PTE Retell Lecture Practice
Retell Lecture asks you to listen to an academic lecture of up to 90 seconds, prepare for 10 seconds and then retell the main points in 40 seconds. Pearson scores content, pronunciation and oral fluency. Use the free practice below (54 original lectures), then get a practice estimate from the optional transcript or tick the key points you covered, and compare your answer with the model.
- Free, no sign-up
- Original questions
- Exam timing
Question 1 of 54
Why bees matter
Audio uses your browser's voices. Your recording never leaves your browser. The result is a practice estimate from an optional transcript (on-device in most recent browsers, or the browser's own in Chrome and Edge) or from key points you tick yourself. It is not a Pearson score.
What Pearson says is scored
Pearson's official description of Retell Lecture (PTE Academic speaking and writing test format) names three traits. Each one maps to something you can practise:
| Trait | What the official text asks | What to practise |
|---|---|---|
| Content | Does the answer retell the main points accurately and in full, including developments or conclusions? | Note the topic and three main points. Say the conclusion last. |
| Pronunciation | Is the speech easy for a regular speaker of English to follow? | Say the key nouns and numbers clearly. Stress the important words. |
| Oral fluency | Does the speech flow at a steady, natural rate, without hesitation or repetition? | Keep going. Do not stop to correct a word. Use the timer. |
Pearson also says PTE Academic recognises regional and national varieties of English pronunciation to the degree that they are understandable to most regular speakers, so clarity matters more than copying an accent.
Pearson also says a response earns no credit if it is irrelevant or unoriginal, so the aim is a clear retelling in your own words, not a memorised script.
How this task is scored (practice estimate)
After each recording you can get a practice estimate. It is labelled as an estimate and is not a Pearson score. You choose how it is made before you start.
Transcript on (automatic)
- Content (key points): every lecture has a fixed list of key points (the topic, the main points and the conclusion), each with a few keywords. A key point counts as covered when one of its keywords appears in the transcript.
- Fluency (rough estimate): your pace in words per minute, counted from when the recording opened to when you pressed Stop, plus hesitation and repeated words. The comfortable range is our own rule of thumb, not a Pearson figure. Long pauses (over 1.5 seconds) are counted only with the on-device transcript, which supplies word timings; with the browser transcript only pace is estimated.
- Headline percentage: the share of key points covered, lowered a little by the fluency estimate. Full coverage with the weakest fluency estimate still shows 70 percent. It is on our own scale and is never turned into a 10 to 90 score.
Transcript off (self-checked)
- You listen to your recording and tick the key points you covered. The result is labelled a self-checked estimate, rests on your own judgement, and has no fluency part because no pace is known.
What is NOT measured
- Pronunciation is never measured. A transcript cannot judge sounds, stress or accent.
- Keywords cannot tell whether your retelling is accurate, in your own words or well organised, which is what the human review of content looks at in the real test. A good idea in different words can be missed, and a keyword in the wrong place can be counted.
- Speech recognition can mishear words, and the on-device model can quietly tidy up slips, so the estimate can run generous. The on-device transcript works in most recent browsers and the browser transcript in Chrome and Edge only. If neither works, the page says so and you use the tick option.
Results are saved only in this browser. See them on the progress page.
Timing: 3 seconds, 10 seconds prep, 40 seconds speaking
| Stage | Time | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Look at the image (if shown) | About 3 seconds | Guess the topic and the vocabulary you may hear. |
| Listen | Up to 90 seconds | Write keywords only, and note any signpost words. |
| Prepare | 10 seconds | Number your notes in order: topic, points, conclusion. |
| Speak | 40 seconds | Start after the tone. Retell all main points, then stop. |
Note-taking that works
- Write the topic first, in 2–3 words, as soon as you hear it.
- Keywords only: nouns, numbers and names. Skip full sentences.
- Listen for signposts: “first”, “the main reason”, “however”, “in conclusion” mark the points worth writing down.
- Mark the conclusion or implication: the lecturer often says what should happen next. Official scoring rewards these.
A 40-second structure you can adapt
This is a structure, not a script. Fill each part with the points you heard and use your own words. The timings below are our practice estimates for a steady pace.
| Part | Approx. time | Example opening (adapt it) |
|---|---|---|
| Topic | 5 seconds | “The lecture was about [topic].” |
| Main points | 25 seconds | “The speaker explained first that [point 1], then that [point 2] and [point 3].” |
| Example or detail | 5 seconds | “For example, [specific detail or number].” |
| Conclusion | 5 seconds | “In conclusion, the lecturer suggested that [conclusion].” |
Worked example: from notes to answer
Take the first practice lecture, “Why bees matter”. Notes written while listening might look like this:
- Topic: bees, pollinators, crops 3/4
- Problem: numbers falling, 3 causes: habitat, pesticides, disease (varroa mite)
- Fix: wild flowers at field edges, less pesticide
In the 10 seconds of prep, put them in order (topic, problem, fix) and speak straight from them. If you forget one cause, move on to the next point instead of stopping, because Pearson's own tip is to keep talking and ignore mistakes. Then play the lecture in the tool above and compare with the model answer.
