PTE guide
The new 2025 tasks
Respond to a Situation and Summarize Group Discussion: formats, scoring traits, and templates for both new tasks.
By EdKnot Editorial Team · Published 22 August 2026 · Updated 23 August 2026
What changed in August 2025
Pearson added two speaking tasks to PTE Academic: Respond to a Situation, promoted from PTE Core, and Summarize Group Discussion, a new task built around multi-speaker audio. Both are integrated tasks, and both reward preparation, because their formats are fixed and their scoring traits are published — templates work for both, and most older prep material simply does not cover them.
Respond to a Situation
Respond to a Situation gives you a scenario — a request, an apology, an arrangement — and scores whether your answer accomplishes the communicative goal. Content marks come from purpose plus specific details; delivery marks come from fluency and pronunciation, like every speaking task. The templates carry both register variants.
Do
- State the purpose in the first sentence — the scorer is listening for the communicative goal
- Add two specifics: names, times, reasons
- Match the register — formal for a professor, warm for a friend
Don’t
- Give a generic answer — it caps the Content trait
- Use one register for every scenario
- Forget delivery — fluency and pronunciation score here too
Summarize Group Discussion
Summarize Group Discussion plays a short discussion between multiple speakers and asks for a spoken summary. The templates order it for you, so your notes can stay on who said what.
A fluent summary of [ONE SPEAKER'S VIEW] scores worse than a plainer summary that covers [EVERY VOICE].
Note [WHO SAID WHAT], not just what was said — missed speakers are missed Content marks.
The frame: [TOPIC] → [EACH POSITION] → [THE POINT OF DISAGREEMENT].
If you prepared before the change
Materials from before August 2025 under-weight two tasks that now carry real marks. Rebalance rather than starting over: the classic tasks are unchanged, so the adjustment is adding drills, not relearning the exam — the current exam pattern shows where they sit.
- Audit your materials
Courses and template PDFs from before August 2025 miss both tasks.
- Drill them scored
Both tasks are in EdKnot's practice library with AI trait feedback.
- Re-baseline once
One mock shows how much the new tasks move your speaking score.