PTE Strategies
10 Common PTE Mistakes That Quietly Cost Marks
From negative marking to word limits, these avoidable mistakes appear again and again in student diagnoses.
- Restarting sentences in speaking tasks. One error is cheaper than a restart.
- Starting late after the microphone opens, leaving silence.
- Writing two sentences in Summarize Written Text — the form requires one sentence of 5–75 words.
- Going outside 50–70 words in Summarize Spoken Text.
- Over-selecting in Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers — incorrect selections lose credit.
- Clicking “just in case” in Highlight Incorrect Words — each wrong click costs a point.
- Ignoring plural and tense endings in Write From Dictation.
- Using generic templates in Describe Image or Retell Lecture that say nothing specific.
- Stopping at 60 seconds in Summarize Group Discussion when you have up to 2 minutes.
- Spending too long on single-answer questions that are only marked correct or incorrect.
Several of these can be fixed in a week. Knowing which ones apply to you is the hard part.
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