Practise Summarize Written Text for PTE Core. Open a question and work on your response at your own pace.
PTE Academic version of this page434 questions · PTE Core
Summarize Written Text gives you a passage to compress into a single accurate summary. Find the passage's controlling idea, connect only the essential support, and remove examples that do not change the conclusion — the response rules differ between Academic and Core.
PTE Core's Summarize Written Text works from a shorter passage than PTE Academic - up to 200 words instead of 300 - and expects a shorter, looser response: 25 to 50 words across one or more sentences, rather than Academic's single 5-to-75-word sentence.
You read a passage of up to 200 words and write a summary that captures its main idea and key supporting points, within 10 minutes.
PTE Core includes one to two Summarize Written Text items, and the task counts toward both your Reading and Writing scores.
Because the passage is shorter, most of your 10 minutes can go on deciding what the writer's main point is and checking your draft, rather than on reading. Pearson does not publish a topic list for Core passages, so practise with a mix of general-interest texts.
Unlike PTE Academic, which requires a single complete sentence, Core allows your summary to run across more than one sentence, as long as the total stays within the word range.
| Detail | PTE Core |
|---|---|
| Items per test | 1-2 |
| Passage length | Up to 200 words |
| Time allowed | 10 minutes |
| Response length | 25-50 words, one or more sentences |
Core scores Summarize Written Text on four traits: Content (maximum 2), Form (maximum 2), Grammar (maximum 2) and Vocabulary (maximum 2). If Content or Form scores 0, the whole response scores 0 on every trait.
Pearson's PTE Core Score Guide gives full Form credit, 2 points, for a response of 25 to 50 words; partial credit, 1 point, for 5 to 24 or 51 to 60 words; and 0 for under 5 or over 60 words, for a response in all capitals, or with no punctuation.
The Core test-format page separately states that a summary under 25 or over 50 words "will not be scored". The Score Guide's partial-credit bands above are the more detailed source where the two pages differ.
Because the task feeds both Reading and Writing, a consistently accurate summary supports two of the four scores IRCC converts to a Canadian Language Benchmark level. Pearson's PTE Core to CLB tables place CLB 7 at 60 or higher in Reading and 69 or higher in Writing.
A dependable Core summary shape: one sentence, or two short ones, stating the passage's main idea, followed by its one or two most important supporting points, in your own words rather than copied phrases.
Example (written by LexiPTE) - passage topic: a short article describing how urban community gardens improve neighbourhood food access and social ties, particularly for older residents.
First draft: "Community gardens improve food access and social ties for older city residents." This is accurate but runs only 12 words, below the 25-word start of the full-credit Form band, so under the Core Score Guide it could earn at most 1 of the 2 Form points. It also leaves out how the gardens produce those benefits.
Revised: "Community gardens in cities improve food access and reduce isolation, especially for older residents, by giving neighbours a shared space to grow food and interact regularly." At 26 words, this now sits inside the full-credit Form band while keeping the same main idea, and the added "by giving neighbours a shared space" clause supplies the mechanism the first draft was missing.
Work through short Core-length passages, writing one summary each, then checking your word count and whether your first sentence states the actual conclusion rather than just the topic. Repeat with passages from different everyday contexts, such as workplace, community and general interest.