Mistakes that cost marks
- Speaking before the microphone opens. Pearson says it will not be recorded.
- Repeating ideas or correcting yourself. This uses up time and lowers fluency.
- Listing disconnected facts. Link each point to the topic, and end with the conclusion.
- Memorising one answer for every lecture. Unoriginal responses earn no credit.
- Forgetting the conclusion. Official scoring looks for developments, conclusions or implications.
How to practise with this page
- Play one lecture. Take notes in the box without looking at the transcript.
- Use the 10-second prep, then record the 40-second retelling once, as in the real test.
- Check your result, or tick the key points you covered. Note which points you missed.
- Read the model answer and note the differences in wording, not the words you should copy.
- Repeat with a different lecture. Review your own delivery for pauses and filler words.
Retell Lecture and Summarize Spoken Text both test listening, note-taking and retelling. Both reward finding the main points quickly. For the full exam layout, see the PTE exam pattern guide.
Lecture transcripts
Read the transcripts after you practise, to check which points you missed. The lectures are original scripts on general academic topics.
Show all transcripts
Why bees matter
Today I want to talk about pollinators, and bees in particular. Around three quarters of the world's major food crops depend, at least partly, on animal pollination. That includes many fruits, nuts and vegetables. Bees are the most important group of pollinators, but their numbers have been falling in many regions. Scientists point to three main causes. The first is habitat loss: as farms grow larger and wild flowers disappear, bees lose both food and nesting sites. The second is pesticides, some of which can impair a bee's ability to navigate back to its hive. The third is disease, spread by parasites such as the varroa mite. The good news is that relatively simple measures can help, for example planting strips of wild flowers along field edges and reducing pesticide use during flowering season.
The forgetting curve
In the late nineteenth century, a German psychologist carried out a series of memory experiments on himself. He memorised lists of meaningless syllables and then tested how much he could recall after different periods of time. What he found became known as the forgetting curve. Memory drops very sharply in the first hour or so after learning, and then the rate of forgetting slows down. Within a day, a large proportion of new information can be lost. But here is the important part for students: each time you review the material, the curve becomes flatter, meaning you forget more slowly. This is the basis of what we now call spaced repetition: reviewing information at increasing intervals, say after one day, then three days, then a week. It is far more effective than cramming everything the night before an exam.
Container shipping
It's hard to overstate how much the humble shipping container changed the global economy. Before the nineteen fifties, cargo was loaded onto ships piece by piece: sacks, barrels and crates were carried by teams of dock workers. Loading a single ship could take a week or more, and theft and damage were common. The standardised steel container changed all that. Because every container had the same dimensions, it could be moved directly from a truck to a ship to a train using cranes, without ever being opened. Loading times fell from days to hours, and the cost of shipping goods dropped dramatically. This made it economical to manufacture products in one country and sell them on the other side of the world. In many ways, the container made modern globalisation possible, although it also led to the loss of many traditional dock jobs.
Urban green spaces
Let's look at the benefits of green spaces in cities, such as parks, gardens and tree-lined streets. First, there are environmental benefits. Trees absorb air pollutants and provide shade, which can lower street temperatures by several degrees in summer. Green areas also absorb rainwater, reducing the risk of flooding. Second, there are health benefits. Studies have found that people who live near parks tend to exercise more and report lower levels of stress. Even short walks in green surroundings appear to improve mood and concentration. Third, there are social benefits: parks give people of different backgrounds a free place to meet. The challenge for planners is that land in cities is expensive, so green space is often the first thing to be sacrificed for development. Some cities now require new housing projects to include a minimum amount of green space.
The placebo effect
The placebo effect is one of the most fascinating puzzles in medicine. A placebo is a treatment with no active ingredient, such as a sugar pill, yet patients who receive one often report real improvements, particularly for symptoms like pain, nausea and fatigue. Why does this happen? Part of the answer lies in expectation. When we believe a treatment will work, the brain can release natural painkillers. The context also matters: a confident doctor, an official-looking package, or even the colour of a pill can influence the result. This creates a challenge for researchers. To prove a new drug really works, it must perform better than a placebo in a controlled trial, where neither patients nor doctors know who is receiving which. Interestingly, some recent studies suggest placebos can help even when patients are told openly that they are taking one.
Desalination
With fresh water becoming scarce in many parts of the world, more countries are turning to desalination, the process of removing salt from seawater. The most common method today is reverse osmosis. Seawater is pushed at high pressure through extremely fine membranes that allow water molecules through but block salt and other impurities. Desalination has clear advantages: the ocean is an almost unlimited source, and supply does not depend on rainfall. However, there are significant drawbacks. The process uses a great deal of energy, which makes the water expensive and, if the energy comes from fossil fuels, adds to carbon emissions. It also produces a very salty waste product called brine, which can harm marine life if it is released carelessly. Engineers are working on solutions, including powering plants with solar energy and finding commercial uses for the minerals in brine.
