Updated October 2026
Listen and Repeat: how the task works and how to practise
Listen and Repeat is the first Speaking task. You hear a sentence once, a beep sounds, and you say the sentence back. The sentences grow longer as the task goes on.
What happens
A speaker says one sentence. You cannot see it and you cannot hear it again. After the beep, recording starts by itself and stops after a few seconds. Then the next sentence plays.
There is no time to prepare and nothing to read. The task is short, and it moves quickly.
What it measures
How accurately you hear spoken English and how clearly you can reproduce it. That includes the words, and also the sounds, the stress within words and the rhythm of the sentence.
Being understood matters more than sounding like a native speaker. A clear, steady repetition scores better than a fast, blurred one.
How to hold a longer sentence
Do not try to store the sentence word by word. Listen for its meaning and its shape: who did what, and then the detail that follows. Sentences are easier to keep in two or three chunks than as twelve separate words.
Start speaking soon after the beep, at a normal pace. Waiting makes the sentence fade.
When you lose a word
Keep going. Say the sentence with the meaning intact, replacing the lost word with the closest one you have. Stopping, restarting or falling silent costs more than one small substitution.
Do not correct yourself repeatedly. One clean attempt is the goal.
How to practise
Use any recording with a transcript. Play one sentence, pause, say it aloud, then check it against the text. Begin with short sentences and lengthen them over time.
Record yourself and listen back. You will hear dropped endings and swallowed small words that you do not notice while speaking.
This is an independent summary written for test takers. ETS publishes the official specification of the test on its own website.