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PTE Trainer

Listening

Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers

Listen to a recording once and select every option it supports. Wrong selections subtract marks.

Score
Audio plays once
Scored on
Content
Contributes to
Listening

Sample item

You will hear a short lecture. Which TWO points does the speaker make? Wrong selections subtract marks. The recording plays once.

Transcript: Urban tree planting is often justified by carbon capture, but the more immediate benefit is temperature. A mature canopy can cut street-level heat substantially on a summer afternoon. The carbon figures, by contrast, take decades to become significant, and species choice matters far more than the number of trees planted.
  1. Cooling is a more immediate benefit than carbon capture
  2. Carbon capture from urban trees is negligible
  3. Which species are planted matters more than how many
  4. Urban tree planting programmes are usually too small

Cooling is a more immediate benefit than carbon capture; which species are planted matters more than how many

The speaker says carbon takes decades to matter, not that it is negligible — an overstatement of something actually said is the standard distractor here. The fourth option is never mentioned. With one playthrough and negative marking, select only what you heard stated.

How to approach Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers

  1. Read every option before playback

    Use the seconds before the audio starts to read the question and all the options. This is your only preparation window, and it converts the task from discovering what the recording says into confirming which of these specific claims it makes.

  2. Judge options as you listen

    The recording plays once. Mark each option as confirmed or rejected the moment the audio settles it, rather than storing an impression to sort out afterwards. A judgement postponed during playback is usually a judgement you can no longer make.

  3. Note the speaker's qualifiers

    Listen for hedges and reversals: what the speaker says is only sometimes true, or attributes to someone else, or later corrects. Distractors are commonly built from statements that were made in the recording but not in the form the option gives them.

  4. Select what you actually heard

    Tick only the options you confirmed while listening, not the ones the topic makes likely. Wrong selections subtract from your correct ones, so two confirmed answers stand better than four where half were reconstructed from memory after the audio finished.

The method

Read every option during the few seconds before the audio starts — this is the one preparation window you get, and it converts listening into confirmation rather than discovery. While the recording plays, mark options as confirmed or rejected in real time; there is no replay, so a decision deferred is a decision lost. Select only what you actually heard stated, not what the topic makes likely.

The mistake that costs most

Waiting for the recording to finish before deciding. The audio plays once, and reconstructing it from memory across several options is where most of the negative marking is earned.

Other Listening tasks

Frequently asked questions

No. Every Listening recording plays exactly once, which is why note-taking during playback matters more than replaying anything in your head afterwards.

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