Coral reefs under pressure
Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, yet they support roughly a quarter of all marine species. That is why scientists often call them the rainforests of the sea. Reefs are built by tiny animals called polyps, which live in partnership with algae. The algae give the coral its colour and much of its food. Unfortunately, when seawater becomes too warm, the coral expels its algae and turns white, an event known as bleaching. A bleached reef can recover if the water cools, but repeated bleaching can kill it. Pollution and overfishing add further stress. Protecting reefs therefore means limiting greenhouse gas emissions, improving water quality near the coast, and creating protected zones where fishing is restricted.
Radiocarbon dating
Archaeologists often need to know how old an object is, and one of their most useful tools is radiocarbon dating. All living things absorb a small amount of radioactive carbon from their surroundings. When an organism dies, it stops absorbing carbon, and the radioactive form slowly decays at a steady rate. By measuring how much remains in a sample of wood, bone or charcoal, scientists can calculate its age. The half-life of this carbon is about five thousand seven hundred years, so the method works for samples up to roughly fifty thousand years old. One complication is that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has varied over time, so results are checked against records such as tree rings.
What causes the tides
Anyone who has spent time by the sea knows that the water level rises and falls during the day. These movements are called tides, and they are caused mainly by the gravity of the Moon. The Moon pulls on the oceans, creating a bulge of water on the side of the Earth facing it and another on the opposite side. As the Earth rotates, a coastline passes through these bulges, so most places experience two high tides a day. The Sun also has an effect. When the Sun, Moon and Earth line up, the tides are especially large, and these are called spring tides. When they form a right angle, the tides are smaller, known as neap tides. Sailors and fishermen rely on tide tables to plan their work.
Reading the layers
Digging in an archaeological site is a little like reading a book, and the pages are layers of earth called strata. As a general rule, deeper layers were deposited earlier, so objects found lower down tend to be older than those near the surface. But the rule is not perfect. Burrowing animals, buildings and later pits can mix layers together. For this reason, archaeologists record exactly where every object was found, its context, using drawings and photographs. Context matters as much as the object itself, because a coin lying beside a hearth tells a different story from the same coin found in a rubbish pit. Excavation destroys the evidence as it goes, so careful records are the only way to revisit it.
Cycling in cities
Many city planners now see the bicycle as part of the transport solution rather than a hobby. A bicycle takes up far less road space than a car, produces no exhaust, and costs very little to run. Cities that have added cycle lanes often find that more people start cycling, which reduces traffic and air pollution. However, painting a line on the road is not enough. Research and experience suggest that people cycle most when the lanes are physically separated from traffic, because this makes them feel safe. The lanes must also form a connected network, so that riders can reach shops, schools and stations without gaps. Finally, secure bicycle parking encourages people to leave their cars at home, especially near railway stations.
Shipwreck archaeology
Shipwrecks can be remarkable archaeological sites, because the sea floor sometimes preserves things that would rot on land. In cold, deep water there is little oxygen and few of the organisms that break down wood, so timbers, ropes and even leather can survive for centuries. Divers first photograph and map the whole site, since lifting objects without a record would destroy their context. Recovery comes later. Then comes a new problem. Waterlogged wood looks solid, but its cells are filled with water, and if it simply dries out it shrinks and cracks. Conservators therefore replace the water with special preserving chemicals over many months before the object can be displayed.
Supply and demand
Let's begin with one of the most basic ideas in economics: supply and demand. Supply is how much of a product sellers are willing to offer, and demand is how much buyers want to purchase at a given price. When demand is higher than supply, buyers compete with each other, and the price tends to rise. When supply is higher than demand, sellers compete for customers, and the price tends to fall. Eventually the market settles near a price where the amount supplied matches the amount demanded. Economists call this the equilibrium price. Think of strawberries: after a poor harvest, there are fewer of them in the shops and the price goes up. In a bumper season, the opposite happens, and they become cheaper.
How monsoons work
A monsoon is a seasonal reversal of wind direction, and it brings much of the annual rainfall to regions such as South Asia. The cause is the different way land and sea warm up. In summer, the land heats faster than the ocean, and the warm air above it rises. Moist air from the sea is then drawn inland to replace it, and as that air rises and cools, it drops heavy rain. In winter the pattern reverses, with dry air flowing out from the land. Farmers in monsoon regions plan their planting around the arrival of the rains, so a late or weak monsoon can seriously affect harvests. This is why accurate seasonal forecasts are so valuable.
How solar panels work
Solar panels are now a common sight on roofs, so how do they actually work? Most panels are made from silicon cells. When sunlight hits a cell, its energy knocks electrons loose, and a built-in electrical field pushes them in one direction. That flow of electrons is an electric current. This is known as the photovoltaic effect. The current produced is direct current, so a device called an inverter converts it into the alternating current used in homes. Panels work best in strong sunlight, but they still generate some electricity on cloudy days. Because there is no sunshine at night, many households add batteries to store spare power. Over the past decade, the cost of panels has fallen sharply, which has made them affordable for many more people.
