PTE Academic · Task guide 2 · 4 min read

PTE Academic scoring explained

How PTE Academic scores work: the 10–90 scale, integrated skills, partial credit and negative marking, item type by item type.

The score scale

Every PTE Academic score report shows an overall score and four communicative skills scores, each on a scale of 10 to 90:

• Listening
• Reading
• Speaking
• Writing

The overall score is not a simple average of the four. It is built from your performance on every scored item in the test, so each answer feeds into it.

Integrated skills

The most important idea in PTE scoring is that many items are integrated. One response is judged for more than one skill. If you read a passage aloud, the computer uses it to judge both how well you understood the text (Reading) and how well you spoke (Speaking).

This means a strong answer on an integrated item helps two scores at once, and a weak one costs you twice.

Pearson publishes the official mapping and may adjust it. Check pearsonpte.com for the current version.

Three ways items are marked

1. Correct or incorrect

Some items have a single right answer and earn a mark only if you choose it. Multiple Choice (Single Answer), Highlight Correct Summary and Select Missing Word work this way. There is no penalty for a wrong choice, so never leave them blank.

2. Partial credit

Many items give one mark for each correct part of your answer:

• Fill in the Blanks (all three kinds): one mark per correct blank.
• Re-order Paragraphs: one mark per correctly placed adjacent pair of paragraphs.
• Write from Dictation: one mark per correct word, spelt correctly.

So an answer that is mostly right still scores well.

3. Partial credit with negative marking

A few items take marks away for wrong choices:

• Multiple Choice (Multiple Answers), in both Reading and Listening: plus one for each correct option, minus one for each incorrect option.
• Highlight Incorrect Words: plus one for each correct word highlighted, minus one for each wrong one.

The score for the item cannot fall below zero, but careless guessing can wipe out marks you had earned on the same item.

Exam tip: on negatively marked items, choose only the options you are confident about. One sure answer is worth more than three guesses.

How speaking and writing are judged

Open responses are scored against several traits. The exact traits differ by item, but they fall into familiar groups:

• Content: did you cover what the task asked for?
• Form: did you keep to the required length or format?
• Language: grammar, vocabulary range and spelling.
• Delivery (speaking): oral fluency and pronunciation.

Form often acts as a gate. If a Summarize Written Text answer is not one sentence, or an Essay is far outside the word range, the item may score zero however good the language is.

Scoring of open responses is automated, and Pearson has said that some responses may also be checked by trained human raters. Either way, the same traits apply.

What this means for your practice

1. Do not skip integrated items. They feed two skills.
2. Protect form first. Word limits and sentence rules can cancel a whole answer.
3. Fluency matters more than perfection in speaking. Hesitations and restarts cost more than a small slip.
4. Spell carefully in Write from Dictation and the fill-in-the-blanks items, where each word is marked.
5. Be cautious on negatively marked items.

Key points

• Scores run from 10 to 90 for the overall result and each communicative skill.
• Many items are integrated and count towards two skills.
• Items are marked as correct/incorrect, with partial credit, or with partial credit and negative marking.
• Open responses are judged on content, form, language and, for speaking, fluency and pronunciation.
• The official scoring guide is on pearsonpte.com.

Find practice tests and the other item-type guides on the PTE hub.