Do PTE Templates Still Work?
I Tested Both for a Year — Here's the Data
Test #25 since the August 2025 scoring changes. Real speaking and writing scores, tracked month by month, comparing memorized templates against structured, freestyle answers.
No — memorized templates for PTE Speaking and Writing stopped being reliable after the August 2025 scoring changes. Across six months of real exam attempts, templates produced wildly inconsistent scores — including a drop from 90 to 62/69 using the exact same template that worked before. Switching to a structured, non-memorized approach in May produced four consecutive months of 90 in Speaking across two different testers, with Writing returning to 90 once the essay question was fully answered.
I sit the real PTE exam every month. Not a mock test — the actual exam, in a real test centre, with a real result. This is my attempt number 24 since PTE changed its scoring last August, and this time I'm also including results from Janelle, one of our teachers, who's been testing the same approach independently. I only test Speaking and Writing, because that's where almost every student asks me the same question: do templates still work?
The Turning Point — April 2026I Said "I'm Done" With Templates
In April, I stopped teaching and testing templates for Speaking and Writing completely. Here's why.
I'd been using the same template that worked well in February and March. Then in April, using that exact same template, both scores collapsed.
April 2026 — same template as the two previous tests. A huge drop from 90.
That inconsistency had been happening repeatedly since August. Something would work a couple of times, stop working, get tweaked, work again, then stop again. April was the test that made the pattern impossible to ignore.
Before That — Feb & March 2026When Templates Still Looked Reliable
To be fair to the templates, they didn't start out broken.
February 2026 — writing tested alone using a memorized template. Reading and Listening blurred since they weren't attempted.
March 2026 — Janelle, one of our teachers, testing the same templates. Strong result: 90 and 90.
February and March both scored well using templates. That's exactly what made April's drop so significant — nothing about the approach changed between March and April. The template stayed the same. The result didn't.
May 2026Switching to Structure, Not Scripts
From May onward, I changed the entire approach. Instead of a memorized template, I started teaching a structured, freestyle way of answering — showing the structure, not a script to memorize.
May 2026 — Janelle's first attempt using structure instead of a memorized template. 90 and 90, first try.
Janelle, one of our teachers, sat the exam using this same structured approach for the first time that month — 90 and 90 on the first attempt.
June 2026Isolating the One Variable That Actually Mattered
Speaking held steady at 90. Writing dropped to 81. If structure was the problem, I'd expect both to drop — but only one did.
June 2026 — Speaking consistent at 90. Writing dropped, but not because of structure.
The drop wasn't the structure — I followed the same organized essay structure as always. The difference was that I deliberately didn't fully answer the essay question, just to see what would happen. The result: everything else scored well, but I lost the top band on that one criterion.
July 2026Three Straight Months at 90 in Speaking
Once I went back and fully answered the essay question, Writing returned to 90 — and Speaking held at 90 for the third month in a row across the team (Janelle in May, myself in June and July).
July 2026 — Sonny again, 90 in Speaking, 90 in Writing. Three straight months at 90 in Speaking across the team.
That's the whole point of testing this monthly instead of guessing: the only thing that changed the Writing score was fully answering the question. Everything else — structure, delivery, approach — stayed exactly the same, and stayed consistent.
August 2026The Result Holds Across the Team
August 2026 — Janelle again, 90 in Speaking, 90 in Writing. Same structured approach, same result.
This isn't just consistent for one person testing every month — it's held up across two different teachers testing independently, months apart. Reading and Listening are intentionally blurred throughout this post — those scores are going into a dedicated video, since there's a lot of misinformation circulating about how those sections are actually scored.
Templates vs. Structure — Side by Side
| Attempt | Tester | Approach | Speaking | Writing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2026 | Sonny | Template | — | 90 |
| Mar 2026 | Janelle | Template | 90 | 90 |
| Apr 2026 | Sonny | Template | 62 | 69 |
| May 2026 | Janelle | Structure | 90 | 90 |
| Jun 2026 | Sonny | Structure | 90 | 81* |
| Jul 2026 | Sonny | Structure | 90 | 90 |
| Aug 2026 | Janelle | Structure | 90 | 90 |
*Dropped only because the essay question wasn't fully answered — not a structure failure.
Two related questions worth reading next: 3 things most students get wrong about PTE scoring, and why the same essay approach can score 90 for one person and not for another.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not reliably. Across six real exam attempts, memorized templates for Speaking and Writing worked in February and March, then produced a severe score drop in April using the exact same template — no changes on my end. That inconsistency is the reason templates were dropped entirely from May onward.
Templates can score well initially, but PTE's scoring has changed enough since August 2025 that identical templates stop producing identical results. In this testing, the same template scored 90 twice, then dropped to 69 with zero changes made — suggesting the scoring system is penalizing repetitive, memorized language patterns rather than genuine communication.
A template is memorized word-for-word and repeated regardless of the question. A structure is a repeatable framework for organizing an answer — the shape stays consistent, but the actual language responds to the specific question. In this testing, structure produced four consecutive 90s in Speaking; templates produced two 90s followed by a drop to 62.
That's a separate question with its own dedicated breakdown coming soon — Reading and Listening scores are intentionally left out of this post, since templates function very differently in those sections and there's a lot of inaccurate information circulating about how they're scored.
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