Words our speech recognition marked as missing or different
Across 195 students, these are words our speech recognition marked as missing or different in saved Read Aloud and Repeat Sentence attempts. Recognition can be wrong; these flags do not establish what a student actually said.
The 8 words students flagged by speech recognition most
| # | Word | Students with a recognition flag | Recognition flags | Likely difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | assignments | 60 | 103 | Silent letters |
| 2 | agricultural | 41 | 54 | Word stress (long word) |
| 3 | work | 35 | 45 | v / w sounds |
| 4 | bibliography | 30 | 47 | Word stress (long word) |
| 5 | students | 29 | 40 | Consonant cluster |
| 6 | came | 24 | 38 | Vowel sound |
| 7 | medicine | 23 | 27 | Word stress (long word) |
| 8 | years | 22 | 24 | -s ending /s, z, ɪz/ |
Each word was flagged by speech recognition for at least 20 different students in at least 3 different questions. Short function words (the, a, of …) are left out.
Difficulty types in the list
| Likely difficulty | Words in the list |
|---|---|
| Word stress (long word) | 3 |
| Silent letters | 1 |
| v / w sounds | 1 |
| Consonant cluster | 1 |
| Vowel sound | 1 |
| -s ending /s, z, ɪz/ | 1 |
How this data was collected
- Sample: 195 students · 3,546 attempts · 9 October 2026 to 21 October 2026.
- These counts describe saved speech-recognition flags, not independently verified pronunciation mistakes.
- This historical table counts wrong, nearly right or unclear flags; missing-word flags were not included in its totals.
- The suggested sound difficulty comes from spelling, not analysis or human review of the recordings.
- AI scores are practice estimates, not official PTE scores.
- Every figure on this page is based on at least 20 different students; smaller groups are not shown. Only totals are published, never a single student’s results.
- The report is about students’ practice and results. It does not show any test questions or question text.
- Recalculated every week from new practice; the update date above shows the latest run.
Questions students ask
Are these verified pronunciation errors?
No. Our speech recognition marked these words as missing or different. Recording quality, transcription and scoring can affect the flags.
Cite this data
RealPTE practice data, October 2026. “Words our speech recognition marked as missing or different (practice data)”. https://realpte.com/pte-data/pte-misread-words
You are welcome to quote these figures with a link to this page.
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