How Answer Short Question works
You hear a question of 3 to 9 seconds, such as "What instrument do scientists use to look at very small organisms?" Recording starts when the question ends, and you have 10 seconds to answer. There is one important rule: if you are silent for more than 3 seconds, the recording stops. You cannot sit and think, then answer at the end.
Pearson lists this task under the Listening skill. What earns credit is understanding the question and giving a right answer, not producing a long or elegant response.
What is scored
The focus is on whether your answer is correct and appropriate. A one-word answer such as "microscope" is complete. Speak clearly enough that the word is recognizable, but you do not need to build a full sentence around it.
On this page, the practice tool listens to your answer through the browser's speech recognition (in Chrome, Edge and Safari) and checks whether one of the accepted answers appears in what it heard. If it marks a correct answer as wrong, replay your recording: speech recognition sometimes mishears single words said without context.
How to answer
- Listen for the question word. "Who" wants a person or job, "where" a place, "how many" a number, "what do we call" a single term.
- Answer within a second or two. The 3-second silence rule means hesitation can end your chance.
- Give one answer. Saying "a telescope, no, a microscope" makes it unclear which you mean.
- Keep it short. "It is a microscope" is fine. A long explanation adds nothing and risks errors.
- Guess if you are unsure. A reasonable guess can be right. Silence cannot.
The vocabulary these questions draw on
Questions test general knowledge and everyday academic vocabulary rather than specialist facts. Useful areas to review include:
- Science and nature: body parts, planets, animals, weather, basic lab equipment.
- Shapes, numbers and time: sides of a polygon, days in a leap year, decades and centuries.
- Jobs and places: who designs buildings, where you borrow books, who treats teeth.
- Study and campus life: syllabus, thesis, semester, bibliography, lecture.
- Common opposites and categories: the opposite of "ancient", a word for a group of stars.
Short daily sets build speed quickly. Because these questions are quick, they also make a good warm-up before longer speaking practice.
Common mistakes
- Pausing to think for more than 3 seconds, which stops the recording.
- Mishearing one key word, for example "north" for "month", and answering a different question.
- Giving two possible answers instead of choosing one.
- Knowing the idea but not the word, then describing it at length instead of naming it. If the word will not come, say the closest word you know.