PTE Academic · Listening
PTE Listening Multiple Choice, Single Answer
You hear a recording once, then pick the one option it supports — the question always tells you only one is right.
A short recording plays once, up to ninety seconds long, and you get five seconds after the question appears to read it and every option before the audio starts. Here, the question and the options stay on screen the whole time. Exactly one option is correct: choosing it earns a point, and choosing any other option earns nothing. The task counts towards your Listening score only.
How the task works
Read, listen once, choose one
The recording starts by itself once the five seconds are up. Here the question and every option stay on screen for as long as you need them, during the audio and after it.
Read the question and every option
Before the audio starts, read the question first so you know what you're listening for, then skim all the options so you already have a sense of the choice you're being asked to make.
Hold your answer loosely until the speaker's point lands
A talk often opens with a common assumption before turning it around, so the option that matches the opening line isn't always the one that matches the conclusion. The recording plays once, so keep listening past the first idea that sounds right.
Choose one option and commit to it
Only one option is scored, so there's nothing to gain by hedging between two. Pick the one you're most confident matches what the speaker actually settled on, and move to the next question.
How Pearson scores it
One point for the right option, nothing for any other
The whole question is scored as a single unit. Choose the correct option and you earn a point; choose any of the others and the question earns nothing at all.
Correct or incorrect
There's no partial credit for a close option and no separate scoring for the options you didn't choose — the question is worth one point if you picked the option Pearson marks correct, and zero if you picked anything else.
Multiple Choice, Single Answer counts towards your Listening score only. Two or three of these appear in a test, and because only the option you choose is scored, there's no advantage in trying to signal more than one answer.
What usually goes wrong
Where students lose points
Picking the opening idea before the talk turns
Many of these recordings state a common assumption in the first sentence, then spend the rest of the talk correcting it. An option built from that opening line is designed to catch the listener who stopped following before the turn.
Trusting an option that reuses the speaker's own words
A distractor is often built from a fact the speaker really did mention, attached to a claim the speaker didn't make. Judge each option against what the speaker actually argued, not against whether its wording sounds familiar.
Confusing the topic with the point
Several options can all be true statements related to the topic. Only one of them is the point the speaker is making — the others are things the talk touches on along the way, not the conclusion it reaches.
Second-guessing a confident first read
The recording plays once, so there's no second listen to settle a late doubt. Switching your answer without a genuine reason to reconsider is more likely to cost a point than to save one.
Worked example
One talk, four options, one correct — and the two traps built to look right
Here is a recording of the kind you hear in this task: “Most people assume that a city's trees are planted mainly for their looks, and for a long time planners thought so too. But when researchers in Melbourne mapped summer temperatures street by street, they found something more useful. Streets with a full canopy of trees were up to six degrees cooler at midday than bare streets only a few hundred metres away. That difference matters, because heat is now the leading weather-related cause of death in Australian cities. The council's response was not to plant more trees everywhere, which would have been expensive and slow. Instead, it used the temperature map to choose the hottest streets first, especially those near hospitals, schools and housing for older residents. The trees themselves were chosen for shade rather than for flowers. So the lesson is not simply that trees are good. It is that a city gets the most from its trees when it plants them where the heat does the most harm.” The question: “What is the speaker's main point about city trees?” The options: (a) Trees are planted mainly for their looks; (b) The council planted trees on every street; (c) Trees help most where heat does the most harm; (d) Flowering trees cool streets best. Below is what each option scored, and why.
The four options and what they scored
- The correct option Option (c) "Trees help most where heat does the most harm" is the speaker's closing point, stated in so many words as the lesson of the talk. Choosing it is the only choice that earns the point.
- A trap built from the opening line Option (a) "Trees are planted mainly for their looks" is the assumption the speaker names in the first sentence, then spends the whole talk correcting. It reads as an answer only if you stop listening before the turn.
- A trap that reverses the fact Option (b) The speaker says the opposite of "the council planted trees on every street" — planting everywhere was rejected as too slow and too expensive, in favour of targeting the hottest streets first.
- A trap that reuses a real detail Option (d) Flowers are genuinely mentioned in the talk, but only to say the trees were chosen for shade instead of for flowers. The detail is real; the claim built on it isn't.
The speaker's actual point
Streets with a full tree canopy were up to six degrees cooler at midday, so the council mapped the hottest streets and planted there first — the lesson isn't that trees are good, it's that they help most where the heat does the most harm.
Strategy tip: The answer is usually the speaker's conclusion, not the first fact you hear. Listen for the moment the speaker sums up the point — words like "so" and "the lesson is" — rather than settling as soon as one option sounds plausible.
Two of these three wrong options are built from something real in the talk: a stated assumption, and a genuine detail about flowers. Only one option names the point the speaker actually reaches, and it's the one that comes last.
Practising here
See why the option you picked scored — or didn't
The timing matches the exam screen, and the review after you check explains every option, not just the one you chose.
Five seconds, then one play
The countdown runs, the recording plays once, and the question and every option stay on screen throughout. After you check your answer you can replay the recording as often as you like.
Scored the way Pearson does
We score the way Pearson does — one point for the correct option, none for any other — and the review says why the right option is right.
Every option marked in place
After you check, each option shows what it was: the option you chose, and the correct one, even when they're not the same option.
The reasoning behind every option
Each option carries its own explanation — not just whether it was right, but what in the talk makes it right or wrong — so a distractor that reused a real detail doesn't stay a mystery.
One tip, and every attempt kept
You get one strategy tip for this question, plus your score and your earlier attempts on the same recording, so you can tell whether you're still catching the opening line instead of the conclusion.
Common questions
Multiple Choice, Single Answer, answered
How long do I get before the recording starts?
Five seconds. The question and every option are already on screen, so use them to read the question first and then skim the options.
How many times does the recording play?
Once. It runs for 30 to 90 seconds and there is no replay in the exam, so our practice plays it once too — after you check your answer you can listen again as often as you like.
How many options are correct?
Exactly one. Every option list has a single correct option, and the others are built to look plausible without being right.
What happens if I choose the wrong option?
The question earns nothing. There's no partial credit for a close option and no separate penalty beyond simply not earning the point.
Do the question and options stay on screen while the recording plays?
Here, yes. They're there before the audio starts and stay there throughout, so you can follow along as you listen.
Which score does this task count towards?
Listening only.
How many of these are in the test?
Two or three, depending on the test you get.
Try it with one play
Hear a recording once, choose the option the speaker supports, and see why the correct option was correct — and why the others were built to look tempting.