Practise Multiple Choice, Single Answer for PTE Academic. Open a question and work on your response at your own pace.
PTE Core version of this page204 questions · PTE Academic
Multiple Choice, Single Answer plays a recording once and asks a question with only one correct option. Identify what the question is actually asking before you listen for the answer, since a plausible-sounding distractor can still miss the recording's real meaning.
Listening: Multiple Choice, Single Answer plays a short recording once, then gives you several options from which exactly one answers a specific question about it. It sits inside PTE Academic's Listening section, scored purely as correct or incorrect, with no partial credit for a close guess. This guide covers its timing, the scoring rule, a worked example, and a practice approach built around answering the specific question asked rather than the recording's general topic.
Multiple Choice, Single Answer belongs to the Listening section of PTE Academic. You hear a recording once, then read a question and a short list of options, from which you choose exactly one.
Academic tests include 2–3 items of this type. Unlike the reading version of the same task name, the prompt here is spoken, not written, so the challenge is holding the question's target in mind while the recording plays rather than rereading a passage.
The distractor options are usually plausible on their own: they may be true in a general sense, or mentioned somewhere in the recording, without actually answering the specific question posed.
The recording lasts 30–90 seconds and plays once; there is no option to replay it, so your selection has to be based on that single playback. On the Academic test, the audio begins 5 seconds after the question and options appear, which gives you a brief window to skim what you are being asked before listening starts.
This task does not carry its own separate clock. It sits inside the Listening section alongside seven other task types, and any time you spend choosing an answer comes out of that section's overall window, so as a practical tip, decide promptly and avoid lingering over one item.
Multiple Choice, Single Answer is scored as correct or incorrect. Selecting the one option the recording actually supports earns the point for that item; selecting any other option, or leaving the question unanswered, earns nothing.
There is no partial credit for choosing an option that is close to the truth or plausible in general. A response that captures the recording's broad topic without answering the exact question asked scores exactly the same as a response that misses the topic altogether: zero.
There is also no negative marking here, unlike some other Listening tasks. A wrong guess costs you nothing beyond the point you did not earn, so leaving an item blank is never the safer option.
Example (written by LexiPTE). A recording describes a mid-sized bakery chain that decided to close two of its five branches. The narrator explains that all five branches were profitable, but that the chain's supplier of specialty flour had recently reduced production, forcing the chain to choose which branches would keep receiving full deliveries. The two closed branches were the ones located farthest from the supplier's warehouse.
Question: According to the recording, why did the bakery chain close two of its branches? A) The two branches were losing money. B) The two branches were hardest for the supplier to reach reliably. C) The chain wanted to reduce its overall size. D) Customers preferred the chain's other locations.
Correct answer: B. The recording states plainly that the closures followed a supply problem tied to distance from the warehouse, not profitability, overall strategy, or customer preference. Option A directly contradicts the recording's statement that all five branches were profitable. C and D each introduce a plausible-sounding reason the recording never actually gives. Notice that a listener who only caught the general topic — a bakery chain closing branches — could easily be drawn to any of the four options; only close attention to the specific cause distinguishes the correct one.
Because each item is short, this task rewards frequent, focused practice more than long study sessions. Work through a small set of Multiple Choice, Single Answer questions in one sitting, and for every item you get wrong, replay it and identify exactly which sentence in the recording answered the question — this trains you to isolate the relevant moment rather than absorbing the whole recording equally.
Once you are consistently finding the right sentence, practise writing the question's target in one phrase before listening (for example, "reason for closure" or "main complaint"), so that habit becomes automatic before you sit the real test.
Mix this task with other single-playback Listening items in the same session rather than practising it in isolation, since on test day this task sits inside a Listening section with other task types, and you cannot know in advance which specific question a given recording will support.
