Skip to content
LexiPTELexiPTE
Login / Sign up
← All practice Questions

PTE Reading Practice Test

Practise understanding written English with reading comprehension, paragraph ordering and fill-in-the-blanks tasks. Choose one task type at a time.

PTE Academic5 task types

Select a task type:

01FIB-DDFill in the Blanks: DropdownStart 02MCMAMultiple Choice, Multiple AnswersStart 03ROReorder ParagraphsStart 04FIB-D&DFill in the Blanks: Drag and DropStart 05MCSAMultiple Choice, Single AnswerStart

Recommended courses

13 lessonsPTE Reading Course0 of 13 done0%12 lessonsPTE Vocabulary & Collocations Kit0 of 12 done0%12 lessonsPTE Vocabulary Foundations0 of 12 done0%

Make the most of reading practice

Choose a focus, try a question, then review what you learned.

Choose the right Reading exercise

Use your mistakes to choose a starting point. Repeating random questions is less useful than targeting the decision you find difficult. Open a task below for its instructions, scoring example and practice questions.

Fill in the Blanks: Dropdown

A passage contains several missing words. Open the menu in each gap and choose the option that fits both the sentence structure and the meaning of the whole passage. Each menu has its own options, so solve every gap independently.

Fill in the Blanks: Drag and Drop

Complete a passage using words from a shared word bank. Some words are distractors and will remain unused. Compare gaps together: a word that almost fits one sentence may be essential in another.

Multiple Choice, Single Answer

Read a passage and select the single option that best answers the question. The question may test the main idea, a stated detail, the writer’s purpose or an inference supported by the text.

Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers

Read a passage and select every option supported by it. More than one answer is correct. Treat each option as a separate claim and compare it with the passage before adding it to your selection.

Reorder Paragraphs

Several text boxes appear in a mixed order. Reconstruct the original passage by following its topic, references and progression of ideas. Read each box as part of a connected text rather than as an isolated sentence.

What does PTE Reading assess?

Reading practice develops two connected skills: understanding a text and recognising how its language works. You need to identify the main message, locate details, follow relationships between ideas and choose words that fit a sentence. LexiPTE separates these skills into five task types so you can work on a specific weakness before combining them in a full test.

PTE Academic or PTE Core?

Choose Academic when preparing for the academic English test, or Core when preparing for the general English test. The exam selector follows you from the task list into practice. Similar task formats do not mean identical preparation: pay attention to the vocabulary, purpose and setting of each passage. Compare the full formats in PTE mock exams. Your institution or application determines the test and score you need.

How should I manage my time?

The real Reading exam has a shared section clock rather than a separate countdown for each item. In individual practice, use a short training target to notice when you are spending too long on one decision. Start by improving accuracy, then practise making the same decisions more quickly. Individual practice is untimed, so you can focus on understanding before building speed.

What should I review after answering?

Compare your selection with the evidence in the passage. For gaps, identify the grammar pattern and natural word combination. For choices, explain why the incorrect option is unsupported. For paragraph ordering, check each adjacent pair and the reference that connects it. A low item score is useful when you can explain the mistake and change your approach on the next attempt.

Try a quick Reading example

“The library extended its evening opening hours after students asked for a quiet place to study after work.”

Why did the library change its hours?

To give students a place to study in the evening. The request from students explains the change; the passage does not say that more staff were hired or that weekend hours changed.

Try a single-answer question

A focused practice session

  1. 1

    Choose

    Choose one task type and read its instructions.

  2. 2

    Try

    Make an initial attempt without consulting an answer or a template.

  3. 3

    Review

    Find the decision or language pattern that caused difficulty.

  4. 4

    Apply

    Repeat once to apply the correction, then move to a new prompt.

Read with a purpose

  • Read the whole passage to establish the topic and purpose.
  • Use grammar, meaning and collocations to evaluate missing words.
  • Look for linking words and references when ordering paragraphs.

