Reading and Writing: Fill in the Blanks is a Part 2 task. You get a text of up to 200 words with several gaps, and each gap has a dropdown of four options. It scores both Reading and Writing, which makes it one of the highest-value tasks per minute in PTE Core.
It is marked with partial credit: each blank is scored separately, so getting three of four right earns three quarters of the marks. Never leave a dropdown unselected.
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| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Text length | Up to 200 words |
| Gaps | Several, each with a dropdown of four options |
| Skills scored | Reading and Writing |
| Scoring | Partial credit — one mark per correct blank |
| Part | Part 2, Reading |
| Type | What the options look like | Decide by |
|---|---|---|
| Grammar | Four forms of one word, or four tenses, or four prepositions | The structure around the gap |
| Collocation | Four different words of the same part of speech | Which one partners the neighbouring word |
Look at the options only after deciding what part of speech the gap needs. Reading the options first is how candidates talk themselves into a plausible wrong answer.
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Employers have become considerably more willing to fund training than they were a decade ago, though the reasons are less altruistic than they appear. The (1) ___ driver is retention: staff who receive training stay longer, and replacing an experienced employee costs several times the price of a course. A second factor is the speed at which technical skills now (2) ___, which means a workforce hired five years ago may lack capabilities that did not exist when they were recruited. There is, however, a persistent gap between what companies fund and what employees ask for. Firms prefer training that is specific to their own systems, because it (3) ___ immediately to productivity. Employees tend to prefer transferable qualifications, which are more valuable precisely because they are portable. This tension (4) ___ for the fact that so much corporate training is compulsory rather than requested, and it also explains why take-up of voluntary schemes is often (5) ___ than the budget assumes. |
| Blank | Options | Answer | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | (A) prime (B) principal (C) major (D) primary | D | “primary driver” is the standard collocation; the others are grammatical but not idiomatic here |
| 2 | (A) date (B) age (C) expire (D) lapse | B | “skills age” is the collocation; expire and lapse take licences and permissions, not skills |
| 3 | (A) contributes (B) attributes (C) distributes (D) constitutes | A | contribute to productivity; the preposition confirms it |
| 4 | (A) accounts (B) counts (C) explains (D) amounts | A | “accounts for the fact that” — explains would need no preposition |
| 5 | (A) low (B) lower (C) lowest (D) lowly | B | “than” forces a comparative |
Blanks 3 and 4 are decided by the preposition that follows, not by meaning. Reading two words past the gap resolves both.
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The growth of home delivery has changed the traffic mix in city centres in ways that planners did not anticipate. Vans now (1) ___ for a larger share of vehicle movements than private cars in some districts, and because they stop frequently and unpredictably, their effect on traffic flow is (2) ___ greater than their numbers suggest. Several cities have (3) ___ consolidation centres on the edge of the controlled zone, where parcels from multiple carriers are combined and delivered by a single vehicle. The engineering is straightforward; the difficulty is commercial, since carriers compete on delivery speed and are reluctant to (4) ___ the final leg to a shared operator. Where consolidation has worked, it has usually been because the local authority made access to the zone (5) ___ on using the shared service, rather than because carriers chose to cooperate. |
| Blank | Options | Answer | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | (A) count (B) account (C) stand (D) make | B | “account for a share” is the fixed collocation |
| 2 | (A) considerable (B) considerably (C) consideration (D) considered | B | An adverb is needed to modify “greater” |
| 3 | (A) established (B) establishing (C) establishment (D) establishes | A | “have” requires the past participle |
| 4 | (A) hand over (B) hand in (C) hand out (D) hand down | A | hand over = transfer responsibility; the others mean submit, distribute and pass to a successor |
| 5 | (A) dependent (B) depending (C) dependence (D) depended | A | “make X dependent on Y” is the pattern |
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Commercial landlords spent much of the last decade assuming that demand for office space would recover to its previous level. That assumption now looks (1) ___, and the market has begun to divide rather than recover. Buildings with good transport links and recent refurbishment are letting at or above previous rents, (2) ___ older stock in secondary locations struggles to let at all. The consequence is that headline vacancy figures (3) ___ a market that no individual building is in. A single average conceals two quite different markets, and lenders who priced their portfolios against that average are now (4) ___ to revalue. |
| Blank | Options | Answer | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | (A) optimist (B) optimistic (C) optimism (D) optimistically | B | “looks” is a linking verb and takes an adjective |
| 2 | (A) despite (B) whereas (C) however (D) in spite of | B | A clause follows, and the relationship is contrast within one sentence |
| 3 | (A) describe (B) prescribe (C) subscribe (D) inscribe | A | Only “describe” fits the meaning; the others are near-homographs |
| 4 | (A) obliged (B) obligation (C) obligatory (D) obliging | A | “are obliged to revalue” — passive plus infinitive |
Blank 2 is the standard connector question. “However” cannot join two clauses inside one sentence, and “despite” and “in spite of” cannot take a clause at all.
