How Retell Lecture works
A short lecture plays, up to 90 seconds long. When it ends you have 10 seconds to prepare and then 40 seconds to retell it. You are not repeating the lecture. You are reporting its main ideas and how they connect, in your own words, in a fraction of the time the speaker took.
Because you have to follow spoken academic content and then explain it, the task feeds both your Listening and Speaking scores.
What is scored
What you say matters as much as how you say it. A strong retelling covers the lecture's topic, its main points and the conclusion or implication the speaker drew. Clear pronunciation and smooth delivery then carry that content. Some responses are now part-scored by human raters as well as AI, so relevance and accuracy count, and generic filler that could fit any lecture will not help you.
The practice tool compares your transcript with the key points of each lecture and shows which ones you mentioned, along with your word count and pace. Lectures are recorded with natural neural voices at a measured lecturing pace, with pauses between paragraphs, so they sound close to a real talk.
Note-taking that fits a 90-second lecture
You cannot write sentences while someone is talking. Write keywords, and only the ones that carry ideas.
- Catch the topic in the first few seconds. Speakers usually announce it early.
- Note each main point on a new line, using two or three words.
- Use symbols for relationships: an arrow for "leads to", a plus for "also", "vs" for a contrast, a question mark for a problem the speaker raises.
- Listen hard at the end. The conclusion or recommendation is often the most important line, and it is easy to miss if you are still writing the previous point.
How to answer
Use the 10 seconds to decide your order, not to rewrite your notes. Then speak in a simple frame: what the lecture was about, the main points in the order you heard them, and how the speaker concluded. For example: "The lecture discussed how cities are adapting to hotter summers. The speaker first explained that paved surfaces trap heat. She then described two responses, planting street trees and using lighter roofing materials. Finally, she concluded that small changes across many buildings can lower local temperatures."
That is around 55 words. Aim for roughly 60 to 90 words, and leave a few seconds at the end so your conclusion is not cut off.
Common mistakes
- Spending the whole answer on the first point because that is where your notes are most detailed.
- Adding your own opinion. The task asks what the speaker said, not what you think.
- Reading notes aloud as a list of disconnected words instead of turning them into sentences.
- Stopping when you reach a point you did not catch. Skip it and move to what you did hear.
- Running out of time before the conclusion.
Retell Lecture has a close relative in the listening section: Summarize Spoken Text asks for the same main-idea listening but in writing. The newer Summarize Group Discussion task uses a similar skill with three speakers.