How to Score 65+ and 79+ in PTE Academic

A score of 65+ in PTE Academic is equivalent to approximately 6.5 in IELTS and is one of the most commonly required score levels worldwide. For immigration purposes, many countries set 65 as a threshold for skilled migration visas. For example, certain Australian visa subclasses require a minimum of 65 in each communicative skill to claim competent English points. Similarly, many universities require 65+ for admission to undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Achieving 65+ requires solid English skills but does not demand perfection. At this level, you need consistent performance across all four communicative skills, with no significant weaknesses in any area. You should be able to communicate clearly and effectively in English, understand academic content with reasonable accuracy, and produce written text with generally correct grammar and spelling. Most test takers with upper-intermediate English proficiency (B2 level on the CEFR scale) can achieve 65+ with focused preparation. The key insight for targeting 65+ is that you do not need to excel at every question type. Instead, you need to perform adequately across all types while performing well on the highest-impact items. This means you can afford some mistakes on lower-scoring question types as long as you deliver strong results on Write from Dictation, Read Aloud, Repeat Sentence, and Summarize Spoken Text. Strategic preparation that focuses on these high-impact items is the most efficient path to 65+.

A score of 79+ is equivalent to approximately 8.0 in IELTS and represents a significantly higher bar. This score level is required for higher immigration point claims in countries like Australia, where scoring 79+ in all four skills earns the maximum English language points. Some competitive university programs, particularly at the graduate level, also require 79+ for admission. Professional registration bodies in fields such as nursing, medicine, and engineering may also require this score level. Achieving 79+ demands near-excellent English skills and very consistent performance across all communicative skills. At this level, you cannot afford significant weaknesses in any area. Your speaking must be fluent with clear pronunciation, your writing must be well-organized with minimal errors, your reading comprehension must be strong, and your listening skills must be sharp. This typically corresponds to an advanced English proficiency level (C1 on the CEFR scale). The critical difference between targeting 65+ and 79+ is the margin for error. At 65+, you have room for some mistakes and weak areas. At 79+, every point counts and mistakes on any question type can prevent you from reaching your target. This means your preparation for 79+ must be more comprehensive and more intensive, covering all question types thoroughly rather than focusing primarily on high-impact items. You also need multiple mock tests under realistic conditions to build consistency, as achieving 79+ in practice once is not enough; you need to achieve it consistently.

For Speaking, your primary focus should be on Read Aloud and Repeat Sentence, which together contribute the most to your Speaking score and also affect Reading and Listening scores respectively. For Read Aloud at the 65+ level, focus on speaking clearly at a moderate pace with natural-sounding stress and intonation. You do not need perfect pronunciation of every word, but you do need fluent delivery without long pauses or false starts. Practice reading academic text aloud daily, recording yourself and focusing on smooth delivery. For Repeat Sentence, aim to reproduce at least 50 percent of each sentence accurately. Use chunking techniques to remember phrases rather than individual words, and maintain natural fluency even when you cannot remember every word. If you miss a word, substitute it with a reasonable alternative rather than pausing or stopping. Fluency scores reward continuous speech even if the content is not perfectly accurate. For Writing, master a Summarize Written Text template that reliably produces grammatically correct single-sentence summaries within the word limit. For Essay Writing, use a structured template with clear paragraphing and focus on presenting relevant ideas with correct grammar rather than attempting sophisticated arguments. At the 65+ level, a well-organized essay with simple but correct language scores better than an ambitious essay with grammatical errors. Our guide on PTE essay writing provides detailed templates and strategies.

For Reading, the most impactful question type is Reading and Writing Fill in the Blanks, which contributes to both Reading and Writing scores. Focus on understanding how grammar and vocabulary clues help you identify the correct words. Practice collocations (words that commonly appear together) and learn to use the context of the sentence to narrow down your options. Re-order Paragraphs is another important task; learn to identify topic sentences, reference words (this, that, these, those, such), and logical connectors that indicate the correct order. For Listening, Write from Dictation is by far the most important question type for reaching 65+. Each correctly spelled word earns a point that contributes to both Listening and Writing scores. Aim to write at least 80 percent of the words correctly in each WFD sentence. Practice with commonly tested sentences on platforms like GoPTE, where you can build familiarity with recurring sentence patterns and vocabulary. Summarize Spoken Text is the other high-impact Listening task. Use a template approach to ensure your responses consistently meet the Form, Grammar, and Spelling criteria. Even if your Content score is imperfect, earning full marks on the other criteria through good template usage and careful proofreading can still give you a strong SST score. For more detailed SST strategies, refer to our guide on PTE Summarize Spoken Text.

