How Summarize Written Text works
You see a passage of up to 300 words, often three or four paragraphs on an academic topic. You have 10 minutes to read it and type a summary in the box below. The summary must be a single sentence between 5 and 75 words. Spell check is switched off, just as it is in the test.
The task sits in Part 1 (Speaking and Writing) of PTE Academic, and it is an integrated task: your response counts toward both your reading and your writing scores. That makes it worth more practice time than its single sentence suggests. For an overview of every writing task, see the PTE writing guide.
What is scored
Pearson scores Summarize Written Text on four factors:
- Content: whether your sentence captures the main idea of the passage and its most important supporting points.
- Form: whether you wrote exactly one sentence within the 5 to 75 word range.
- Grammar: whether that sentence is correctly built. A long sentence joined by commas alone will cost you here.
- Vocabulary: whether your word choices are appropriate and precise.
Treat form as the one rule you never break. A brilliant summary written as two sentences has ignored the task. Since August 2025, some responses are also reviewed by trained human raters alongside the automated scoring, and heavily templated or memorized wording may be flagged, so your sentence needs to be about this passage, not a pre-written frame with a few words swapped in.
How to answer
- Read for structure first. Spend two or three minutes finding the main claim of each paragraph. Opening and closing sentences often carry it, but not always.
- Decide what the whole passage is saying. Ask yourself: if the author could keep only one idea, which would it be? That becomes the main clause of your sentence.
- Pick two or three supporting points. Choose ideas, not examples. "Trees cool streets" is a point; "one park was four degrees cooler" is an example you can leave out.
- Join the points with real connectors. Words such as although, while, because, which and so let you hold several ideas in one grammatical sentence.
- Check before time runs out. One capital letter at the start, one full stop at the end, subject and verb agreement, and spelling of the key terms you borrowed from the passage.
You do not need to use all 75 words. A clear sentence of roughly 30 to 50 words is a common target because it leaves room for the main points without inviting grammar slips.
Common mistakes
- Writing two sentences, or ending one sentence and starting another after a full stop in the middle.
- Summarizing only the first paragraph because it was the easiest to understand.
- Copying one long sentence from the passage. It rarely covers the whole text, and it shows little of your own grammar or vocabulary.
- Stringing clauses together with commas and no linking words, which produces a run-on sentence.
- Filling space with an opening like "The passage discusses the fact that the author explains..." before any real content appears.
- Forgetting the full stop at the end.
Building one sentence that holds together
Imagine a passage arguing that city trees are worth their cost because they cool streets, absorb rainwater and improve residents' health. A strong summary puts the argument in the main clause and folds the reasons in around it:
Although urban trees cost money to plant and maintain, they lower summer temperatures, reduce stormwater runoff and improve residents' health, so planners should treat them as essential infrastructure rather than decoration.
That sentence is 34 words. The although clause handles the counterpoint, the list carries the supporting ideas, and so delivers the conclusion. Try the same shape on the passages in the practice tool above, then compare your version with the sample answer.