| Signal around the gap | Gap needs | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Article or possessive before it, noun after it | Adjective | the primary driver |
| Article before it, nothing after it | Noun | the completion of the work |
| Preposition before it | Noun or gerund | without warning / after reviewing |
| have / has / had before it | Past participle | have established |
| is / are / was / were before it | Past participle or adjective | are obliged |
| Linking verb (look, seem, appear, become) | Adjective | looks optimistic |
| Comparative adjective after it | Adverb | considerably greater |
| “than” anywhere in the sentence | Comparative | lower than expected |
| A full clause after it, at the start of a clause | Conjunction | whereas older stock struggles |
| A noun phrase after it, at the start | Preposition | despite the delay |
| Collocation | Common wrong option offered |
|---|---|
| account for a share | count for / stand for |
| contribute to productivity | attribute to / distribute to |
| the primary driver | the prime driver / the principal driver |
| skills age | skills expire / skills lapse |
| hand over responsibility | hand in / hand out / hand down |
| make X dependent on Y | make X depending on Y |
| pose a risk | make a risk / give a risk |
| meet a requirement | fill a requirement / answer a requirement |
| raise concerns | rise concerns |
| bear the cost | carry the cost / hold the cost |
| Error | Fix |
|---|---|
| Leaving a dropdown unselected | Partial credit — always choose |
| Reading the options before analysing the gap | Decide the part of speech first |
| Reading only the words immediately either side | Read the full sentence; connectors depend on the whole clause |
| Choosing by meaning when the question is grammar | Four forms of one word means position decides, not meaning |
| Choosing by grammar when the question is collocation | Four different words means the partnership decides |
| Spending too long on one gap | Each gap is one mark; move on and come back |
With partial credit, one mark per correct blank, and it contributes to both your Reading and Writing scores. Because each gap is scored independently, an unselected dropdown is a certain lost mark while a guess still has a chance.
Up to 200 words, with several dropdown gaps. It is one of the shorter Reading texts in PTE Core, which is part of why it is efficient to work carefully rather than quickly.
This task gives you dropdown options for each gap and scores both Reading and Writing. The Reading-only Fill in the Blanks task uses a shorter text of up to 80 words and asks you to drag words into the gaps from a shared list, which means wrong choices can cascade.
No. Decide what part of speech and what meaning the gap needs from the sentence, then look at the options. Reading four plausible words first tends to override your own analysis.
Look at the options. Four forms of one word, four tenses or four prepositions is a grammar blank decided by structure. Four different words of the same part of speech is a collocation blank decided by which one partners the neighbouring word.
No. Negative marking in PTE Core applies to the Multiple Choice, Multiple Answers tasks in Reading and Listening, where an incorrect selection deducts a mark. Fill in the Blanks uses partial credit with no deduction, so guessing is always correct strategy here.
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