The PTE Collocation Bank

Collocations are pairs or short groups of words that native English speakers naturally use together, such as make a decision, significant impact or highly likely. In PTE Academic they matter for Reading and Writing Fill in the Blanks, Summarize Written Text, and any speaking or writing task that is scored for vocabulary range and accuracy.

Yes. The Academic Collocation List (ACL) was compiled by Pearson from a 25-million-word corpus of published academic English. It contains 2,469 of the most frequent and useful academic collocations and is a recognised resource for PTE Academic, IELTS Academic and university-entry preparation.

Collocations are directly tested in Reading and Writing Fill in the Blanks and Reading Fill in the Blanks, and they contribute to your score on Summarize Written Text, Write Essay, Retell Lecture and Answer Short Question through the vocabulary and grammar rubrics.

For a PTE score of 65 and above, aim to actively know 300 to 500 high-frequency academic collocations. The 324 collocations in this bank are drawn from the most productive headwords in the Academic Collocation List and cover the patterns that appear most often in PTE Reading and Writing tasks.

Yes. The PTE Collocation Bank is completely free, needs no sign-up and works on any phone or laptop. Your progress is saved on your device only.

A vocabulary list teaches single words. A collocation list teaches which words go together, which is what PTE actually scores. Knowing the word decision is not enough; you also need to know that we make a decision, not do a decision.

The page is built and maintained by First Academy, a Hyderabad-based test-preparation and corporate training academy that coaches students for PTE Academic, IELTS, OET and university English.