To understand my score/score report:

PTE is scored against the Global Scale of English, a thermometer-style scale that gives you an accurate overview of your skills. The Global Scale of English aligns with a variety of popular tests and scales around the world. Find out more about the Global Scale of English .

The PTE Score Report includes your overall score, communicative skills scores and enabling skills scores.

 

The overall score reflects your overall English language ability. The score is based on performance on all items in the test. The range for the overall score is 10-90 points.

 

Scores for communicative skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) are based on all test items that assess these skills, either as a single skill, or together with other skills. The range for each communicative skill score is 10-90 points.

Scores for enabling skills (grammar, oral fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, and written discourse) are based on all test items assessing one or more of these skills. The range for each enabling skill score is 10-90 points.

 

The display of the scores in a graph allows you to quickly see your strengths and weaknesses, and how each skill relates to your overall performance.

For a detailed understanding of PTE scores, view the PTE Score Guide.

I`m disappointed with my score:

We realize that studying for and taking an English proficiency test can be a tough journey but we want to assure that the automated scoring system behind PTE is both impartial and highly accurate - it is based on thorough research and held to a rigorous standard. If you wish to gain more information regarding the PTE scoring system, please visit our website where you can find our Score Guide. 

Reviewing Test Performance: please visit our website.

 

Your accent will not stand in the way of success! Everyone has an accent. You might even be a proficient or native English speaker, but with an accent other people find hard to understand.

So how does your accent affect your score when you take PTE? Because PTE is marked by a computer, it can cut out potential obstacles, such as a human examiner being unfamiliar with your particular accent.

 When the automated scoring program was being designed, the computer was trained using 130 different language backgrounds, so it recognizes accents from around the globe. As a result, PTE`s automated scoring technology recognizes and marks everyone’s speech equally and with equal accuracy, regardless of where they are from. What the PTE scoring engine looks for is intelligibility and clarity of response (not which accent you are speaking in) – did you answer in a clear and understandable way that any international speaker of English would understand? To hear more on this, listen as one of our leading independent advisors, Dr Alistair Van Moere, a member of Pearson’s Technical Advisory Group, explains how it works.

The test has been designed by humans, all leading experts in their field. Our human experts design and write the questions, quality assure them and then score them. At this point, computers are trained to use the patterns of highly trained language experts to attribute scores to questions. When the computer marks correlate highly with human scores, we then allow the computer to mark test scripts from across the world.

As a result of our processes and technology, the computer behaves like an expert human examiner – but without any possible bias, lack of concentration or variation between individual examiners. The scoring criteria are exactly the same as human scoring – test takers are marked on their delivery, clarity, relevance, accuracy of grammar and appropriateness of vocabulary.

 

Mastering the English language and achieving a high score on PTE is a challenging task for many test takers. We appreciate test takers feel frustrated when they don’t achieve the score they need or hoped to achieve. We would like to reassure you and your students/clients that we make every effort to ensure that the scores we give are accurate to the degree we describe in the Score Guide. PTE scoring is being constantly monitored and refined. We are confident that the scoring system is providing accurate scores.

Each time you take the test you may get a different score. The differences in the overall score should be quite small, but for skill scores and enabling skill scores, these might be larger. Enabling skill scores are used only for guidance so don’t worry if you see a bigger difference there. It just reflects how you answered some of the questions at that particular sitting.

 

PTE reports scores between 10 and 90. Some scores are below 10 and some are above 90 but we don’t report these. Some enabling skills scores are based on only a few questions so if you did badly on those questions you might get 10 on that enabling skill. You can still get a high score by answering the other questions correctly.

 

Enabling skills are part of the skills that make up language proficiency. So, pronunciation, fluency, grammar and vocabulary. The scores are given to provide additional insight to the test taker on their areas of strength or weakness. Low enabling scores do not impact your overall score; however, they are a useful indicator if there are any areas a test taker should work on before they take the test again.

 

The scores for Speaking and Fluency are calculated separately. The speaking score comes from all speaking items and include pronunciation, fluency and the content of the answers. Fluency is measured only on some items and is only a small part of the speaking score. That’s why sometimes people score well on Speaking but have a lower score on fluency.

 

No. The marking engine is trained to recognize speech from over 90 different language groups. One of the benefits of the test being computer scored is that has no bias against any particular accent. All test takers are treated the same. So, the score you get represents a true measure of your ability on the day of the test. 

Watch

As PTE is used as an approved form of evidence of English language ability for visa applications for entry into Australia we must maintain the strictest level of security around the exposure and use of our test content. Outside of any security-monitored test session, we are not in a position to share any live, in-use PTE test content or any responses to questions which would either directly reveal or infer suitable responses to questions posed. In acceding to requests for disclosure of questions and responses, we risk compromising the integrity of our test by potentially facilitating fraudulent use of test content or providing an unfair advantage in respect of candidate preparation.