PTE Repeat Sentence practice
In the PTE Academic Repeat Sentence task you hear a recorded sentence of 3 to 9 seconds once, and you repeat it exactly as you heard it within 15 seconds. You can practise the same skill free in Sada with real sentences from recorded talks, said after the speaker, recorded and played beside the original. Sada shows which of your words it recognised and compares your timing; it does not grade individual sounds and its result is not a PTE score.
Practise one sentence now
The exercise opens on one line from Bill Gates’s talk at 0:38: “We all need people who will give us feedback.” Listen to the whole sentence once, then say it back as soon as it ends. Record your take and open Compare to play it beside the original. No account is needed, and recordings stay on your device.
Seven sentences of 3 to 9 seconds, short to long
Listen without reading, then repeat from memory. Hold the sentence in meaning chunks and keep their word order. In Compare, check the final word and the small words between chunks; retry one omission before moving on.
These are practice excerpts from talks, not a complete test or official test questions. Word recognition is not an exam score. Listen to your take before deciding a word was missing.
After Compare, retry the same line with one change. Return to this page with your browser’s Back button (from Compare, go back until this guide returns), then choose the next sentence. The numbers show the practice order, not saved progress or exam difficulty levels.
Practice line 1 of 7
Short statements
3.6 seconds of source audio
“We all need people who will give us feedback.”
Bill Gates · 0:38 · Practise this line →
Nine words. “We all need” is one quick chunk; the stress falls on “feedback”.
Repeat again without looking at the caption: keep the ending “give us feedback.” in order. In Compare, listen for it in your recording before deciding what to retry.
Practice line 2 of 7
Short statements
6.1 seconds of source audio
“Augustus understood that individuals alone can't protect themselves from fires.”
Bill Gates · 0:26 · Practise this line →
A name and two long words. Keep “individuals” at five syllables and do not drop the T in “can’t”.
Repeat again without looking at the caption: keep the ending “themselves from fires.” in order. In Compare, listen for it in your recording before deciding what to retry.
Next sentence — line 3: Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores.
Practice line 3 of 7
Hold the connecting words
4.8 seconds of source audio
“Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores.”
Angela Lee Duckworth · 0:45 · Practise this line →
An unusual word in the middle: hold the sentence by its meaning, and “stratospheric” will come back with it.
Repeat again without looking at the caption: keep the ending “stratospheric IQ scores.” in order. In Compare, listen for it in your recording before deciding what to retry.
Next sentence — line 4: So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses.
Practice line 4 of 7
Hold the connecting words
5.0 seconds of source audio
“So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses.”
Jill Bolte Taylor · 0:44 · Practise this line →
Twelve words in two chunks: “I dedicated my career” and “to research into the severe mental illnesses”.
Repeat again without looking at the caption: keep the ending “severe mental illnesses.” in order. In Compare, listen for it in your recording before deciding what to retry.
Practice line 5 of 7
Hold the connecting words
4.5 seconds of source audio
“We fail to recognize the danger because we're reluctant to rethink the situation.”
Adam Grant · 0:45 · Practise this line →
Cause and effect. Keep “because” and the words after it in order; that is where word sequences are lost.
Repeat again without looking at the caption: keep the ending “rethink the situation.” in order. In Compare, listen for it in your recording before deciding what to retry.
Next sentence — line 6: When I was a kid, the disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war.
Practice line 6 of 7
Keep three chunks
5.5 seconds of source audio
“When I was a kid, the disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war.”
Bill Gates · 0:17 · Practise this line →
Fifteen words with a pause at the comma. Small words such as “the”, “we” and “a” are the ones that go missing.
Repeat again without looking at the caption: keep the ending “a nuclear war.” in order. In Compare, listen for it in your recording before deciding what to retry.
Practice line 7 of 7
Keep three chunks
5.2 seconds of source audio
“In America, law is a professional degree: after your university degree, you go on to law school.”
Dan Pink · 0:45 · Practise this line →
Seventeen words, the longest here. Three chunks: “In America, law is a professional degree”, “after your university degree”, “you go on to law school”.
Repeat again without looking at the caption: keep the ending “to law school.” in order. In Compare, listen for it in your recording before deciding what to retry.
End of this set. Try the first line again and listen for the one thing you changed. Play your first take and your newest take in Compare’s “First try vs now”.
Key facts
- Any captioned YouTube video
- No extension, works on phone and computer
- No account needed to practise; a free, optional account keeps your history on every device
- Free, no paid plan
- Recordings stay on your device
- Repeat and Shadow modes
- Word recognition and timing feedback (not per-sound grading)
How the task works
According to Pearson’s description of the Speaking & Writing part and its PTE Academic test tips, checked on 11 October 2026:
| Part of the task | In the test |
|---|---|
| The sentence | A recording of 3 to 9 seconds that plays automatically, once, with no replay |
| What you do | Speak as soon as the recording ends and repeat exactly what you heard |
| Time to answer | 15 seconds, and you can record your response only once |
| How it is scored | Content (does your answer include all the words, and only these words, counted as correct word sequences), pronunciation and oral fluency |
| What it affects | Your listening, speaking, pronunciation and oral fluency scores |
| In PTE Core | The same item type in Pearson’s PTE Core format page, read on 14 October 2026: a 3 to 9 second sentence heard once, repeated, recorded once |
Sada is not connected with Pearson. Its lines are not test items, and the words it recognised are not a PTE score and do not predict one. For the real format, use Pearson’s official practice materials.
