You can expect around 6-7 texts for this section. Each text will usually be a single paragraph between 50-65 words.
How you are scored
Oral fluency: 5 Native-like 4 Advanced 3 Good 2 Intermediate 1 Limited, 0 Disfluent
1. Blue
While blue is one of the most popular colors, it is
one of the least appetizing. Food researchers say that when humans searched for
food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue,
black or purple. When food dyed blue is served to study subjects, they lose
appetite.
2. Carbon Emission
When countries assess their annual carbon emissions,
they count up their cars and power stations, but Bush fires are not included –
presumably because they are deemed to be events beyond human control. In
Australia, Victoria alone sees several hundred thousand hectares burn each
year; in both 2004 and more recently, the figure has been over one million
hectares.
3. Tesla and Edison
Tesla's theoretical work formed the basis of modern
alternating current electric power systems. Thomas Edison promised him almost
one million dollars in today's money to undertake motor and generator
improvement. However, when Tesla, the ethical Serb, asked about the money,
Edison’s reportedly reply was "Tesla, you don't understand our American
humor." The pair became arch-rivals.
4. Productive Capacity
The core of the problem was the immense disparity
between the country's productive capacity and the ability of people to consume.
Great innovations in productive techniques during and after the war raised the
output of industry beyond the purchasing capacity of U.S. farmers and wage
earners.
5. Father
Every morning, no matter how late he had been up, my
father rose at five-thirty, went to his study, wrote for a couple of hours,
made us all breakfast, read the paper with my mother, and then went back to
work for the rest of the morning. Many years passed before I realized that he
did this for a living.
6. Himalayas
Although it hails from a remote region of the
western Himalayas, this plant now looks entirely at home on the banks of
English rivers, and colonized river banks and damp woodlands. In the Himalayas
the plant is held in check by various pests, but take these away and it grows
and reproduces unhindered. Now it is spreading across Europe, New Zealand,
Canada and the US.
7. Pluto
Pluto lost its official status when the
International Astronomical Union downsized the solar system from nine to eight
planets. Although there had been passionate debate at the General Assembly
Meeting in Prague about the definition of a planet, and whether Pluto met the
specifications, the audience greeted the decision to exclude it with applause.
8.Fiscal Year
At the beginning of each fiscal year funds are
allocated to each State account in accordance with the University's financial
plan. Funds are allocated to each account by object of expenditure. Account
managers are responsible for ensuring that adequate funds are available in the
appropriate object before initiating transactions to use the funds.
9. Lincoln
Lincoln's apparently radical change of mind about
his war powers to emancipate slaves was caused by the escalating scope of the
war, which convinced him that any measure to weaken the Confederacy and
strengthen the Union war effort was justifiable as a military necessity.
10. Shakespeare
A young man from a small provincial town, a man
without independent wealth, without powerful family connections and without a
university education, moves to London in the fifteen eighties, and becomes a
remarkable playwright of all time. How is an achievement of magnitude made? How
does Shakespeare become Shakespeare?
11. Domestication
Domestication is an evolutionary, rather than a
political development. They were more likely to survive and prosper in an
alliance with humans than on their own. Humans provided the animals with food
and protection, in exchange for which the animals provided the humans their
milk and eggs and, yes, their flesh
12. Akimbo
Akimbo, this must be one of the odder-looking words
in the language and puzzles us in part because it doesn't seem to have any
relatives. What's more, it is now virtually a fossil word, until recently
almost invariably found in arms akimbo, a posture in which a person stands with
hands on hips and elbows sharply bent outward, one signalling impatience or
hostility.
13. Yellow
Yellow is considered as the most optimistic color,
yet surprisingly, people lose their tempers most often in yellow rooms and
babies will cry more. The reason may be that yellow is the hardest color for
eyes to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused.
14. Elephant
The elephant is the largest living land mammal.
During evolution, its skeleton has greatly altered from the usual mammal,
designed for two main reasons. One is to cope with the great weight of huge
grinding cheek teeth and elongated tusk, making the skull particularly massive.
The other is to support the enormous bulk of such a
huge body.
15. Avi Loeb
The situation is similar to a pregnant woman that
has twin babies in her belly, says Avi Loeb of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics. He's proposing the idea in a paper that's been accepted for
publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
16. Yellow Tulip
How do we imagine the unimaginable? If we're asked
to think of an object - say, a yellow tulip – a picture immediately forms in
our mind's eye. But what if we try to imagine a concept such as the square root
of negative number?
