The New PTE Format Since 7 August 2025: Summarize Group Discussion & Respond to a Situation, Decoded

If your PTE prep material was made in 2024, it has no answer for two of the task types you will actually see on the day. On 7 August 2025 Pearson added two brand-new speaking questions to every PTE Academic and PTE Academic UKVI test: Summarize Group Discussion and Respond to a Situation (Pearson PTE Updates 2025). They are not a footnote. Both live in the Speaking and Writing section, and if you have never rehearsed them, you are improvising a chunk of your exam live.

I scored 82 on my first attempt with one week of prep, and the single biggest edge was practising the exact tasks on the current test instead of an old version of it. This is what the two new tasks are, how they are timed, and how to actually answer them, checked against Pearson's own pages so you are not trusting a coaching centre's guess.

Why this matters

If your prep is pre-August-2025, you are walking into two questions blind, and both count toward your Speaking and Listening scores. There is no partial credit for "I didn't know that task existed".

The second reason is bigger and quieter. Content on seven of the 22 task types, including both new speaking tasks, is now double-marked by a human as well as the AI (Pearson: PTE Changes 2025). That single change breaks the old cheat code. The rigid, word-for-word template that used to farm marks off a pure algorithm now gets read by a person who is looking for original, relevant content. If your score is tight for your visa points, a resit in Australia costs you several hundred dollars and weeks you may not have. Getting these two tasks right the first time is worth the hour it takes to learn them. (If you are new to how PTE feeds your PR points, start with how PTE scores map to your PR points.)

Who this is for

This is for you if:

• Your PTE is booked and your practice material or coaching notes predate August 2025.
• You are on a 485 or student visa and need a specific score band for points, so a resit hurts.
• You have relied on memorised templates before and want to know if they still work.
• You want the technique for the two new tasks, not a vague "practice more".

What are the two new PTE speaking tasks?

There are two, both in the Speaking and Writing section, and both were added on the same date. In Pearson's words: "Every PTE Academic and PTE Academic UKVI test now features two new question types in the Speaking & Writing section: 1. Summarize Group Discussion 2. Respond to a Situation" (Pearson PTE Updates 2025).

Summarize Group Discussion plays you an audio conversation between three people and asks you to summarise the whole thing in your own words. Respond to a Situation gives you a short real-life scenario, on campus or in daily life, and asks you to speak your response as if you were actually in it. Both are partial-credit tasks scored on content, oral fluency, and pronunciation (Pearson official task guide).

When did the new PTE format start?

7 August 2025. Pearson states the updates "apply to any test taken after 7 August 2025" (Pearson PTE Updates 2025). If you sat PTE before that date, you never saw these tasks. If you sit it now, you will. Any study guide, YouTube playlist, or coaching pack that does not mention both tasks by name is out of date, full stop.

How do you answer Summarize Group Discussion?

You listen to a discussion between three people, up to about 3 minutes long, then you get 10 seconds to prepare and 2 minutes to respond (Pearson PTE Updates 2025; prep window per the Pearson official task guide). You hear the audio once. That is the whole game: you cannot re-listen, so your notes are your memory.

The method that works is a note grid you draw before the audio even starts. Write four labels down the page with space under each: Topic, Speaker 1, Speaker 2, Speaker 3. As you listen, drop keywords, not sentences, under whoever is talking. You physically cannot write full sentences fast enough, and you should not try. The speakers will jump around and interrupt each other, so keep tracking who is who and add to the right row (Pearson official task guide).

The trick to a high content score is that you are not just listing facts. You have to capture what each speaker says, thinks, and feels, and then show how their ideas connect, using linking words like "however", "on the other hand", and "as a result" (Pearson official task guide).

Here is a worked mini-example. Say the three speakers are students discussing time management at university. Your grid might end up looking like this:

• Topic: time management at uni
• S1: heavy workload, no routine, wants balance not just study
• S2: too many lectures and deadlines, procrastinates, less discipline than high school
• S3: agrees, feels stressed, says long-term planning is the fix but hard, suggests a time-management seminar

Then, instead of reading the grid out flat, you connect the perspectives: "The second speaker agreed with the first that the workload is overwhelming, but pointed to procrastination as the real cause, and the third speaker built on that by arguing long-term planning is the fix, though a hard one". That one sentence, three speakers, one visible relationship, is what separates a summary from a list.

What is the timing for Respond to a Situation and how do you structure it?

You read and hear a scenario of up to 60 words, get 10 seconds to prepare, then have 40 seconds to speak your response (Pearson PTE Updates 2025; prep window per the Pearson official task guide). Forty seconds is short, so you cannot waffle.