Keep building your PTE skills

Focus on one task type, then combine your preparation with the other skills. For a complete test format, explore PTE mock exams.

PTE Academic Reading is a 23-30 minute, five-question-type section, but your Reading score is built from more than those five tasks - two Listening items and one Writing item feed into it as well. This hub covers what the Reading section tests, the tasks inside it, how the shared section clock works, exactly how each task is scored, and how to plan Reading practice.

What PTE Academic Reading tests

Reading is the second of the exam's three parts: 23-30 minutes covering 5 of the exam's 22 question types, inside a roughly two-hour test of 65-75 questions overall.

Your Reading score is not built only from the Reading section, though. Two Listening tasks - Highlight Correct Summary and Highlight Incorrect Words - are also scored against Reading, because both require you to read text while you listen. Summarize Written Text, in the Speaking & Writing section, is scored for Reading as well. Practising Reading skills pays off in the Listening section too.

All five Reading tasks are typed or clicked rather than spoken, so unlike Speaking you can reread a passage as many times as you like within the section clock before committing to an answer.

The five Reading tasks

All five sit in the practice catalogue under Reading, in test order:

  • Fill in the Blanks: Dropdown (FIB-DD) - complete a passage of up to 300 words by choosing the right word for each blank from a dropdown.
  • Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers (MCMA) - read a passage of up to 350 words and select every correct answer; wrong selections cost you a point.
  • Reorder Paragraphs (RO) - read up to 150 words split into scrambled paragraphs and drag them into the correct order.
  • Fill in the Blanks: Drag and Drop (FIB-D&D) - read a passage of up to 80 words and drag the correct words into blanks from a word bank with more options than gaps.
  • Multiple Choice, Single Answer (MCSA) - read a passage of up to 300 words and choose the one correct answer.

Time management for Reading

Reading tasks do not have individual per-item timers; instead, all five question types share one 23-30 minute section clock. A single difficult Reorder Paragraphs or Multiple Choice item should not be allowed to consume minutes you need for the rest of the section.

Because item counts vary by task (5-6 for Reading & Writing Fill in the Blanks, 4-5 for drag-and-drop Fill in the Blanks, 2-3 for each of the other three), a practical pacing rule is to budget roughly a minute or two per question depending on passage length, and to make your best choice and move on rather than freezing on one item.

None of the five Reading tasks reward finishing early with bonus points, so before you move on from each Fill in the Blanks passage, reread it once with your choices in place, since a single misread word is the easiest point to lose there.

How PTE Academic scores Reading

Both Fill in the Blanks tasks score 1 point per correctly completed blank, with no negative marking and a minimum of 0. Reorder Paragraphs scores 1 point for every pair of paragraphs placed correctly next to each other, again with no penalty for a wrong pair. Multiple Choice, Single Answer is straightforward correct/incorrect for 1 point.

Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers works differently: you gain 1 point for each correct option you select but lose 1 point for each incorrect one you select, though the item can never score below 0. That negative marking makes guessing extra options a real risk on MCMA specifically, unlike the other four Reading tasks.

Remember that Highlight Correct Summary and Highlight Incorrect Words, both practised under Listening, also count toward this same Reading score - correct/incorrect for the former, and the same +1/-1 negative-marking pattern as Reading MCMA for the latter.

A study plan for Reading

Start with the two Fill in the Blanks tasks: they reward vocabulary and grammar precision with no penalty for a wrong guess, so they are the safest place to build confidence and points.

Move on to Reorder Paragraphs by practising spotting the topic sentence and the pronoun or linking-word clues that show which paragraph follows which - each correct adjacent pair earns credit even if the full order is not perfect.

Save Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers for once your reading speed is solid, since selecting an extra wrong option there costs you a point instead of just failing to gain one. Round out your plan with a few Highlight Correct Summary and Highlight Incorrect Words drills from the Listening catalogue, since they train this same Reading score.

PTE Reading FAQ