Lesson 8 of 147 min read
Retell Lecture
Retell a short lecture in your own words after listening or watching. Learn the Academic format, Content scale and a note-taking method.
What does Retell Lecture look like, and who takes it?
This task exists in PTE Academic only
Retell Lecture does not appear anywhere in the PTE Core Score Guide or the PTE Core Handbook's task lists. If you're sitting PTE Core, you won't see this task at all, move on to the tasks in this course that PTE Core does use, listed in Orientation & Score Targets.
A short lecture, usually with an accompanying image or video of the speaker, plays once. Afterwards you get a short preparation window, then you retell the lecture's main ideas aloud in your own words.
| PTE Academic | |
|---|---|
| Items per test | 2–3 |
| Preparation time | 10 seconds |
| Response time | 40 seconds |
| Silence auto-stop | About three seconds |
| Re-record | Not available, one attempt only |
How is Retell Lecture scored?
Retell Lecture scores two communicative skills, Listening and Speaking, and is marked on the same three traits as the other speaking tasks: Content, Pronunciation and Oral Fluency.
- Content is scored 0–6: The top band, 6, is a response that's “clear, accurate, and demonstrates full comprehension of the lecture by paraphrasing the main ideas seamlessly in own words.” The bottom band, 0, still has to be “related to the lecture but too limited to assign a higher score” (there's no band below that. Any Content 0) too limited or genuinely irrelevant, ends scoring there: Pronunciation and Oral Fluency aren't rated for that item, and it earns 0 overall. The full Content-0 rule is set out in How Speaking Is Scored.
- Paraphrasing matters, not word-for-word recall: The top band explicitly rewards putting the lecture's ideas in your own words, not reciting phrases you happened to remember exactly. A retell built from your own sentences that captures the same ideas outperforms a patchwork of memorised fragments.
- Pronunciation and Oral Fluency use the standard 0–5 scales: The same bands that apply to Read Aloud and Describe Image apply here, clarity and intelligibility for Pronunciation, smooth rhythm and minimal hesitation for Fluency.
- PTE Academic also runs a human check on Content: Retell Lecture is one of the task types that “also include a human expert review of the Content before the final score for the task is finalized” (PTE Academic Score Guide, p.15), on top of the AI score, not instead of it. If the AI and the human reviewer disagree, a second human makes the final call. This live human review is specific to PTE Academic; PTE Core's Score Guide only says human raters helped train its automated scoring engine (PTE Core Score Guide, p.6).
How to approach Retell Lecture
- Take notes while the lecture plays: You can write on the erasable whiteboard and two pens you're given while the audio or video plays. Jot down the topic, two or three main points and any numbers or names, full sentences aren't necessary, keywords are enough to jog your memory afterwards.
- Listen for the lecture's structure, not just its facts: Most short lectures introduce a topic, develop two or three supporting points, and sometimes close with an implication or a takeaway. Recognising that shape while you listen makes it far easier to reconstruct in your response.
- Use your 10 seconds of preparation to sequence your notes: Ten seconds isn't long, so use it to glance over what you wrote and decide the order you'll say things in, rather than trying to add new content.
- Open with the topic, then work through your points: A first sentence like ‘This lecture discusses…’ orients the listener immediately and buys you a moment to settle into a steady pace before the harder content.
A worked Retell Lecture example
Practice lecture: migratory birds and light pollution (original text, not a real exam item)
You hear a short lecture: “Many migratory bird species navigate at night using starlight and the moon. Recent studies have found that artificial light from coastal cities disrupts this navigation, drawing birds off their usual routes and, in some cases, causing fatal collisions with lit buildings. Several cities have responded by dimming building lights during peak migration seasons, and early results suggest the number of collisions drops noticeably when they do.” Notes you might jot down: nav = stars/moon; city light = disrupts, off-route, building collisions; fix = dim lights in migration season, fewer collisions. Retell the lecture.
Answer: “This lecture is about how city lights affect migrating birds. Many species normally navigate at night using starlight and the moon, but artificial light from coastal cities interferes with this, pulling birds off their normal routes and sometimes causing them to collide with lit buildings. To address this, some cities have started dimming building lights during the main migration periods, and early results show this noticeably reduces the number of collisions.”
Content: the response covers all three parts of the lecture (how birds normally navigate, how artificial light disrupts that, and the dimming response and its early results) entirely in paraphrased language rather than lifted phrases, which is what the top Content band asks for.
Pronunciation: words like ‘migrating’, ‘artificial’ and ‘collisions’ carry the technical content of this lecture, so clear stress on these specific words matters more here than on the simpler connecting words around them.
Oral Fluency: the response is organised into three sentences that mirror the lecture's own three-part structure (cause, disruption, response) which keeps the pacing even because each sentence has a clear, single idea to deliver rather than cramming everything into one long breath.
Practice lecture: urban tree canopy (original text, not a real exam item)
You hear a short lecture: “Cities with extensive tree canopy cover tend to be several degrees cooler in summer than cities with sparse greenery, because trees provide shade and release moisture through their leaves. Urban planners increasingly treat canopy cover as infrastructure rather than decoration, and some cities have introduced planting targets tied to public health goals rather than aesthetic ones.” Notes you might jot down: trees = cooler city, shade + moisture; planners = infrastructure, not decoration; targets = health goals, not looks. Retell the lecture.
Answer: “This lecture discusses how tree cover affects city temperatures. Cities with a lot of trees are noticeably cooler in summer than cities with little greenery, because the trees provide shade and release moisture into the air. As a result, urban planners are starting to treat tree cover as a form of infrastructure rather than just decoration, and some cities have set planting targets based on public health rather than on how the city looks.”
Content: the lecture makes its point through two ‘not X but Y’ contrasts (infrastructure rather than decoration, health goals rather than aesthetic ones) and a strong retell needs to keep both contrasts intact rather than collapsing them into a vaguer statement like ‘planners care more about trees now’. Preserving the contrast is what shows full comprehension, not just general awareness of the topic.
Pronunciation: ‘infrastructure’ is the word most likely to trip up an otherwise fluent response here, it's longer and less common than the everyday vocabulary around it, so the stress needs to land clearly on its second syllable for a listener to catch it the first time.
Oral Fluency: each ‘rather than’ contrast works best delivered as a single unbroken phrase rather than split across a pause, pausing mid-contrast, for instance between ‘infrastructure’ and ‘rather than decoration’, breaks the logical link the lecture is making and reads as choppier than the same hesitation would in a plainer sentence.
What costs the most points in Retell Lecture?
Retelling only the first half of the lecture
Under time pressure it's tempting to describe the opening in detail and run out of things to say before reaching the lecture's later points. Since Content rewards covering the whole lecture, brief notes on every section beat detailed notes on only the first one.
Practise this task with short recorded talks on unfamiliar topics (science, history, workplace training) so your note-taking habit doesn't depend on already knowing the subject.
Continue learning
Related lessons and more practice
Try a full set in Speaking practice. Next in this course: Respond to a Situation, a task both PTE Academic and PTE Core candidates take.
The listening-while-note-taking skill behind this task is covered in more depth in Summarize Spoken Text in the Listening Course, and paraphrasing in your own words is practised further in Flexible Speaking Structures.
The Content scale and item details for this task are set out in the PTE Academic Score Guide (p.21).