What Is Repeat Sentence?

You hear a sentence played once through your headphones (3–9 seconds long) and must repeat it back as accurately as possible within a 15-second response window. There is no preparation time — the microphone opens immediately after the audio ends.

How It Is Scored

Repeat Sentence contributes to both Speaking and Listening scores, making it one of the highest-impact tasks in the entire exam.

Key insight: Content is worth only 3 points but Fluency and Pronunciation together are worth 10. If you miss a word or two but keep speaking smoothly and clearly, you still score very well. Never stop — partial credit is always better than silence.

Step-by-Step Strategy

Memory Technique: The Chunking Method

The single most important skill in Repeat Sentence is holding the sentence in memory long enough to say it back. Use this technique:

1. Divide on natural pauses. Break the sentence at commas, conjunctions (and, but, because), and preposition phrases (in the city, for several years).
2. Label each chunk by type. WHO did WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY. This gives you a structural skeleton to hang words on.
3. Trust the rhythm, not individual words. The beat of the sentence stays in your ear even when exact words fade. Let the rhythm guide your output.
4. Reconstruct with grammar. If you lose a word, your grammar knowledge tells you what word-type fits (article before noun, preposition before place, etc.).

Practice Sentences

Click Reveal Sentence to see the sentence, say it aloud, then click Hide Sentence and try again. Use the filter to practise by difficulty.

Tips and Tricks

Before the Audio Plays

• Position your microphone correctly before the task starts. Repeat Sentence has no preparation screen — you go straight from the instructions to the audio.
• Take a breath and clear your throat during the brief instruction screen. Your airway should be ready before the audio begins.

During the Audio

• Do not write anything down. Writing splits your attention and destroys the phonological loop (the short-term memory system that holds speech sounds). Listen with full attention.
• Do not sub-vocalise (mouth the words silently as you hear them). This also interferes with listening and memory formation.
• Focus on keywords and content words — they carry the sentence’s meaning and are hardest to reconstruct later.

During Your Response

• Never say “Umm” or “Err”. These count as disfluencies and directly cut your fluency score.
• If you lose a word, use a synonym. “large” instead of “significant”, “use” instead of “utilise” — similar meaning gets partial content credit.
• Keep your voice steady to the end of the sentence. Many test-takers trail off and drop the last 2–3 words, losing both content and pronunciation points on the ending.
• Aim for your normal speaking speed. Going faster to “get it all out” causes slurring; going slower sounds unnatural and tanks fluency.

Score-Maximising Mindset

• A response that includes 80% of the words, delivered smoothly, scores far higher than a stilted attempt to get every single word right.
• The AI does not penalise you for one missing article (a, the) as harshly as it penalises a 3-second pause. Fluency always comes first.
• The more sentences you practise aloud each day, the stronger your phonological memory becomes. Ten sentences a day for two weeks produces measurable improvement.

Common Mistakes

Quick Reference