Practise Write from Dictation for PTE Academic. Open a question and work on your response at your own pace.
PTE Core version of this page3648 questions · PTE Academic
Write from Dictation plays a short sentence once. You type it back exactly, in the correct word order. There is no template for the content since you are reproducing exactly what you hear — the repeatable part is your process for capturing and checking it.
In Write from Dictation, a brief sentence is read to you once, and you reconstruct it in a text box as accurately as you can. Each correct, correctly spelled word earns its own point, and Pearson's published scoring rule does not mention word order, although Pearson advises typing the words in the order you heard them. This guide explains the format, that scoring rule precisely, a worked example, and a practice method for reconstructing short sentences after a single playback.
Each item gives you a single hearing of one short sentence. You then type what you heard into a text box, aiming to reproduce every word it contained.
Academic tests include 3–4 items of this type, each built from a sentence of 3–5 seconds of audio. Because the sentences are short, the task tests accurate short-term recall of exact wording rather than the note-taking skills used in longer Listening items.
This makes Write from Dictation different in character from tasks like Summarize Spoken Text, where you are compressing a long recording into your own words. Here there is nothing to compress and nothing to paraphrase: the entire task is reproducing a handful of words exactly as they were said, which rewards precise short-term memory over general comprehension. Pearson scores it toward both your Listening and your Writing results, since it combines accurate listening with accurate written spelling.
Each sentence is brief, 3–5 seconds of audio, and plays only once before you type your answer. Pearson does not publish a separate answer time for this task; it runs on the Listening section's overall clock.
As with the rest of the Listening section, you manage your own pace across all of its task types rather than racing a per-item clock. Because each sentence is so brief, most of the time you spend on this task happens after the audio stops, while you type and check your answer, not while you are listening.
Write from Dictation awards one point for every word you type that is both correct and correctly spelled. A word that is wrong, missing, or misspelled simply scores zero for that word — it is not penalised beyond failing to earn its own point.
Pearson's published scoring rule for this task does not mention a sequence condition. Pearson does advise, as a practical tip, typing the words in the order you heard them. Because the rule is silent on order rather than explicitly waiving it, the safe approach is to follow that advice and reproduce the sentence exactly as spoken.
In practice this means every word in your response is judged individually against the original sentence: getting most of a sentence right still earns most of its available points, even if the overall response is imperfect.
This word-by-word design is worth understanding clearly, because it changes how you should react to uncertainty. If you are confident about six of eight words in a sentence and unsure about the remaining two, typing your best guess for all eight is always better than leaving the uncertain two blank, since a blank guarantees zero for that word while a wrong guess costs you nothing beyond the same zero.
Example (written by LexiPTE). The recording says: "The committee postponed its decision until further evidence became available."
A response that types "The committee postponed its decision until further evidence became available" earns full credit: one point for every word, ten points in total.
A response that types "The committee delayed its decision until more evidence became available" loses credit only for "delayed" and "more", since neither matches the word actually said, even though both preserve the sentence's overall meaning; the other eight words still earn their points individually.
A response that types "The committee postponed its decission until further evidence became available" loses credit only for the misspelled word "decission", since spelling is checked word by word rather than for the sentence as a whole.
Practise with short, unfamiliar sentences played only once, exactly as the real task presents them. After each attempt, compare your answer word by word against the original sentence rather than judging it by overall meaning, since that word-by-word comparison is how the scoring actually works.
Keep separate notes on two different kinds of error: words you got wrong or missed entirely, and words you heard correctly but misspelled. The two call for different fixes — the first needs sharper listening, the second needs more careful proofreading before you finish each item.
Once your accuracy is steady, mix in sentences with academic vocabulary, numbers written as words and less common plurals, since these are where a word you recognised is most likely to be typed slightly wrong and lose its point.