El Nino
El Nino is a climate pattern that begins in the tropical Pacific Ocean and affects weather far beyond it. Normally, steady trade winds push warm surface water towards the western Pacific. During an El Nino, these winds weaken, and the warm water spreads back east along the equator. This happens every two to seven years, with no fixed schedule. The shift changes where storms form, so some regions, such as parts of South America's coast, receive unusually heavy rain, while others, including parts of Australia and Southeast Asia, can experience drought. Fisheries are affected as well, because the warm water reduces the nutrients that fish depend on. Scientists monitor ocean temperatures closely to give early warning.
The power of handwashing
In the 1840s, a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis worked in a Vienna hospital where many new mothers died of a fever soon after childbirth. He noticed that the death rate was much higher in the ward staffed by doctors than in the ward staffed by midwives. The doctors often came straight from examining dead bodies. Semmelweis ordered them to wash their hands in a chlorine solution before treating patients, and the death rate fell dramatically. Surprisingly, many of his colleagues rejected the idea, partly because germs had not yet been discovered. Only later, when the germ theory of disease became widely accepted, did his work receive recognition. Today, handwashing is regarded as one of the simplest and most effective public health measures.
Why forecasts are probabilities
Modern weather forecasts are produced by computer models that simulate the atmosphere. The difficulty is that the starting measurements are never perfectly accurate, and in a system as complex as the atmosphere, tiny errors can grow quickly. To deal with this, forecasters run the same model many times, each with slightly different starting conditions. This is called an ensemble. If nearly all the runs show rain tomorrow, confidence is high. If they disagree, the forecast expresses that uncertainty as a percentage chance. Accuracy falls as we look further ahead, and beyond about one to two weeks, detailed day-by-day forecasts are not reliable. So when you see a seventy per cent chance of rain, it is honest information, not a failure.
The printing press
Around the middle of the fifteenth century, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing system in Germany that changed Europe. Before that, books were copied by hand, which took months and made them very expensive. Gutenberg's key innovation was movable metal type: individual letters that could be arranged into a page, inked and pressed onto paper, then rearranged for the next page. This made it possible to produce many identical copies quickly. As books became cheaper, more people learned to read, and new ideas in science, religion and politics travelled faster than ever before. Some historians argue that the printing press helped to bring about the Renaissance and the scientific revolution, although these changes also had many other causes.
Crop rotation
Farmers have known for centuries that growing the same crop on the same field year after year gradually harms the land. Crop rotation is the practice of changing what is planted from season to season. It helps in several ways. Some plants, particularly beans and clover, work with bacteria in their roots to add nitrogen to the soil, which the following cereal crop can then use. Rotation also interrupts the life cycles of pests and diseases that specialise in one crop, so they do not build up. In medieval Europe, many farms used a three-field system, leaving one field fallow, or unplanted, each year to recover. Today many farmers combine rotation with reduced fertiliser use.
Mangrove forests
Mangroves are trees that grow along tropical and subtropical coasts, with their roots standing in salty water. They have special adaptations: some filter salt at the roots, and others release it through their leaves. Their tangled roots provide shelter for young fish and crabs, so mangroves act as nurseries for many species that later move out to reefs or open water. The roots also slow incoming waves, which helps protect the shore from storms and erosion. In addition, the waterlogged soil stores large amounts of carbon, because plant material decays very slowly there. Despite these benefits, mangroves have been cleared in many places to make way for shrimp farms and coastal development, and conservation groups are now working on replanting projects.
Vertical farming
Vertical farms grow crops in stacked layers inside buildings, usually without any soil. Plants sit in trays with their roots in water or a mist containing nutrients, and they are lit by energy-efficient lamps. Because the environment is controlled, crops can be grown all year round, with no need for pesticides, and the water is recycled, so use can be far lower than in a field. Farms can also be built inside cities, which shortens the journey to shoppers. However, there are limits. Lighting and climate control consume a lot of electricity, which makes the produce costly, so most vertical farms grow leafy greens and herbs rather than staples such as wheat or rice.
Life without sunlight
In 1977, scientists exploring the seabed near the Galapagos Islands made a remarkable discovery. At a depth of more than two kilometres, where no sunlight reaches, they found hot water streaming out of cracks in the rock, surrounded by thriving communities of animals. These cracks are called hydrothermal vents. The water leaving them is rich in chemicals such as hydrogen sulphide. Certain bacteria can use the energy in these chemicals to make food, a process known as chemosynthesis. Giant tube worms and other creatures depend on these bacteria, sometimes housing them inside their bodies. The discovery showed that life does not always rely on sunlight and photosynthesis, and it has encouraged scientists to consider that life might exist in other dark, watery places beyond Earth.
