Understanding your PTE Essay Topic: Basics of a Good Essay

Imagine if you had practiced answering the exact PTE essay topic before sitting your PTE exam? 

Well, it’s not entirely out of the question if you happen to brainstorm a few common PTE essay topics.    

The Basics to a Good Essay

The more you write essays, the easier it gets but there are a few key elements to writing a good essay that you need to know at the outset. First and foremost, you need a clear structure, which E2language has the perfect formula for. Also, ensure that you accurately answer the whole question and stay on the PTE essay topic.

Finally, it’s vitally important that you follow the ‘rubric,’ or instructions, on what you need to do with the topic: agree or disagree, discuss, find a solution, outline the advantages and disadvantages or give your opinion.

A question that I frequently ask students who have just sat the PTE test is: Which PTE essay topic did you get? This way I can get an update on the latest essay topics that are coming up. Knowing a majority of the common PTE essay topics in advance allows you to prepare for them, and thus saves time and stress during the test.

When you go through the list of the most common PTE essay topics, even if you don’t have time to write an essay for every single one, you can certainly at least read through them so you know what to expect. You can then write a short plan with 2 main ideas/ key points that you would make in the body paragraphs of your essay if you got that PTE essay topic in the test.

I’ll show you what I mean by a short plan to illustrate how simply and quickly brainstorming some ideas for your essay can be done, using some of the most common PTE essay topics, which I have categorized below according to a theme or broad academic topic.

I have used the minus and plus symbols to indicate whether the point is for or against: − / + .

Other Common Academic Subjects and PTE Essay Topics 

What are some of the most common PTE essay topics that we see time and time again on the PTE exam?

A quick explainer for each topic … 

Shopping: over-packaging; large shopping malls

Work: who should do decision-making in companies; the modern work/ life balance- difficulties with

Travel: effects of tourism on a country; travel to study- good or bad

Media: are newspapers are necessary,

Sport: extreme adventure sports

Inventions: the best invention in the past 10/100 years

Environment: combatting climate change, birthplace affecting one’s success

Education: The ability to learn versus being able to read and write well; is assessment through exams in education out-dated

No ideas for your PTE Essay Topic?!

Don’t feel bad if you have trouble coming up with ideas for different PTE essay topics as it’s quite a common problem.

While it’s true that some people are naturally creative and seem to be ‘ideas people,’ and others have strong critical thinking skills for solving problems or finding solutions, it doesn’t mean that you can’t improve in this area to be able to create a strong argument for and against in your essays and increase the speed of generating some main ideas and examples for your essay.

Some suggestions to develop this skill are:

Practice brainstorming! Take a topic and just start writing what comes to mind and let your thoughts and inspirations flow. Also, this can be fun and inspiring to do with others in a group- 2,3 or more minds can be more powerful than 1! Even asking friends and family about their opinion on a topic- engage in a lively intellectual discussion to gather their ideas for your essay!

Just Google it! If you don’t know much about a topic or subject area –no excuses, just research it: you could read articles, watch programs, listen to talks and analyze others’ essays and opinions on the matter.

For more PTE Writing advice and strategy, view PTE Writing Tips: How to Improve your Essay Score. 

Take a look at E2Language’s PTE Write Essay ‘Super Structure’ video posted below! You can visit E2 PTE YouTube channel for plenty of PTE test preparation videos. 

Written by Danielle