PTE Writing: Practice Questions - 9 | Practice Tests for PTE PDF Download

Summarize Written Text

You need to summarize the passage given below. In the exam, you will have 10 minutes to complete this task. Your response will be assessed on how well you capture the essential points of the passage and the clarity of your writing.
You can draft your answer on paper, and then check your response by clicking the "View Answer" button.

Q1: It all started out with imaginary rabbits. In a book completed in the year 1202; mathematician Leonardo of Pisa (also known as Fibonacci) posed the following problem: How many pairs of rabbits will be produced in a year, beginning with a single pair, if every month each pair bears a new pair that becomes productive from the second month on? The total number of pairs, month by month, forms the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 and so on. Each new term is the sum of the previous two terms. This set of numbers is now called the Fibonacci sequence.

Fibonacci numbers come up surprisingly often in nature, from the number of petals in various flowers to the number of scales along a spiral row in a pine cone. They also arise in computer science, especially in sorting or organising data.

Amazingly, the ratios of successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence gets closer and closer to a specific number, often called the golden ratio. It can be calculated as 1.6180339887.... For instance, the ratio 55/34 is 1.617647.... and the next ratio, 89/55, is 1.6181818….. The standard Fibonacci sequence has an intriguing property. The hundredth Fibonacci number, for example, is roughly equal to the hundredth power of the golden ratio.

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Q2: The Journal of Royal Society Arts reported an American auto executive's saying, "We are so short of professional engineers in the motor industry that we have to outsource design work to Germany." But the business practice of contracting with outside suppliers soon brought frowns from labour unions. Business Week noted in 1981 that the "decline in auto industry jobs….. will make outsourcing a key issue." But since 2000, when the creation of new jobs began to dip and then further decreased during recession, outsourcing has become a national dirty word.

N. Gregory Mankiw, the Harvard economist heading the Council of Economic Advisers, placed himself squarely in the bull's eye. In his annual report, he noted, "One facet of increased services trade is the increased use of offshore outsourcing, in which a company relocates labour-intensive service-industry functions to another country." He then observed, "When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically." Though few economists would take issue with this idea first propounded by David Ricardo in 1817, the language seemed deliciously insensitive in a campaign year. Mankiw was forced to apologise: "My lack of clarity left the wrong impression that I praised the loss of U.S. jobs." Writing on the Web site of the leftist magazine The Nation, Matt Bivens blurted out the truth: "The dirty little secret in all of this is that both parties support free trade – as Mankiw describes it. He just wasn't supposed to be so coolly honest about it. It's disconcerting.

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Write Essay

You will have 20 minutes to plan, write and revise an essay about the topic below. Carefully read the statement below and write an essay in response. A sample essay is available for you to review by clicking on the "View Answer" button.
Your essay will be evaluated based on how effectively you develop your position, organize your ideas, provide supporting details, and adhere to the conventions of standard written English. Aim for a word count between 200-300 words.

Q1: Decisions can be made quickly, or they can be made after careful thought. But quick decisions are much more likely to lead us astray to repent later.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with this statement. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience and observations.

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