PTE Speaking for Hindi, Punjabi and Telugu Speakers: 9 Sound Habits the AI Scorer Hears

If your first language is Hindi, Punjabi or Telugu, the PTE scorer does not mark you down for sounding Indian. Pearson says PTE recognises regional and national varieties of English to the degree that most regular speakers understand them, and the PTE Academic Score Guide lists Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi and Urdu among the 126 first languages of the field-test candidates whose responses trained its scoring engines. What it does mark down are specific habits: a sound that turns one word into another, an ending you swallow, a vowel that adds a syllable, stress on the wrong syllable, an even syllable-by-syllable rhythm, and above all the restart, going back to fix a word. In Read Aloud and Repeat Sentence, the two tasks with the most items, one habit can hit Content, Pronunciation and Oral Fluency at once. This page ranks nine habits by what they cost, ties each one to the wording of Pearson’s descriptors, and gives a fix and a 60-second drill. They are tendencies, not rules: many speakers have two or three, few have all nine, so record yourself before you drill anything.

How the PTE scorer hears an Indian accent

Pearson’s speech engine scores the speaking tasks on up to three traits. Content works differently by task. In Read Aloud the Score Guide says each replacement, omission or insertion of a word counts as one error. In Repeat Sentence, Content runs from 3 (all words in the right order) to 0, and hesitations and pauses are ignored for Content. In Answer Short Question you are simply right or wrong on the word you choose. Pronunciation and Oral Fluency run from 5 to 0, are scored by the AI only, and use the same descriptors on every task that has them. The habits on this page match phrases in those descriptors almost word for word.

Two things follow. First, in Read Aloud a single habit can cost twice: once on Pronunciation, and again on Content if the word you said is a different English word. Second, a human listener fills in the right word from context. Do not count on a machine scoring the words you say to do the same. Pearson also says its engine recognises speech from over 90 language groups, which is why the fixes below target only the habits that change sounds or rhythm, never the accent as a whole.

The nine habits at a glance, ranked

The ranking is our judgement of cost across the whole speaking section, not Pearson’s, and "common in" describes tendencies we hear in Indian English, not every speaker of the language.

One passage, read with the habits and without

The passage below is written by TalkDrill in the style of a Read Aloud text (54 words; Pearson’s limit is 60). Under it is how it can sound when several habits stack up. That second version is our illustration, not a real candidate’s recording.

Count what the scorer has to deal with. Words that became other English words, the Content risk: "tree" for three, "vest" for west, "ask" for asked, "finish" for finished, "walk" for walked, "stay" for stayed. Each one can count as a replacement. A repeated word, "have... have", is an insertion for Content and a repetition for Oral Fluency. Sound changes that make no other word, such as "willage", "wisits", "ewery", "istate" and "ischool", cost Pronunciation only. One reading, about a dozen separate problems, and not one of them is the accent.

Now the version to practise. The slashes are chunk boundaries for a tiny pause and a slight fall in pitch, as Pearson’s own Read Aloud tip suggests; the capitals mark the stressed syllables.

British and American dictionaries both accept KIlometre and kiLOmetre; either is fine. Read it three times a day for a week and record the third reading each day. You will hear the endings come back before anything else.

Habits 1 and 8: the restart reflex and racing the clock

1. The restart reflex, and fillers

What happens. You misread a word, stop, and read the phrase again correctly. Or you fill thinking time with "basically", "actually", "so" or "umm". Why. Most of us were taught at school that a reading mistake must be corrected, out loud, at once. In PTE the correction costs more than the mistake. What it costs. Pearson’s Oral Fluency level 5 has "no hesitations, repetitions, false starts"; level 4 allows "no more than one". In Read Aloud, a re-read phrase also adds words the text does not contain, and the Score Guide counts each insertion as an error. In Repeat Sentence, Content ignores hesitations, but Oral Fluency does not. And if a restart turns into a pause of three seconds, the recording ends.

The fix. One rule: say the wrong word and keep going. A wrong word costs one Content error; a restart costs a word count error plus a fluency penalty. Replace fillers with a silent breath at a chunk boundary, under a second long.

60-second drill. Read a passage you have never seen with no preparation at all, and have a friend tap the table every time you repeat or restart. Do it daily until a 60-word passage gets no taps. Then do the same with Repeat Sentence: if you lose the middle of a sentence, say the end anyway.

8. Racing the progress bar

What happens. Nervous candidates read as fast as they can, worried the bar will run out. What it costs. Speed is the main reason endings vanish, and fast reading tends to break into uneven bursts. Pearson’s format page says plainly that there is no need to rush, and that the best responses are spoken at a constant and natural rate. Read Aloud answer time varies with the length of the text, so a steady pace fits. The fix. Read at the speed of a news reader, not a rapper. Fall slightly at the end of each sentence. Drill. Record the worked passage above at your normal speed and then 20 per cent slower; listen to both and count the endings you can hear in each.