At the 79+ level, your Speaking performance must demonstrate fluent, clear, and natural English. For Read Aloud, you need smooth delivery with appropriate pausing at clause boundaries, natural word stress, accurate pronunciation of academic vocabulary, and expressive intonation that reflects the meaning of the text. Practice with a wide variety of academic texts covering different subjects to ensure you can handle unfamiliar vocabulary without losing fluency. For Repeat Sentence, aim to reproduce 80 percent or more of each sentence accurately. At this level, word-for-word accuracy is important because the scoring algorithm evaluates the sequence and content of your response closely. Practice with longer, more complex sentences that include academic vocabulary and complex grammatical structures. Develop your auditory memory through daily practice with increasing sentence lengths. For Describe Image, your responses should cover all key features of the image with specific data references, use a clear organizational structure, and fill the 40-second response time with relevant content. For Re-tell Lecture, you need to capture the main ideas and key supporting details accurately, demonstrating both strong listening comprehension and fluent speech production. At the 79+ level, vague or generic responses are not sufficient; you need to show specific understanding of the content.

Writing at the 79+ level demands precision in grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and organization. For Summarize Written Text, your single-sentence summary must be grammatically impeccable, capture the main idea comprehensively, and demonstrate sophisticated vocabulary usage. Practice writing complex sentences with multiple clauses that remain grammatically correct. Every spelling error or grammatical mistake costs valuable points that are difficult to recover at this score level. For Essay Writing, your essays should demonstrate clear thesis statements, well-developed body paragraphs with specific examples and explanations, effective use of transition words and phrases, a range of sentence structures (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex), and accurate grammar throughout. At the 79+ level, you should aim for essays that would earn high scores on every criterion: Content, Development, Organization, Grammar, Vocabulary, Spelling, and Linguistic Range. Pay special attention to enabling skills that affect your Writing score across multiple question types. Grammar accuracy must be consistently high, which means reviewing and internalizing the most commonly tested grammar rules. Spelling accuracy is also critical; create a personal list of words you tend to misspell and review it daily. Vocabulary usage should demonstrate range and precision, using academic words correctly and avoiding repetition.

For Reading at the 79+ level, you need to answer Fill in the Blanks questions with very high accuracy, which requires strong vocabulary knowledge and an intuitive understanding of collocations and grammar patterns. Build your vocabulary systematically by studying academic word lists and practicing with extensive reading of academic texts. For Re-order Paragraphs, develop advanced skills in identifying logical relationships between ideas, including cause-effect, chronological, and comparative relationships. Multiple Choice Reading questions at the 79+ level require not just identifying correct answers but understanding why other options are incorrect. Practice analyzing each answer option against the passage text, looking for subtle differences in meaning, scope, and emphasis. Avoid selecting options that are only partially correct or that go beyond what the passage actually states. For Listening at the 79+ level, Write from Dictation accuracy should be 90 percent or higher. This means writing virtually every word correctly in each sentence. Build an extensive practice bank and review sentences you have previously gotten wrong. For Highlight Incorrect Words, develop your ability to follow along with a transcript at speaking speed with near-perfect accuracy. For all Listening question types, practice with a variety of accents and speaking speeds to ensure you are prepared for any speaker you might encounter on exam day. The difference between 65+ and 79+ often comes down to the smaller question types. While Fill in the Blanks, Multiple Choice, and Highlight questions may not carry as much individual weight, their cumulative contribution can easily account for the 14-point difference between these two targets. Consistent accuracy on these supplementary question types, combined with strong performance on the high-impact items, is what pushes your score into the 79+ territory.