Preserving food
Food spoils mainly because microorganisms grow in it, and they need water, warmth and time. Almost every preservation method works by denying them one of these. Drying and salting remove or lock up the water, which is why dried fruit and salted fish last for months. Refrigeration and freezing slow the growth of microbes by lowering the temperature. Canning takes a different approach. In the early nineteenth century, the French confectioner Nicolas Appert showed that food sealed in airtight containers and heated could be kept safely for long periods. Heat destroys the microbes, and the seal keeps new ones out. These methods transformed diets, because people could eat a varied range of foods far from where and when they were produced.
Mixed-use neighbourhoods
For much of the twentieth century, many cities separated land into zones: housing in one area, shops in another, and factories in a third. The original aim was reasonable, since it protected residents from smoke and noise. But the side effect was that people had to travel by car for almost every errand. Planners are now rediscovering mixed-use neighbourhoods, where homes, shops, offices and small workplaces sit close together. In such areas, many daily needs can be reached on foot or by bicycle, streets stay lively throughout the day, and local businesses have more customers. Critics point out that mixing uses can create noise and parking problems, so careful design is essential. Even so, many cities have updated their rules to make mixed-use development easier.
Formative and summative assessment
Teachers use two broad kinds of assessment, and they serve different purposes. Summative assessment happens at the end of a period of learning, such as a final exam or an end-of-year project, and it produces a grade that sums up what a student has achieved. Formative assessment, by contrast, happens during learning. Examples include short quizzes, questions in class and comments on a draft essay. Its aim is not to give a grade but to show students and teachers what is understood and what needs more work, so that teaching can be adjusted in time. Research suggests that frequent, specific feedback is among the most effective ways to help students improve. Good courses therefore use both types together.
Opportunity cost
Economists use the term opportunity cost to describe a simple but powerful idea: whenever you choose one option, you give up the next best alternative. The cost of a decision is therefore not only the money you spend, but also the value of what you could have done instead. Consider a student who spends Saturday studying rather than working a part-time job. The opportunity cost is the wages she did not earn. Governments face the same problem. If a city spends its budget on a new stadium, it cannot spend the same money on a hospital. Recognising opportunity costs does not tell us which choice is right, but it encourages us to see the hidden price of every decision and to compare options more honestly.
Apprenticeships
Education policy often debates how best to prepare young people for work, and one long-standing answer is the apprenticeship. An apprentice is employed and paid, usually at a lower wage, while also studying for a recognised qualification, so learning takes place both in a workplace and in a classroom. Several countries, Germany and Switzerland among them, have built their vocational systems around this combination, and many apprentices there are later hired permanently by the companies that trained them. Supporters argue that apprenticeships give practical skills and reduce youth unemployment. Critics point out that quality varies, and that employers must be willing to offer enough places. For the model to succeed, governments, schools and industry need to cooperate over what is taught.
Comparative advantage
Why do countries trade, even when one of them is better at producing everything? The economist David Ricardo answered this question in the early nineteenth century with the idea of comparative advantage. His point was that a country should specialise in what it produces at the lowest opportunity cost, meaning the smallest sacrifice of other goods. Suppose one country is very efficient at making both wine and cloth, while its neighbour is less efficient at both but relatively better at cloth. If each concentrates on its stronger area and they trade, total production rises, and both can end up with more than before. Of course, in reality, specialisation can make a country dependent on a few exports, and workers in declining industries may lose their jobs.
Finding exoplanets
Planets that orbit stars other than our Sun are called exoplanets, and most of them are too faint to see directly, because the star's glare drowns them out. One successful approach is the transit method. When a planet passes in front of its star, as seen from Earth, it blocks a tiny fraction of the starlight, and the star dims very slightly. Telescopes in space can detect these small, regular dips. The size of the dip reveals how big the planet is, and the time between dips shows how long its year lasts. Astronomers watch for repeated dips to rule out false alarms. This method has helped discover thousands of planets, including some of roughly Earth's size.
Working memory
Working memory is the mental workspace where we hold and manipulate information for a few seconds, for example when we remember a phone number long enough to dial it, or follow the steps of a mental calculation. Its capacity is strictly limited. A famous paper in the 1950s suggested that people can hold about seven items, but more recent research points to a smaller figure, closer to four meaningful chunks. A chunk is a group of items that the mind treats as a single unit. This is why a number such as one nine four five is easier to remember as a date than as four separate digits. Because capacity is limited, distractions can easily push information out, which is why studying with a phone buzzing nearby is so difficult.
Looking back in time
When astronomers look at the night sky, they are also looking into the past. Light travels extremely fast, about three hundred thousand kilometres every second, but distances in space are so vast that even light takes time to cross them. Sunlight reaches us after around eight minutes, so we see the Sun as it was eight minutes ago. A light-year is not a unit of time but a distance: the distance light covers in one year, roughly nine and a half trillion kilometres. The nearest large galaxy, Andromeda, is about two and a half million light-years away, so the light we see left it before humans existed. The more distant the object, the further back we see.