Habits 2 and 3: swallowed endings and extra vowels

2. Swallowed endings: -ed, -s and final consonants

What happens. Past tense -ed disappears after a consonant ("ask" for asked, "walk" for walked, "drop" for dropped), plural and verb -s goes quiet ("visit" for visits, "cost" for costs), and clusters shrink ("fac" for facts, "mon" for months). What it costs. The Score Guide puts "some consonants are regularly omitted, and consonant sequences may be simplified" at Pronunciation 2. Worse, a lost ending can leave a different English word, which Read Aloud counts as a replacement, and Repeat Sentence counts as a word out of sequence.

One nuance that most guides miss. Native speakers also drop sounds: "last year" usually comes out as "las’ year", and Pearson’s top Pronunciation level expects "deletions appropriate to continuous speech". So do not force every t. Protect the endings that carry grammar: -ed, -s, and n’t.

The fix. Learn the three -ed sounds: /t/ after voiceless sounds (asked, walked, finished, dropped), /d/ after voiced sounds (stayed, called, planned), and an extra syllable /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted, needed, extended). For -s, hold the hiss a fraction longer than feels natural. 60-second drill. Say these in pairs, present then past, and record: ask and asked, walk and walked, finish and finished, stay and stayed, want and wanted. Then plurals: fact and facts, cost and costs, month and months, result and results. Our -ed endings drill, plural endings drill and final cluster drill score each word.

3. Extra vowels: "ischool" and "and-u"

What happens. Two different habits produce the same result, an extra syllable. Hindi and Punjabi do not start native words with s plus a consonant, so some speakers put a vowel in front ("ischool", "istation", "ispeech") and others put one in the middle ("sakool"). Telugu words end in vowels, so some Telugu speakers add a short u-like vowel after a final consonant: "and-u", "but-u", "it-u is". What it costs. The Score Guide’s Pronunciation 1 descriptor includes "a few syllables added or missed", and level 0 includes "several words may have the wrong number of syllables". An added syllable also breaks the rhythm of the chunk.

The fix. For s clusters, start the word on a long hissing s and slide straight into the next sound: "sss-chool", "sss-tudent". For final vowels, stop on the last consonant with your mouth still: "and." "but." "it." Then join it to the next word instead of adding a vowel, so "and it" becomes "an-dit". 60-second drill. School, student, study, station, speak, special, spread, street, strong, scheme, screen, small. Then the phrases "and it is", "but at last", "that is it", linked. Our connected speech sentences are built for the linking half.

Habits 4, 7 and 9: v and w, th, and the low-priority three

4. v and w as one sound

What happens. Hindi, Punjabi and Telugu each have one sound, written व, ਵ and వ, that sits between English v and w, so many speakers use it for both. "Very well" becomes "wery vell", or one sound in the middle. What it costs. Pronunciation every time; Content when the result is another word. Academic texts are full of pairs: west and vest, wine and vine, worse and verse, wet and vet, while and vile, wail and veil. The fix. For v, rest your upper teeth lightly on your lower lip and buzz. For w, round your lips as for "oo", keep your teeth away from your lip, and open into the vowel. Use a mirror: if you see teeth on the lip, it is a v. 60-second drill. "We visited a village in the west." "A worse verse." "Very well, we will." "The value of water." Read the v and w guide once, then use the v and w read-aloud drill daily.

7. th said as t or d

What happens. Most Hindi, Punjabi and Telugu speakers use the dental t and d of their first language (the sounds in त and द) for English th. Usually that is understood: "thank you" said that way is not a problem. What it costs. The risk is the pairs: three and tree, thin and tin, thought and taught, then and den, they and day, breathe and breed. In Answer Short Question, a TalkDrill-style item such as "How many sides does a triangle have?" answered "tree" can be heard as the wrong word, and that task is scored right or wrong. The fix. Put the tip of your tongue lightly between your teeth. Blow for the th in "three" and "think"; add voice for the th in "this" and "the". 60-second drill. "Three thin thieves thought." "The other brother, the third one." Then "in the", "of the", "at the", ten times each, with a voiced th. See the th sound guide and the voiceless th and voiced th drills.

9. The low-priority three: z as j, unaspirated p t k, retroflex t and d

z as j. Some Hindi and Punjabi speakers say "jero" for zero and "jone" for zone. It mostly affects words that begin with z, which are rare in academic texts; fix it with a buzzing s ("zzz-ero") if it is one of your habits. Unaspirated p, t, k. English adds a puff of air to p, t and k at the start of a stressed syllable ("pen", "time", "keep"). Hindi treats the puffed and unpuffed sounds as different letters (प and फ), and many speakers use the unpuffed one in English, which some listeners hear as b, d or g. Hold a strip of paper in front of your lips: it should move on "pen". Retroflex t and d. The curled-back t and d of Indian English is the feature people notice first and the one that matters least. It does not create other words, and it sits well inside what Pearson describes as an understandable national variety. Leave it until habits 1 to 8 are fixed, and probably leave it for good.

