Dictation Words for PTE: Tips, Tricks, and Practice Samples

Write From Dictation, or WFD, is an important task in PTE Academic, UKVI, and Core tests, as this contributes marks to both Listening and Writing. Here, you will hear an audio file just once, and you need to listen to it carefully and write it down as accurately as possible, without making any spelling mistakes. Although the words might sound very simple, it can be tricky sometimes, so you have to be very attentive while the audio plays. This task checks your listening skills and writing perfection under stress. AlfaPTE gives you the best platform to master this task with its AI scoring system and instant feedback.

🎯 What are the skills assessed?

It contributes to listening and writing skills.

Listening—You need to listen with full focus.

Writing—You need to reproduce the sentence with accurate spelling and grammar.

📈 What is its impact on scores?

This is one of the highest-scoring tasks in the Listening section, which can improve your listening and writing scores a lot. Every correct word in the correct sequence will give you scores. Changing the words by either adding or removing or disturbing the order with spelling and grammatical errors will damage your scores heavily.

   👉 If your target is for higher scores, then WFD perfection is a must.

📏 What is the usual sentence length?

You can usually expect the length of the sentences to be 6-16 words, and the audio lasts for about 3-7 seconds.

🔢 How many questions can we expect from this task?

You can expect about 3-4 WFD questions in the real PTE exam. So, make sure you attend all of them.

Although the tasks are few, they give heavy weightage to your overall scores.

💡 What are the tips to ace writing from dictation, or WFD?

✅ Active Listening: Try to understand the pronunciation of the words clearly, grasp the sentence structure, and focus on individual words.
Try to understand the sentence as it is while the audio plays.

✅ Breaking into Chunks: Learn to break the words into 3-4-word phrases.
Keep on repeating these phrases in your mind to remember them.

✅ Work on note-taking skills: Be faster in your writing skills so that you can grasp the sentence properly and write it accurately as per the audio.
Write in short forms to capture the important things quickly.

✅ Focus on Spellings: Misspelled words cause penalties.
Make sure you are not losing marks due to just spelling errors.

✅ No paraphrasing: Paraphrasing is not required in this task.
Write what you have heard, accurately, just like that.

✅ One-time play practice: Practice in the same way as in the real exam on AlfaPTE.
Do not replay the audio while practicing to mimic the exam method.

✅ Daily practice: Practice makes man perfect.
So, do this task every day to improve your listening and writing skills.

✅ Reviewing: Always cross-check your answers before submitting.
Look out for word order issues, spelling issues, or punctuation errors.

✍️ Why is Write from Dictation so important?

Though this is a short task, it has a heavy weightage on your overall scores with huge impacts on listening and writing scores. Every high scorer masters this task to significantly enhance their scores. It is not just like repeating whatever you hear; it is about your memorization skills, written comprehension, typing skills—everything should work at a proper pace to ace this task.

📖 Frequently Asked Questions

1) How many of these WFD can we expect in the real exam?

3-4 Write from Dictation per exam.

2) How long will the sentences be?

The length of this task will be around 3-7 seconds.

3) Which skills are impacted by this?

Listening and writing tasks are significantly impacted due to this.

4) Can we replay the audio if we don’t listen to it properly?

The audio will be played only once, and you can record only once.

5) Do we get time to answer this task?

Yes, after the audio ends, but make sure not to waste too much time on each task.

6) What skills are analysed in this task?

The ability to memorize and the written skills are analysed.