The structure comes straight out of the prompt, because the prompt always tells you three things: the situation (what is happening), the person (who you are talking to), and the goal (what you need to achieve) (Pearson official task guide). Pull those three out in your 10 seconds and you have your answer's skeleton.

Take Pearson's own example: you are struggling to organise your ideas for an essay, and you approach your professor after class to ask to meet in her office. Situation: essay ideas won't organise. Person: your professor, so the tone is polite and a bit formal. Goal: get a meeting in her office. A strong response speaks in the first person, opens politely, states the request early, explains the problem, and repeats the request at the end: "Excuse me, professor, could I book some time in your office to talk about the essay? I'm really struggling to organise my ideas. Would tomorrow morning work?" (Pearson official task guide).

One trap kills the content score: drifting off the prompt. If it says her office, do not say the library. Every detail you add has to stay consistent with the scenario (Pearson official task guide).

Can you still use templates for the new tasks?

Not the rigid, memorised kind, and this is the part most people get wrong. For Summarize Group Discussion, Pearson is explicit that your response must be original: "no memorized templates or anything pre-prepared" (Pearson official task guide). Respond to a Situation says the same, that your answer must be original and relevant, using your own ideas and language, not a memorised response (Pearson official task guide).

The distinction that matters: a flexible frame is fine, a fixed script is not. "Draw a four-row grid, capture each speaker, connect two of them" is a frame, and it works. "The three speakers discussed a topic. The first speaker said X. In conclusion..." recited identically every time is a template, and under human marking it reads as exactly what it is, which drags your content score down. Learn the shape, fill it live with what you actually heard.

How does human plus AI double-marking change your prep?

Before August 2025 you could, to a point, game a pure algorithm. Now content on seven of the 22 task types is scored by a human as well as the AI, and those seven are Describe Image, Retell Lecture, Summarize Written Text, Write Essay, Summarize Spoken Text, Summarize Group Discussion, and Respond to a Situation (Pearson: PTE Changes 2025). Both new speaking tasks are on that list. So is most of the writing section.

What this changes in practice: stop optimising for tricks and start optimising for genuinely covering the content. On Summarize Group Discussion that means actually representing all three speakers, because missing or misrepresenting one is the classic content-killer (Pearson official task guide). On Respond to a Situation it means clearly hitting the goal in the prompt. A human notices when you have covered the substance and when you have padded. Prep like a person is reading it, because on these seven tasks, one is. (For the full picture of what the AI and human are each measuring, see how PTE's AI actually scores you.)

What you can do about it

You can close the gap on both tasks today, no purchase needed.

1. Confirm your prep material is post-August-2025Open your study guide or playlist and search for "Summarize Group Discussion" and "Respond to a Situation". If both names are missing, your material is stale and you are practising an old test.
2. Drill the Summarize Group Discussion gridPlay any 3-person discussion clip. Draw the Topic / Speaker 1 / Speaker 2 / Speaker 3 grid before it starts, take keyword notes, then speak for 2 minutes connecting at least two speakers' views. Do it three times.
3. Practise the situation/person/goal splitTake any short scenario, spend 10 seconds pulling out the situation, the person, and the goal, then answer in 40 seconds in the first person. Record it and check you hit the goal and stayed on-prompt.

Clearing PTE with a strong score is step one toward your points, but the score only makes you eligible. The resume and LinkedIn that actually get you hired in the Australian market are a separate fight, and one I have run myself. If you want that mapped out after your test, that is what my Get Hired sessions are for.

Sources and further reading

📋 Pearson PTE Updates 2025: confirms the 7 August 2025 effective date, both new task names, the up-to-3-minute discussion and 2-minute response for Summarize Group Discussion, and the 60-word scenario and 40-second response for Respond to a Situation.

📊 Pearson: PTE Changes 2025, Everything You Need to Know: confirms both new speaking tasks and that human-plus-AI double marking now covers seven of the 22 PTE Academic question types, and lists which seven.

🎯 Pearson official task guide, Summarize Group Discussion and Respond to a Situation: Pearson's own walkthroughs, source for the 10-second prep windows, the note-grid method, the situation/person/goal breakdown, and the "no memorised templates" rule.

I am not affiliated with or endorsed by Pearson, and I am not a registered migration agent. This is a study plan based on my own PTE experience and Pearson's published task descriptions, not immigration advice. Task formats and scoring change, so always confirm the current details on pearsonpte.com before booking your test.