Habits 5 and 6: even rhythm and word stress

5. Even rhythm, full vowels in small words

What happens. Hindi, Punjabi and Telugu give syllables roughly equal time. English does not: it stresses the content words and squeezes the small ones, so "to" becomes /tə/, "of" /əv/, "and" /ən/, "for" /fə/, "can" /kən/ and "the" /ðə/. Read every word at full strength and English starts to sound like a list. What it costs. Pearson’s Oral Fluency level 1 names "staccato or syllabic timing"; level 4 asks for "acceptable rhythm with appropriate phrasing and word emphasis". The fix. Chunk first, then stress only the content words in each chunk and let the rest fall. Pearson’s own Read Aloud tip asks you to stress the words that carry meaning and to rise into a chunk and fall a little at its end. 60-second drill. "a CUP of TEA", "GO to the SHOP", "BREAD and BUTter", "FISH and CHIPS", each five times, with the small word reduced to a quick "uh". Our schwa guide for Indian speakers explains the vowel.

Punjabi is a tonal language, and some speakers carry its pitch movements into English, while others rise at the end of statements. Both make a statement sound unfinished. Pearson’s advice is the fix: fall a little at the end of each chunk and clearly at the end of each sentence.

6. Stress on the wrong syllable

What happens. Indian English often places stress differently from British and American English: "DEvelopment" for deVELopment, "CAreer" for caREER, "inDUStry" for INdustry. What it costs. The Score Guide’s Pronunciation 4 expects stress "placed correctly on all common words"; level 2 says stress "may be placed incorrectly on some words or be unclear". The fix. Learn stress with the word, in the dictionary, and say the word aloud with the stress exaggerated three times. Watch for families where the stress moves: PHOtograph, phoTOgraphy, photoGRAPHic; eCONomy, ecoNOMic; deMOCracy, demoCRATic; aNALysis, anaLYTical. 60-second drill. Those eight words, then development, environment, available, particular and comfortable (COMfortable, three syllables). The word stress rules and the stress-shift drill cover the patterns.

Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada: the shared southern habits

Telugu speakers share most of their habits with Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada speakers, so this section is for all four. The extra final vowel (habit 3) is the big one. Two more are common enough to check for. First, a glide added at the start of a word: "yeleven" for eleven, "yevery" for every, "wonly" for only, "wopen" for open. It adds a sound the passage does not have; fix it by starting the vowel from a relaxed, open mouth. Second, some speakers say f as a puffed p ("phan" for fan), which listeners can hear as p: fine and pine, fast and past. Put your top teeth on your lower lip and blow, as for v without the buzz.

Many southern speakers keep long and short vowels apart (ship and sheep), because their first languages contrast vowel length, so do not spend time there unless your recording shows the problem. Our South Indian pronunciation guide and the guide for Tamil speakers go further.

Where each habit costs most, task by task

Item counts are from the Score Guide for PTE Academic. PTE Core has the same short tasks but no Retell Lecture or Summarize Group Discussion.

The Personal Introduction at the start is not scored, so use it as your sound check: speak at the volume and pace you will use for the rest of the test. For the task methods, see Read Aloud and Repeat Sentence; for the full descriptors, the 79-plus scoring page.

A ten-minute routine for four weeks, and what not to fix

Pick your two costliest habits from your own recording, not from this page. Then, every day for four weeks:

Once a week, read the worked passage on this page and compare it with last week’s recording. When a habit gets no tally marks for five days running, swap it for the next one. The practice bank has timed sets for every task, and the four-week plan on the PTE Speaking hub puts this routine inside a full schedule. Nepali or Tagalog speaker? Use the sister page.

What not to spend time on

• Accent neutralisation courses. Pearson’s format page says regional and national varieties are recognised to the degree that most regular speakers understand them. You need to remove the nine habits, not your accent.
• Retroflex t and d. See habit 9.
• British or American vowels. Neither is required. Choose the one you hear most and stay consistent.
• Memorised templates. The Score Guide classes responses with significant pre-prepared or memorised material as irrelevant, and an irrelevant response scores 0 for Content, which stops the scoring of that answer. Learn structures, not scripts.

Sources: the PTE Academic Score Guide (2025 edition, from the Pearson scoring page), the Speaking and Writing format page and the Pearson scoring help centre, the last two read on 21 October 2026. Pearson does not publish results by first language, so the habit list and the cost ranking are our own, built from the descriptors and well-documented features of Indian English.