17. Grand Canyon
Few things in the world produce such amazement as
one's first glimpse of the Grand Canyon; it took around more than 2 billion
years to create this vast wonder in some places. 17 miles wide, largely through
the relentless force of the Colorado River, which runs 277 miles along its
length and a mile beneath its towering rims.
18. English Revolution
There are three main interpretations of the English
Revolution. The longest lasting interpretation was that the Revolution was the
almost inevitable outcome of an age-old power struggle between parliament and
crown. The second sees it as a class struggle, and a lead-up to the French and
other revolutions. Finally, the third interpretation sees the other two as too
fixed, not allowing for unpredictability, and that the outcome could have gone
either way.
19. Quotes
Many papers you write in college will require you to
include quotes from one or more sources. Even if you don't have to do it,
integrating a few quotes into your writing can add life and persuasiveness to
your arguments. The key is to use quotes to support a point you're trying to
make rather than just include them to fill space.
20. Global Warming
Global warming is defined as an increase in the
average temperature of the earth's atmosphere. This trend began in the middle
of the 20th century and is one of the major environmental concerns of
scientists and governmental officials worldwide. The changes in temperature
result mostly from the effect of increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses
in the atmosphere.
21. Marine Biologist
The speaker is a marine biologist who became
interested in the Strandlopers, an ancient people who lived on the coastline,
because of their connection to the sea. Their way of life intrigued him. As a
child he had spent a lot of time by the sea, exploring and collecting things –
so he began to study them, and discovered some interesting information about
their way of life, how they hunted, what tools they used, and so on.
22. Company-Oriented Reforms
The climate for doing business improved in Egypt
more than in any other country last year, according to a global study that
revealed a wave of company-oriented reforms across the Middle East. The World
Bank rankings, which look at business regulations, also showed that the pace of
business reforms in Eastern Europe was overtaking East Asia.
23.Furniture
There are perhaps three ways of looking at
furniture: some people see it as purely functional and useful, and don't bother
themselves with aesthetics; others see it as essential to civilized living and
concern themselves with design and how the furniture will look in a room. In
other words, function combined with aesthetics; and yet others see furniture as
a form of art.
24. Modern buildings
Modern buildings have to achieve certain performance
requirements, at least to satisfy those of building codes, to provide a safe,
healthy, and comfortable environment. However, these conditioned environments
demand resources in energy and materials, which are both limited in supply, to
build and operate.
25. Historian
As a historian, if you really want to understand the
sensibilities of those who lived in the past, you must be like a novelist and
get into the skins of your characters and think and feel as they do. You are
asked to imagine what it's like to be a peasant in medieval times, asking the
sort of questions a peasant might ask. What the writer is saying is that a
historian needs imaginative sympathy with ordinary people in the past.
26.Energy and Pollution
Humans need to use energy in order to exist. So it
is unsurprising that the way people have been producing energy is largely
responsible for current environmental problems. Pollution comes in many forms,
but those that are most concerning, because of their impact on health, result
from the combustion of fuels in power stations and cars.
27. The Border
The border itself between Mexico and United States
is fraught with a mix of urban and desert terrain and spans over one thousand
nine hundred miles. Both the uninhabited areas of the border and urban areas
are where the most drug trafficking and illegal crossings take place. Crime is
prevalent in urban cities like El Paso, Texas and San Diego, California.
28. Long-Distance Fliers
Researchers think that long-distance fliers such as
the American golden-plover and the white-rumped sandpiper picked up the spores
while lining their nests. Then when the birds arrive in new places they molt,
leaving behind the feathers and their precious cargo-to start growing again at
the other end of the world.
29. University
A university is a lot more than just classes and
exams. University is a concept that offers you a host of possibilities to
develop both academically and personally. Find out about the different
projects, clubs and societies that are in your university. You will definitely
find something you are interested in.
30. Moods
Moods may also have an effect on how information is
processed, by influencing the extent to which judges rely on pre-existing,
internal information, or focus on new, external information. Positive moods
promote more holistic and top-down processing style, while negative moods
recruit more stimulus-driven and bottom-up processing.
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Most repeated PTE exam questions for speaking, writing, reading and listening. Free online exam practice, real exam 79+ answers.
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