Highlight Incorrect Words (PTE listening) — Difficulty & Question Bank Overview

Strategy Overview

Highlight Incorrect Words is a listening and reading alignment task. The learner follows written text while audio plays, then marks words that differ from what is heard. It looks mechanical, but the real challenge is maintaining synchronized attention without drifting ahead or falling behind. In this bank, low average difficulty does not mean the skill can be ignored, because a single lapse can create a chain of missed differences. Preparation should emphasize eye tracking, phrase-level listening, and quick decisions about substitutions, omissions, and grammatical changes. Difficulty increases when the speaker uses connected speech, weak forms, or a pace that makes small function words less obvious. A useful method is to follow with a finger or cursor during practice, pause only after the recording, and review mistakes by sound pattern rather than by spelling alone.

Highlight Incorrect Words has 188 metadata-safe items in this aggregate, with an average difficulty of 1/5. The distribution currently appears across Difficulty 1/5, and the largest share is Difficulty 1/5 with 188 items (100%). Treat this profile as a planning signal for listening practice: lower bands are useful for controlled accuracy reps, while upper bands should be saved for timed review. For this type, the main review lens is Connected speech, Small grammar changes, Attention drift.