In the PTE Summarize Text question you are required to write a single sentence summary. The summary has to be between 5 and 75 words. This wide range is not very helpful! How many words should be in an ideal summarize text response? This is what you will learn in this video. Frame your response according to the guidelines in this video and you are sure to get a high score.
Ideal word limit
The best responses are between 35 and 45 words. If you stick to this range you will be able to cover the key points without making mistakes in the sentence structure or grammar.
As you write too many words, you will face more challenges in combining them into a single sentence. Remember! your response cannot be more than one sentence. Don’t think that if you write maximum possible words you will get any extra credit for that. PTE Academic software doesn’t care about that! All that matters is – you have covered the key points and you have not made any grammatical mistakes while forming the sentence.
Anything below 30 words usually is not sufficient to cover all the key points. Even if you, it doesn’t give you an opportunity to form a sentence of a reasonable complexity. If your response is just a short and simple sentence, then though it might cover most of the key information, you will not get points for other factors such as grammar and language usage.
Anything close to 75 words is most of the times filled with unimportant points and contains grammatical errors. So, why take the risk? Simply stick to writing between 35 and 45 words and you will be able to get a good score.