Two tasks, both with hard word limits that gate the rest of the marks. More PTE writing points are lost to the limits than to the writing, which makes this the section where knowing the rules is worth more than improving your English.
You read a passage of up to about 300 words and compress it into a single sentence. The single sentence is not a stylistic preference; it is the form requirement, and a response containing a full stop in the middle fails it.
One argumentative essay in 20 minutes, within a 200–300 word band. The prompts are broad and familiar — technology, education, work, the environment — and the scoring rewards a predictable structure far more than an original argument.
Entirely machine-scored, which cuts both ways. Results come back in a day or two, and the scoring rewards clear, evenly-paced speech over interesting speech.
The practical consequence for writing is that safety pays. A construction you are not certain of can only lose marks; the engine gives no credit for ambition it cannot parse. Write the sentence you can definitely get right, spend the saved attention on the word count, and remember that these tasks are feeding your Reading score too.
Between 5 and 75 words, and it must be a single sentence. Going over the cap or writing two sentences scores zero on form, and form gating means the rest of your marks on that item go with it — it is the most avoidable zero in the whole test.
10 minutes for each Summarize Written Text and 20 minutes for the essay. There are 2 summaries and 1 essay in a sitting.
Between 200 and 300 words. Outside that range costs you on form regardless of quality, so a superb 320-word essay scores worse than an ordinary 280-word one.
Yes. PTE Academic is entirely machine-scored, which shapes what is rewarded: clear structure, explicit connectives, correct grammar and on-topic vocabulary. Rhetorical flourish that a human marker might enjoy earns nothing, and risky sentence constructions cost more than they can gain.
Yes. PTE reports communicative skills across the whole test rather than by section, so the writing tasks contribute to your Reading score as well — Summarize Written Text in particular, since it is scored on whether you correctly identified the source passage's main idea.
Our PTE mock runs both writing tasks on Pearson's published timings and word limits, and flags a response that breaks the form requirement before it costs you the item. The first session is free.
This guide is written from the PTE Academic test format published by Pearson, in our own words. For the official wording, see Pearson's Speaking & Writing format page. MockLive AI is an independent practice tool and is not affiliated with Pearson.