How Repeat Sentence is marked
Pearson’s PTE Academic score guide for test takers (July 2025) marks each response on three traits: content from 0 to 3, pronunciation from 0 to 5 and oral fluency from 0 to 5.
| Content | What Pearson’s guide says |
|---|---|
| 3 | “All words in the response from the prompt in the correct sequence” |
| 2 | “At least 50% of words in the response from the prompt in the correct sequence” |
| 1 | Less than 50% of the words in the correct sequence |
| 0 | Almost nothing from the prompt in the response |
Errors in content are words replaced, left out or added. So one dropped “the” moves you from the top of the content scale, and losing the second half of a long sentence takes you below 50%. Hesitations, repetitions and false starts count against oral fluency. Pearson’s PTE Academic specification (June 2022) lists 10 to 12 Repeat Sentence items in one test; check Pearson’s current format page before your test.
Compare shows much of the content side: a word you left out or replaced is marked as not recognised. Sada does not apply Pearson’s scale, does not mark pronunciation or fluency, and its result is not a PTE score.
What Sada can and cannot tell you
After each take, Compare marks the words it recognised and the ones it missed. That is close to how the task counts content: a dropped “the” or a missing ending breaks a word sequence, and you can see which one at once, even when you did not hear yourself drop it. In After the speaker mode it also gives your pace against the speaker’s, for example “20% slower than the speaker”, so you can tell whether you stopped in the middle of the sentence.
It does not grade individual sounds, stress or intonation, so it does not measure the pronunciation and fluency parts of the score. A missed word can come from noise or a distant microphone, so play your take before judging it.
How to practise each sentence
- Listen once, without reading. Look away from the caption: the test gives you no text and no replay.
- Start as soon as it ends. In the test the microphone opens straight after the recording, so do not wait.
- Record and compare. Play your take beside the original and look at the words Sada did not recognise.
- Copy the speaker’s stress and pauses. Pearson’s tips advise noting the speaker’s stress and intonation and copying it, calmly and clearly. Say the line again in the same chunks.
- Move to a longer line. When a long line is hard to remember, hold it as three or four chunks of meaning, not as single words.
For a short session, try two or three lines, each followed by listening to your take and retrying one phrase. Then play your first take and your newest one in Compare’s “First try vs now”.
Why the small words matter
Content is counted in correct word sequences, so a missing article or preposition costs more than it seems: it breaks the sequence on both sides. Most learners keep the long, meaningful words and lose “a”, “the”, “to” and endings such as “-s” and “-ed”. Compare shows exactly those gaps. For linking small words into the words around them, see how to speak English fluently without hesitation.
Keep going
The other PTE task where every word counts, reading a text aloud: PTE Read Aloud practice. More real lines to repeat, from short to long: listen and repeat practice. Taking the TOEFL instead? See TOEFL Listen and Repeat practice; for the Versant test an employer may ask for, Versant Repeat practice; for IELTS, shadowing for IELTS Speaking. If you grew up speaking an Indian language, the sounds and rhythms that can change a word are in English pronunciation for Indian speakers. To understand Compare in detail, read about the pronunciation checker. Which other tests have a repeat or read-aloud task, and which have none: speaking tests with a repeat task.
Questions people ask
How many Repeat Sentence items are in the PTE exam, and how long are they?
Pearson’s PTE Academic specification (June 2022) lists 10 to 12 items. Each is a recording of 3 to 9 seconds, played once; you have 15 seconds to repeat it and can record your response only once. Pearson gives no word count; the practice lines on this page run from 9 to 17 words.
How is PTE Repeat Sentence scored?
Pearson’s score guide marks content from 0 to 3 (3 is all the words in the correct sequence, 2 is at least half of them), pronunciation from 0 to 5 and oral fluency from 0 to 5. It affects your listening, speaking, pronunciation and oral fluency scores. Sada is not connected with Pearson and does not give a PTE score: it shows which of your words it recognised and your timing against the speaker.
How can I practise PTE Repeat Sentence for free?
Repeat real English sentences of 3 to 9 seconds, from short to long, out loud, and record yourself so you can hear what you dropped. In Sada each line on this page opens in After the speaker mode, and Compare shows which of your words were recognised. It is free and needs no account.
Is Repeat Sentence the same in PTE Core?
Yes. Pearson’s PTE Core format page describes the same item type: a sentence of 3 to 9 seconds heard once, repeated as you heard it, and recorded once. It counts towards listening and speaking.
What if I forget the end of the sentence?
Hold it as a few chunks of meaning rather than single words, and copy the speaker’s pauses. Start with the shorter lines on this page and move up one line at a time.
Practise again tomorrow? Get one short sentence a day, ready to record in one tap.
You don't need to speak fast.
A slow line to begin with: listen to how “don’t need to” runs together, then say it at the speaker’s pace.
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