus on understanding individual words, you will need to understand the conversation often inferred by intonation and short expressions between longer sentences.
I think this is a good move as in my opinion PTE has always focused on details that can be mastered through learning the test and memorization, rather than an actual understanding of real-life English.
A good spoken response is likely to be an overview of the different speakers’ attitudes and the outcome of the conversation.
Strategies for the changes
The best way to fly by this task is likely to respond with speculative modal verbs and a range of precise and nuanced phrases. Avoid the easy to memorise easy to use language of templates.
For instance, many templates that are used in PTE overuse subjective mandates such as “It is crucial that ….”, “It is essential that ……” , “It is vital that….” , “It’s certain that…”, ‘It’s possible that ….” With just some words from the rubric added after the that. This is very simplistic grammatically as no conjugation is required and also shows less depth of feeling, conviction, degrees and accuracy than modal verbs and other phrases.
Instead an array of modal verbs and phrases are more precise and show more nuance in different situations; “It/You must” “It/You has/have to ” or “It/you bound to ” and a huge range of other phrases and modal verbs.
For instance, does “it may well be” mean certain or possible? The test-taker will need to understand the conversation to know. Consider the tonal difference between “the computer may well have a glitch” compared to “the computer may have a glitch”. The answer depends on the conversation and tone of voice.
What if a boss says; “You may as well take a break now” . It could be reluctance, it could be sarcasm and irony, or other meanings. The tone of voice and whole conversation needs to be understood to know.
Structure, timing and scoring.
The overall test difficulty and scoring method remain unchanged. These will be scored by a human but Pearsons insist that the pronunciation and fluency will still be scored by a machine, and that the human examiners are listening for templates and memorised language only.
Pearsons state that the test itself will not become harder or easier, and the scoring methodology remains consistent with previous versions, although a new personalized Skills Profile provides more specific feedback for test-takers.
For more details and updates, keep an eye on the Pearsons Website
For more practice lessons, with modals and soon with these questions forms places look at my free lessons.
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