PTE Core · Part 1 · Listening + Speaking
PTE Core Respond to a Situation
Two to four everyday scenarios: a neighbour, a manager, a customer, a landlord. You hear and read the situation, get twenty seconds to think, and forty seconds to say what you would actually say. It is the task that tests whether your English works in real life, not just on paper.
- Questions in the test
- 2–4
- Time
- 20 s to prepare, 40 s to speak
- Scoring
- Partial credit
- Traits scored
- Appropriacy, Pronunciation, Oral fluency
38 real Respond to a Situation questions inside
A glimpse of the bank. The full prompt, audio and scoring open after you sign in.
- 1You and your friend Swati work at the same place. Swati…
- 2Your friend is out of town, and you're staying at her…
- 3You are going out of town for three days, and you have a…
What the task asks
A short description of a situation is read to you through the headset and shown on screen at the same time. It sets up who you are, who you are talking to, and what you need to achieve: apologise to a friend for missing their event, ask a landlord to fix something, persuade a colleague to swap a shift, explain to a customer why an order is late. When the audio ends, a twenty-second countdown starts for you to prepare. A tone then opens the microphone and you have forty seconds to respond as if you were speaking to that person. As in every speaking task, three seconds of silence ends the recording.
This task is unique to PTE Core. There is no equivalent in PTE Academic, and it exists because the test is built for migration and work rather than for university. The question is not whether you can produce grammatically correct sentences; it is whether what you say would be the right thing to say in that room, to that person, in that moment.
How it is scored
Respond to a Situation is scored on three traits. All three feed your Speaking score, and because you also had to understand the spoken prompt, the task counts toward Listening as well.
| Trait | What is measured | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Appropriacy | Whether the response fits the situation: it does what was asked, speaks to the right person in the right register, and uses language a competent speaker would actually use. Pre-prepared or memorised material scores 0. | Band scale |
| Pronunciation | Whether sounds, stress and rhythm are easy for a listener to follow. | 0 to 5 |
| Oral fluency | Smoothness of delivery: hesitations, repetitions and false starts lower it. | 0 to 5 |
Appropriacy replaces the content trait you see in the other speaking tasks, and the zero for memorised material is the single most important fact on this page. A rehearsed speech that could be attached to any scenario is the one thing the scoring guide names as worthless. Tone matters too: the words you use with a close friend who is upset are not the words you use with a manager you are asking for leave, and the scorer is looking for that difference.
How our practice scorer grades it
When you record a response here, it is transcribed and checked against the scenario's required moves, with a short look-ahead window so a stumble does not throw the rest of the match off. The parts of the situation you addressed, and the ones you skipped, are highlighted. Fluency is measured from the audio itself, looking at mid-phrase pauses and erratic pitch changes, and words per minute are counted only while you are actually speaking, so the prep silence and any trailing quiet are excluded. Half-finished attempts and microphone failures are marked partial or void and never count toward your averages. You get a result on the 10 to 90 scale with the CLB level next to it.
It is a practice estimate. The engine is designed to rank your attempts the way the real scorer would, but a practice tool cannot see your actual test and does not claim to.
A worked example
You borrowed a colleague's car for the weekend and returned it with a small scratch on the rear bumper. Your colleague has not noticed yet. Tell them what happened and say what you will do about it.
A forty-second response that would score well on appropriacy might run like this. Hi Priya, thanks again for lending me the car, it really helped. I need to tell you something, though. When I was parking on Sunday I caught the rear bumper on a post and there is a small scratch on the left side. I am really sorry. I have already called a body shop and they can fix it on Thursday, and of course I will cover the full cost. If you would rather use your own garage, that is completely fine too, just let me know and I will pay whatever it comes to.
Look at what that does. It greets the person by role, acknowledges the favour, states the problem plainly instead of hiding it, apologises once without grovelling, offers a concrete fix, and gives the other person a choice. That is the shape of a good answer to almost any scenario: open, explain, act, close. It is around ninety words, which at a conversational pace fits inside forty seconds comfortably. Our template walks through those four moves with phrases for the common situation types.
Five habits that raise the score
- Read the situation for three things: who, what, and the ask. Who am I talking to, what has happened, and what do I need to achieve. Those three decide the tone and the content before you say a word.
- Use the twenty seconds to pick your two key sentences. One that handles the problem, one that proposes the solution. Everything else is connecting tissue you can improvise.
- Address the person directly. Start with a name or a role and speak in the second person. I would tell him that is reporting; Mark, I wanted to let you know is responding.
- Match the register to the relationship. Friends get sorry, that was my fault; managers get I apologise for the inconvenience. Both are right in their place and wrong in the other.
- Finish with a next step. A question, an offer or a plan. It closes the loop, gives the listener something to react to, and signals the scorer that the response is complete.
The mistakes that cost the most
- A memorised all-purpose speech. The score guide gives appropriacy a zero for prepared material, and generic sentences are easy to spot because they never mention the situation.
- Describing the situation instead of responding to it. Repeating the prompt back uses time without doing anything. The scorer already knows the scenario.
- Over-apologising. Five sorries in forty seconds crowd out the solution. One clear apology, then action.
- Wrong tone for the person. Casual slang to a landlord or stiff formality to a close friend both fail the appropriacy trait even when the grammar is perfect.
- Running out of words at thirty seconds. Silence closes the microphone. If you finish early, add a next step or a question rather than stopping.
Quick answers
How many Respond to a Situation questions are in PTE Core?
Two to four, in Part 1, after Describe Image and before Answer Short Question.
Can I use a template?
You can use a structure, not a script. A frame of open, explain, act and close is fine because every word inside it comes from the scenario. Sentences you could say to any prompt are what the scoring guide treats as memorised. See our template page for the difference.
Does this task count toward Listening?
Yes. The situation is delivered as audio as well as text, so the task contributes to both Listening and Speaking. The exam guide shows which tasks feed which skill.
What if I do not know the right word?
Say it another way and keep moving. Appropriacy rewards a response that does the job; a short paraphrase costs nothing, while a pause while you search for a word costs fluency.