Wind power
Wind turbines convert the movement of air into electricity. As wind turns the blades, they spin a generator inside the machine. Turbines on land are cheaper to build and maintain, but those at sea usually catch stronger and steadier winds, so they produce more power, although the construction costs are higher. The main challenge with wind is that it is variable: some days the air is still. Grid operators handle this in several ways. They connect wind farms across wide regions, because the wind is rarely calm everywhere at once. They use batteries and other storage to hold surplus power. And they keep flexible power sources ready to fill any gaps. Together, these measures let wind supply more electricity.
What causes the seasons
Many people assume that summer happens because the Earth is closer to the Sun, but that is not the explanation. The real cause is the tilt of the Earth's axis, which is about twenty-three and a half degrees. As the Earth travels around the Sun over a year, the tilt means that for part of the year the northern half leans towards the Sun, and for the rest of the year the southern half does. The hemisphere leaning towards the Sun receives more direct sunlight and longer days, so it is warmer. In fact, the Earth is closest to the Sun in early January, in the middle of the northern winter. This also explains why the two hemispheres have opposite seasons.
The telegraph
Until the nineteenth century, a message could travel no faster than a horse, a train or a ship. That changed in the 1830s and 1840s with the electrical telegraph. A telegraph sent pulses of electricity along a wire, and operators translated the pulses into letters using a code, the best known being Morse code. News that once took days or weeks could now arrive within minutes. Railways used the telegraph to control train movements, newspapers used it to collect reports, and merchants used it to follow prices. In 1858, the first cable across the Atlantic Ocean was completed, though it failed after only a few weeks. A more durable link was established in 1866, and communication between Europe and North America became almost immediate.
Gothic cathedrals
Medieval Gothic cathedrals look light and airy, which is surprising, since they are built entirely of heavy stone. Their builders solved the problem with three key innovations. The pointed arch directs the weight of the roof more steeply downwards than a round arch does. Ribbed vaults then channel that weight into specific columns. Finally, flying buttresses, which are stone arms on the outside of the building, carry the sideways push of the roof down to supports on the ground. Because the walls no longer had to hold up the roof on their own, they could be thinner and filled with huge windows, often of stained glass. The result was interiors flooded with coloured light, which was part of the purpose.
Eradicating smallpox
Smallpox was once one of the deadliest diseases in the world, and it is the first human disease to have been completely eradicated. The story begins in 1796, when the English doctor Edward Jenner showed that exposure to cowpox, a milder disease, protected people against smallpox. This was the first vaccine. In the twentieth century, the World Health Organization led a global campaign. Rather than vaccinating everyone, teams used a strategy called ring vaccination: when a case appeared, they located the people around the patient and vaccinated them, which stopped the virus from spreading. Careful surveillance helped them find outbreaks quickly. The last natural case occurred in 1977, and in 1980 the disease was officially declared eradicated. The campaign remains a model of international cooperation in public health.
Passive design
Architects who practise passive design aim to keep a building comfortable with very little heating or cooling equipment. They start with the site. Windows are placed so that, in colder climates, low winter sun enters and warms the rooms, while overhangs or shutters block the higher summer sun. Good insulation and airtight construction then stop the heat from escaping. Heavy materials such as concrete or brick, known as thermal mass, soak up warmth during the day and release it slowly at night, smoothing out temperature swings. Finally, ventilation systems can recover heat from outgoing stale air. Buildings designed this way can cut energy use dramatically, and the extra cost at construction is often repaid through lower bills.
Why English spelling is odd
English spelling is famously inconsistent, and history explains much of the confusion. Words like knight and night once had a sound for every letter, including the k and the gh. Over the centuries, pronunciation changed, particularly during the Great Vowel Shift, which took place roughly between the fourteen hundreds and the sixteen hundreds, when long vowels moved to new positions in the mouth. But spelling did not follow. One reason is that printing spread in the same period, and printers helped to fix spellings that reflected older pronunciation. English has also borrowed words from many languages, including French and Latin, and often kept their original spellings. The result is a system with many silent letters and irregular patterns that learners simply have to memorise.
Earthquake-resistant buildings
It is a common belief that the strongest buildings are the stiffest, but in an earthquake, rigid structures can crack and fail. Modern engineers therefore take a different approach: they design buildings to move with the ground in a controlled way. One technique is base isolation, in which a building sits on flexible bearings that absorb much of the shaking before it reaches the structure. Another is the use of dampers, devices that work like shock absorbers by turning movement into heat. Steel frames are also valued because they can bend without breaking. Of course, no building can be made completely safe, so regulations in earthquake zones require strict standards. Even so, older buildings often need strengthening to meet them.
Green hydrogen
Hydrogen is often described as a fuel of the future, but it is better understood as an energy carrier. It is rarely found free in nature, so it must be produced, and most today is made from natural gas, which releases carbon dioxide. Green hydrogen is different: it is produced by electrolysis, which uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the electricity comes from renewable sources such as wind or solar. Its main appeal is for industries that are hard to electrify, such as steelmaking, shipping and some chemical production. The drawbacks are significant. Energy is lost at each step of production, storage and use, and the equipment is still expensive. So many experts see hydrogen as a tool for specific sectors.
