6.2 The Reading, Writing, and Listening Tasks

The six tasks the speaking test never asks

This section covers the six VEPT parts that have no equivalent on the speaking VET. Five of them require you to type, so read them with a keyboard in front of you, and remember the recurring warnings: spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are scored on every typed task, and each item is timed with no going back. Grouping the tasks by the skill they measure is the fastest way to see what each is really testing.

Listening tasks

Conversations (Part D) — 12 items. You hear a short conversation between two people and answer a question about it by saying a single word or short phrase. Note that although this is a spoken response, the skill being scored is Listening — the engine is checking whether you extracted the right information, not your pronunciation. The trap is trying to follow every word. Instead, listen for the relationship between the speakers and hold the likely answer targets — a place, a time, a decision — in mind, then answer the specific question asked.

Dictation (Part G) — 16 items. You hear a sentence spoken only once and must type it word for word within 25 seconds. This is the purest test of listening comprehension and memory on the VEPT, because you cannot replay the audio. The technique that works is meaning-first: rather than trying to freeze the exact string of sounds, grasp the sentence's meaning as you hear it, then use that meaning to reconstruct the wording as you type. Type quickly but do not ignore spelling and capitalization, which are part of the score.

Reading tasks

Sentence Completion (Part F) — 20 items. You see a sentence (or two) with a single missing word and type the one word that best fits, within 25 seconds. This is the VEPT's main Reading task, and it rewards two things at once: understanding the sentence's overall meaning and knowing which word grammatically and idiomatically fits the gap. The technique is to read the words on both sides of the blank, decide what part of speech is needed, and choose the word that collocates naturally. Enter only one word, and get the spelling right — a correct word spelled wrong earns nothing.

(Read Aloud, Part A, also draws on reading, but because it is shared with the VET it was covered in Chapter 2 and is not repeated here.)

Writing tasks

Typing (Part E) — 1 item, not scored. You copy a passage shown on screen, typing as much as you can in 60 seconds. This item produces no score of its own; it exists to establish your typing speed and accuracy so the engine can interpret your Writing responses fairly, and administrators may look at it. Pearson's guidance: for a valid Writing score you should type faster than 12 words per minute with at least 90% accuracy. Favor accuracy over raw speed, but keep moving.

Passage Reconstruction (Part H) — 3 items. You read a passage that stays on screen for 30 seconds and then disappears, after which you have 90 seconds to rewrite it in your own words. Crucially, this is not a summary task — Pearson tells you to include all the details you can, not to condense. It scores your ability to reproduce key points and details in grammatical writing. The winning technique is to use the 30 seconds of reading to lock in the structure — who, what, when, and the order of events — rather than memorizing exact wording, then to write full grammatical sentences that recover those details in your own words.

Summary and Opinion (Part I) — 1 item. You read a passage and answer in two parts: first summarize the author's view in 25 to 50 words, then give your own opinion in at least 50 words. You have 18 minutes for both parts combined, making this the longest single item on the test. Keep the two boxes distinct — the first is the author's argument in your own words with no copying, the second is your agreement or disagreement with reasons. Write complete grammatical sentences in both and watch the timer so you leave enough time for the opinion.

All six new tasks at a glance

The two writing tasks pull in opposite directions, and confusing them is the most common VEPT writing error: Passage Reconstruction is about faithful, detailed recovery of someone else's text, while Summary and Opinion is about compression then original argument. Practice them separately so you instinctively know which mode each one wants. A simple rehearsal is to take one short article each day and do both on it: first reconstruct a paragraph from memory with every detail intact, then write a 25-to-50-word summary of the whole piece followed by your own 50-word reaction. Doing them back to back trains your brain to switch cleanly between faithful recovery and original argument.