Templates
PTE Core templates that do not get you zero
Every forum has a "guaranteed 90" template. Pearson's scoring guide is clear that a response built from memorised material unrelated to the prompt scores zero for content, and content is the gate for every other trait. This hub explains what to use instead: short sentence frames you fill with the prompt's own facts.
Pearson scores content first, and a memorised template that does not address the prompt scores 0 for content. When content is zero, the response scores zero overall, regardless of grammar, vocabulary or fluency. The same applies to a Summarize Written Text that breaks the one-sentence form rule and an email that ignores the three bullet points. This is stated in the score guide's description of the scoring traits and it is enforced by the automated scorer.
Why memorised templates fail
The scoring engine for PTE Core does three things in order when it reads a spoken or written response. It checks content: does the response deal with the prompt, in the way the task requires? It checks form where the task has one: one sentence of 5 to 75 words, an email of 50 to 120 words, a summary of 20 to 30 words. Only then does it rate the language traits: grammar, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, fluency, organisation, email conventions. A response that fails the first check does not reach the third. There is no partial credit for beautiful English on the wrong subject.
Memorised templates fail the content check in two ways. The obvious way is a paragraph that says nothing about the prompt: "This image provides a wealth of information about a very important topic that is extremely relevant in today's world" contains no fact from the image, so it contributes no content. The less obvious way is dilution. If 70 of your 100 words are template and 30 are prompt, the scorer sees a response that is mostly off-topic, and the content score drops even if it is not zero. In Describe Image and Respond to a Situation, where the recording is forty seconds, every template sentence is a sentence of real content you did not have time to say.
The engine also recognises repeated material. Pearson has stated that responses built from memorised text are scored down, and its system has seen the popular templates many thousands of times. Delivering one fluently is not an advantage; it is a signature.
What a frame is
A frame is a sentence opener, usually four to eight words, that commits you to a grammatical structure and leaves the content open. "The chart compares ___ across ___" is a frame. "Although the writer acknowledges ___, the main argument is that ___" is a frame. "I am writing to ask whether ___" is a frame. Frames do three jobs that templates pretend to do:
- They remove the first-second hesitation. The most common fluency loss in Speaking is the pause before the first word. A frame means the first word is already chosen.
- They force a complete, correct structure. "Although ___, ___" cannot be finished without a main clause; "ask whether ___" cannot be finished without a question. The grammar takes care of itself.
- They are mostly content. A twelve-word sentence built on a five-word frame is seven words of prompt. The ratio is the opposite of a template's.
Each task page on this site gives two or three frames per stage of the response, a filled example written for that page, and the mistakes that cost the most. None of the frames is unique to us, and none should be used in exactly the form printed; change the words to ones you say naturally. What matters is the habit of starting with a structure and finishing with the prompt.
The template pages
Write Email
50 to 120 words in nine minutes, scored on seven traits including email conventions and organisation. Frames for the opening, each bullet point and the closing.
Describe Image
Forty seconds on a chart, graph, map or photo. A four-part shape: what it shows, the extremes, the pattern, one conclusion.
Respond to a Situation
Forty seconds to speak as yourself in a social or workplace situation, scored on appropriacy. Frames for acknowledging, explaining, proposing and closing.
Summarize Written Text
One sentence, 5 to 75 words, that carries the main idea and the key supporting points. Three sentence shapes that stay grammatical at sixty words.
Summarize Spoken Text
20 to 30 words on what a speaker said. Frames that hold the topic, the main point and one detail in two short sentences.
How to practise with frames
- Pick one frame per stage, not three. You need one opener for Describe Image, not a menu. Choose the one you can say without thinking and drop the others.
- Fill it with ten different prompts in a row. The frame should disappear into the sentence by the fifth attempt. If you can still hear it as a frame, it is too long.
- Record and count. In a forty-second Describe Image, how many numbers and labels from the image did you say? Under five is a template habit; eight or more is content.
- Check form before language. For the written tasks, count words and sentences before you look at grammar. Form zero is as fatal as content zero.
- Vary the frame once it is automatic. Two openers used alternately keep the response from sounding mechanical across the three or four items of a task.
What about memorising for the other tasks?
Read Aloud, Repeat Sentence and Write from Dictation have no template problem because there is nothing to template: the content is given and you reproduce it. Answer Short Question needs one or two words. The fill-in-the-blanks tasks and the multiple-choice tasks are selection, not production. Memorisation helps with those only in the ordinary sense of knowing vocabulary and collocations. The five tasks on this hub are the only ones where a prepared structure matters, and in all five the structure should be a skeleton, not a body.
A note on where this advice comes from
The frames on these pages were written for this site, tested against our practice scorer (which weights content, form and the language traits the way Pearson's guide describes) and used by test takers who sent us their real score reports. None of it is endorsed by Pearson, and nothing here guarantees a score. What we can say is that in every report we have seen where a candidate used a long memorised template, the writing or speaking score was lower than their practice without it, and in several cases the specific item was scored zero.
Sign in to practise each of the five tasks on screens that match the test, with the frames open in the next tab until you no longer need them.