Skyscrapers
Two inventions made the modern skyscraper possible. The first was the steel frame. Traditional buildings used thick masonry walls to carry their weight, which meant that the taller the building, the thicker the lower walls had to be. A steel skeleton carries the load instead, so the walls become a thin covering. The first buildings of this type appeared in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. The second invention was the safe passenger elevator. In the eighteen fifties, Elisha Otis demonstrated a safety brake that stopped a lift from falling if its cable broke, which gave people the confidence to ride it. Together, these developments allowed cities with expensive land to grow upwards rather than outwards.
Pidgins and creoles
When speakers of different languages need to communicate but share no common tongue, for example in trading ports, they often develop a pidgin. A pidgin is a simplified contact language with a small vocabulary, minimal grammar and no native speakers. It serves a practical purpose, and it is usually learned as a second language. Something remarkable can happen, however, when children grow up hearing a pidgin as their main input. They tend to expand it, adding consistent grammar, a richer vocabulary and ways to express tense and complex ideas. The result is a creole, a full language with native speakers. Linguists find creoles valuable because they show how human beings can create grammatical structure so readily, which supports the idea that the capacity for language is deeply built into us.
Just-in-time logistics
Many manufacturers and shops use a system called just-in-time. Instead of storing large amounts of parts or stock in warehouses, they arrange for deliveries to arrive only when they are needed. This saves money, because warehouse space is costly and unsold goods tie up cash. It also reduces waste, since items are less likely to become outdated or spoil. However, the system depends on every link in the supply chain working on schedule. If a port is closed, a factory has a fire, or a storm blocks a road, there is little reserve to fall back on, and production can halt within days. For this reason, some companies now keep extra buffer stock of the most critical items, accepting higher storage costs in return for resilience.
Ocean acidification
The ocean absorbs roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans release into the air, and this has slowed the warming of the atmosphere. But it comes at a cost. When carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater, it forms carbonic acid, which lowers the water's pH and reduces the availability of carbonate ions. Many marine organisms, including oysters, sea snails and corals, need carbonate to build their shells and skeletons. In more acidic water, they must spend more energy on construction, and their shells may be thinner or even dissolve. Because these animals form a key part of food webs, effects can move upward to fish and eventually to the people who depend on them. The only lasting remedy is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The last mile
In logistics, the last mile is the final stage of a delivery, from a local depot to the customer's door. It is usually the most expensive part of the whole journey, even though it covers the shortest distance. The reasons are simple. A van may stop at dozens of addresses, each one needing a separate drop-off, and if the customer is not at home, the trip may have to be repeated. Traffic and parking add further delays. Companies are experimenting with several remedies. Parcel lockers let many customers collect items from one location, cargo bikes can move quickly through crowded centres, and delivery slots help to ensure someone is home. Combining deliveries from several sellers in one vehicle can also reduce traffic.
Memory is reconstructive
Many people imagine memory as a video recording that can be replayed exactly. In the 1930s, the psychologist Frederic Bartlett tested this idea. He asked participants to read an unfamiliar folk story and later retell it, sometimes after weeks or years. The retellings became shorter, and unfamiliar details were changed to fit the participants' own cultural expectations. Bartlett concluded that remembering is an act of reconstruction: we rebuild an event from fragments, guided by what we already know. This has important consequences. It helps explain why two honest witnesses may recall the same event differently, and why confidence in a memory is not proof that it is accurate. Courts and police investigators now take this into account when they interview witnesses.
Roundabouts
Compared with traditional crossroads controlled by traffic lights, roundabouts have a good safety record, and the reasons are mostly about geometry. At a crossroads, vehicles can collide at right angles or head-on while turning, which often causes serious injuries. At a roundabout, all traffic moves in the same direction, so the number of possible collision points falls sharply, and any crashes tend to be at shallow angles. Drivers must also slow down to enter, which reduces the force of impacts. Roundabouts keep traffic flowing when volumes are moderate, and they save the cost of maintaining signals. They are not ideal everywhere, though: very heavy traffic can overwhelm them, and they can be difficult for pedestrians and cyclists without well-designed crossings.
The Broad Street pump
In 1854, a severe cholera outbreak struck the Soho district of London. At the time, most doctors believed cholera was spread by bad air, known as miasma. A physician named John Snow doubted this. He interviewed residents and marked each death on a map, and he noticed that the cases clustered around a public water pump on Broad Street. He also found that nearby workers who drank from a different supply were largely spared. Snow persuaded local officials to remove the pump handle, and the outbreak declined, although it may already have been fading. He did not know about bacteria, but his careful mapping showed that the disease travelled through water. His method is often regarded as a founding example of epidemiology, the study of how disease spreads in populations.
