PTE Writing: Practice Questions - 15 | 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: European colonisation of Africa followed a long history of contact between the two continents. By the second half of the 19th century, however, rapidly industrialising European economies needed reliable access to natural resources, new markets for their manufactured goods, and new sites for the investment of finance capital. The vast, mineral-rich African continent had the potential to offer all three.

During the late 19th century "scramble for Africa", even leaders with little prior interest in colonisation, such as German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, staked claims to the continent. Meanwhile, Christian missionaries' calls for European intervention to end African slavery and "barbaric" practices (such as human sacrifice in the kingdom of Dahomey) provided a moral rationale for European political and economic ambitions. These ambitions were officially legitimated and negotiated at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, when European leaders agreed to partition the African continent into neatly bordered "spheres of influence". Rapid conquest and treaty-making followed. By 1900, fewer than 30 years after the scramble had started, almost 90 percent of Africa was under European control.

Just as quickly, European powers were confronted with the basic problem of colonial occupation: how to rule effectively and cheaply over a foreign subject population? Although metropolitan governments clearly had to invest in the initial occupation, it was anticipated that colonial administrations would become self-sufficient. In other words, they were expected to establish a system of rule that would generate revenue but not revolt. European colonial powers struggled to find this ideal system for the next half century.

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Q2: Among those who call themselves Socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the more thoughtful and philosophic Socialists generally. The others, who may be called the revolutionary Socialists, propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resource of the country by one central authority, the general government. Some of them state that the working classes should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit.

Whatever be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of Socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more. The former has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. Nevertheless, the second form of Socialism has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of Socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promises to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing their aspirations realised in their own time and at a blow.

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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: Some say that due to heavy traffic, governments need to build more roads in metropolitan cities. Others argue that this isn't the right solution or is at best a short-term solution.

Which opinion do you agree with and why? Support your point of view with details from your own experiences, observations or reading.

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