The most common mistake among test takers targeting 65+ is neglecting Write from Dictation practice. Because WFD appears at the very end of the exam and seems deceptively simple (just write what you hear), many students do not practice it enough. However, WFD is the single most impactful question type for your overall score, and underperformance on WFD is one of the top reasons test takers miss the 65+ threshold. Another frequent mistake is poor time management on essay writing. Some test takers spend too long planning their essay and run out of time before writing a complete conclusion, while others write too quickly without proofreading and submit responses full of preventable errors. Practice writing complete essays within 20 minutes, including 2 minutes for planning and 2 minutes for proofreading, to develop a reliable pace. A third common mistake is inconsistency in Speaking fluency. Test takers may perform well when they feel confident about the content but fall apart when they encounter unfamiliar topics. For Describe Image and Re-tell Lecture, it is essential to have template structures that allow you to speak fluently regardless of the topic. Your templates should be so well-practiced that you can deliver them automatically while focusing your mental energy on inserting the correct content.

Test takers targeting 79+ often make the mistake of focusing exclusively on their weakest areas while allowing their strengths to deteriorate from lack of practice. At the 79+ level, you need consistently high performance everywhere, so your study plan must maintain all skills while improving weak areas. Allocate at least 30 percent of your study time to maintaining strong areas and 70 percent to improving weak areas. Another critical mistake at the 79+ level is careless errors caused by overconfidence. Test takers who are skilled enough to target 79+ sometimes rush through questions they consider easy, making spelling mistakes, misreading instructions, or selecting wrong answers due to insufficient attention. At this level, every point matters, and careless errors can be the difference between achieving your target and falling short. Develop a habit of double-checking every response before moving on. A third mistake is inadequate practice with less common question types like Re-order Paragraphs, Select Missing Word, and Highlight Correct Summary. These question types may not carry the most individual weight, but their cumulative contribution matters significantly at the 79+ level. Test takers who focus only on the big four (Read Aloud, Repeat Sentence, WFD, SST) may hit a scoring ceiling in the low to mid 70s. Breaking through to 79+ requires strong performance on these secondary question types as well. For a comprehensive overview of all PTE question types and their scoring impact, review our guide on the PTE scoring system.

A 65+ study plan should allocate approximately 50 percent of study time to the four high-impact question types (Read Aloud, Repeat Sentence, Write from Dictation, and Summarize Spoken Text), 30 percent to other question types, and 20 percent to enabling skills (grammar, vocabulary, spelling). Daily study should include at least 2 hours of focused practice, with a full-length mock test every 7 to 10 days to track progress. The ideal weekly structure for a 65+ plan includes daily WFD practice (10 to 15 sentences), daily Read Aloud practice (5 to 8 passages), Repeat Sentence practice 4 to 5 times per week (10 to 15 sentences per session), SST practice 3 times per week (2 to 3 responses per session), essay writing practice twice per week, and rotating practice on other question types. This structure ensures the highest-impact items receive the most attention while still building competence across the full exam. As your mock test scores approach 65, shift your focus to consistency and error prevention rather than skill building. The final week before your exam should emphasize maintenance practice and confidence building rather than learning new material. For a detailed day-by-day plan, refer to our 30-day PTE study plan guide, which provides a structured framework that can be adapted to the 65+ target.

A 79+ study plan must be more balanced in its time allocation: approximately 35 percent to high-impact question types, 40 percent to all other question types, and 25 percent to enabling skills and error correction. Daily study should include 3 to 4 hours of focused practice, with full-length mock tests every 5 to 7 days. At this level, mock test frequency is higher because consistency of performance is as important as peak performance. The weekly structure for a 79+ plan includes daily WFD practice (15 to 20 sentences with emphasis on 100 percent accuracy), daily Read Aloud and Repeat Sentence practice with self-recording and review, daily Reading practice focusing on Fill in the Blanks accuracy, SST and essay writing practice every other day, and daily focused practice on one rotating secondary question type. This comprehensive approach ensures no question type is neglected. For 79+ candidates, analysis of practice errors is critically important. Keep a detailed error log that categorizes every mistake by type (comprehension, carelessness, knowledge gap, time pressure). Review this log weekly and adjust your study focus to address the most frequent error types. At the 79+ level, eliminating mistakes is often more effective than building new skills. Your enabling skill scores (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, oral fluency, written discourse) should all be 75 or above; if any are below this threshold, prioritize improvement in that specific area.