A four-week PTE study plan, day by day

It is day twenty. You have done fourteen Read Alouds and no essays, because Read Aloud feels friendly and essays do not. That is what happens when practice follows your mood instead of a plan, and this plan is meant to stop it: find your baseline, work on producing language, work on taking it in, then test and tidy up.

Be realistic about what four weeks can do. It is long enough to learn every task, fix some habits and get used to the clock. It is not long enough to lift your English by a whole level, so the plan suits you best when your English is already close to the score you need.

The shape of the month

Plan on about 90 minutes a day, six days a week, with one full rest day. A mock day runs longer than 90 minutes and replaces that day's practice.

• Week 1, formats and baseline. On days 1 to 4, learn how each task works: what appears on screen, how the timer behaves, what a complete answer looks like. Timings and task counts can change, so read the on-screen instructions and Pearson's current test guide. On day 5 take a full mock as your baseline, and on day 6 go through it and start an error log. Treat the number as a starting point, not a verdict; what a practice score can and cannot tell you explains why.
• Week 2, speaking and writing. These are the tasks where you produce language, so they need the most repetition. Record every spoken answer.
• Week 3, reading and listening. Here you take language in and respond: blanks, re-ordering, multiple choice, dictation, summaries of what you hear.
• Week 4, mocks and review. Two mocks about four days apart, each followed by a review day. The days between go on the errors those mocks showed you, not on new material. Whenever your real test falls, keep its last two days for light review only: the error log, your equipment and an early night.

One week in detail

This is week 2. Weeks 3 and 4 follow the same skeleton with different tasks in the middle.

• Day 1: redo the weak items from last week's mock (30 minutes). Read Aloud and Repeat Sentence, recorded (35). One Summarize Written Text (25).
• Day 2: Describe Image, six pictures, recorded, two played back (45). Essay plans for three topics, outline only (30). Error log (15).
• Day 3: Respond to a Situation and Summarize Group Discussion, three attempts each (50). Ten new sentences on one grammar error from your log (25). Error log (15).
• Day 4: one full essay, timed, then checked line by line (50). Five short Read Aloud passages, recorded (30). Error log (10).
• Day 5: the weekly mock, about two hours. Afterwards, ten minutes on the skill breakdown: write down three things you notice. Nothing else today.
• Day 6: review day. Go through the weakest skill task by task and log every error (70). Then the vocabulary routine (20).
• Day 7: rest. No "just one Read Aloud".

The list does not name every task. Rotate the others, such as Re-tell Lecture and Answer Short Question, through the same slots, and check Pearson's current test guide for what your sitting contains.

When one skill lags

After each mock, compare the skill scores. One low skill on one mock may be bad luck; the same skill low on two mocks in a row is a signal. When you see it, move about 30 minutes a day from your strongest skill to the weakest, and keep a short daily touch on the strong one so it does not slip. In week 2, for example, if Speaking is strong and Listening trails, trim day 2's Describe Image block from 45 minutes to 15 and spend the 30 you saved on dictation.

Change one thing at a time. If you rearrange everything at once, you will not know what helped.

If the weak spot is an enabling skill such as Oral Fluency or Spelling, a long block is the wrong tool. Add a ten-minute daily drill instead: shadowing a recording for fluency, or one dictation passage with every word checked for spelling.

Mock day and rest day

Run the weekly mock the same way each time: same day, same hour, headset on, no pausing. Using mock tests well covers the set-up and the review. After the rest day, begin day 1 by redoing the mock's weak items. Looking at them cold is the point.

Treat the rest day as part of the plan, not a reward for finishing it. Tired practice teaches careless habits.

Tonight

Choose a start date and write all 28 days into a calendar. Then spend your first 90 minutes reading how each task works and trying one of each at your own pace. Save the baseline mock for day 5: the practice tests on this site give AI-estimated scores and feedback you can use as your starting point.