Neuroplasticity
For a long time, scientists believed that the adult brain was fixed, and that only children could change it significantly. We now know that this is wrong. The brain remains plastic throughout life, meaning that connections between its cells can strengthen, weaken or form anew in response to experience. A well-known study examined London taxi drivers, who must memorise thousands of streets to qualify. Brain scans showed that a region involved in spatial memory, the hippocampus, was larger at the back in the drivers than in comparison groups. Plasticity also helps the brain recover after injury, as other regions sometimes take over lost functions. Learning new skills, at any age, appears to take advantage of this ability.
The tragedy of the commons
Imagine a shared pasture open to every farmer in a village. Each farmer benefits personally from adding one more animal, while the cost of overgrazing is shared by everyone. So each has an incentive to add animals, until the pasture is destroyed. This idea, from a well-known 1968 essay, is called the tragedy of the commons. It is often applied to ocean fisheries, where individual boats catch as many fish as possible and the stock eventually collapses. Two main remedies have been proposed: government regulation, such as catch quotas, and private ownership of the resource. The political economist Elinor Ostrom showed a third possibility. In many places, local users have created their own rules to manage shared resources sustainably, provided they can monitor each other and sanction rule breakers.
Sleep and memory
Sleep is not simply a period of rest for the brain. Evidence from many studies suggests that it plays an active role in storing memories. During the day, new information is held in a fragile form. At night, especially during deep sleep, the brain appears to replay recent experiences and to move important material into more stable, long-term storage. Other stages of sleep seem to help with creative problem solving and with learning physical skills such as playing an instrument. In experiments, people who slept after learning a list of words usually remembered more of them than people who stayed awake for the same period. For students, this suggests that an all-night study session may be counterproductive.
Improving the steam engine
Early steam engines, built in the early eighteenth century, were used mainly to pump water out of mines. They were useful, but they wasted a great deal of fuel, because the cylinder was heated and then cooled again on every stroke. In the 1760s, the Scottish instrument maker James Watt worked out a solution: a separate condenser, so that the cylinder could stay hot while the steam was cooled elsewhere. This greatly improved efficiency. Later modifications allowed the engine to turn a wheel rather than just move a pump. With that, steam power could drive machinery in factories, which no longer needed to be located beside a fast-flowing river. Eventually the same principle powered locomotives and ships, and transport, trade and manufacturing were reshaped across the world.
The cost of multitasking
Many people believe they are good at multitasking, for example replying to messages while listening to a talk. Psychologists, however, have found that the brain does not truly perform two demanding tasks at the same time. Instead, it switches rapidly between them, and each switch carries a small cost in time and accuracy, because attention must be redirected and the previous task must be recalled. These costs add up. Studies show that people who switch often make more errors and take longer to finish than people who complete one task at a time. The exceptions are tasks that are automatic, such as walking while talking. Experts therefore recommend working in focused blocks, with notifications turned off, and checking messages only during breaks.
Frequently asked questions
How long is the PTE Retell Lecture question?
The lecture lasts up to 90 seconds. When it ends you get 10 seconds to prepare and 40 seconds to speak. You can take notes while the audio plays. Pearson's test-format page lists these timings.
How is Retell Lecture scored?
Pearson scores three traits: content, pronunciation and oral fluency. All three are AI-scored, and a human expert reviews content before the final score is confirmed. Content looks at how accurately and fully you retell the main points, with any possible developments or conclusions.
Does this page score my Retell Lecture answer?
It gives a practice estimate, not an official score. With the optional transcript on, the page looks for each key point of the lecture in the transcript and estimates your pace (and long pauses too, with the on-device transcript). With it off, you tick the key points you covered and the result is labelled self-checked. Keyword matching cannot judge accuracy or wording the way the human review of content does in the real test, and pronunciation is never measured.
Can I use a memorised template in the exam?
Pearson says a response earns no credit if it is unoriginal, and you must use your own words. A template is useful for structure (topic, points, conclusion), but do not memorise a full answer that you repeat for every lecture.
Can I take notes during Retell Lecture?
Yes. In the official test you can take notes on an erasable noteboard while the audio plays. This practice page gives you a notes box, so you can build the same habit at home.
Does Retell Lecture show a picture?
Sometimes. You may see an image related to the audio. Pearson's test tips say you have a few seconds to look at it before the audio starts, so use that time to guess the topic.
How many words should I say in 40 seconds?
Pearson does not give a word count. As a practice estimate, most learners can say about 90 to 110 words in 40 seconds at a steady pace. Practise with the timer and aim to finish all three main points before the time runs out.
Are these real exam lectures?
No. Every lecture on this page is an original script written for practice, on general academic topics. None of them is taken from the real PTE test.
PTE retell lecture kaise kare? (How do I retell a lecture?)
Write the topic in 2 or 3 words first. Note only keywords: numbers, names and the main points. In the 10 seconds of prep, put your notes in order: topic, three points, then the conclusion. Speak in your own words, start after the tone and keep going without long pauses.
PTE retell lecture ka template kya hai? (Is there one template for every lecture?)
There is no single template that suits every lecture. Use the same structure for every lecture: topic, main points, one example, then a conclusion. Fill the structure with the points you heard, in your own words.