Versant Test Questions 2026: Current 40-Item Format

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Pearson's current Versant English Speaking and Listening Test contains 40 items across six tasks and takes about 17 minutes. The tasks are short answers, sentence repeats, questions about conversations, questions about passages, passage retells, and opinion responses. The older 63-item English Speaking Test still appears in search results, but Pearson labels that product as retiring soon.

Every example below is original and written from the public task description. No live or confidential question is reproduced.

Key takeaways

• The current English Speaking and Listening Test has 40 items and takes about 17 minutes.
• Its six sections assess both spoken production and listening comprehension.
• Sentence Builds, Reading, and Story Retellings belong to the retiring 63-item English Speaking Test, not the current replacement.
• Dictation, Sentence Completion, and Passage Reconstruction belong to longer multi-skill Versant products.
• Match the product name, sample link, and instructions in your invitation before practising.

In this guide: questions at a glance | which test | current six tasks | written tasks | what tasks measure | how we researched | official samples | practice limits | one-week plan | FAQ

Versant test questions at a glance

There is no single "Versant test". Pearson sells a family of them, and the question types you face depend entirely on which one your employer or school bought. Here is the product comparison from Pearson's official guides, checked August 28, 2026:

Sources: the Versant English Test official guide, the English Speaking and Listening Test guide, the 4 Skills Essential guide, and the Placement Test guide. The approximately 63-item count belongs to the retiring English Speaking Test, not its current 40-item replacement.

Three structural facts apply to every test in the table, and they matter more than any individual question:

• You cannot go back. Every guide repeats the same line: "You can only move forward : it is not possible to go back to a previous question or re-record an answer."
• Silence ends the item. Start speaking within 6 seconds on most tasks (8 seconds on Sentence Builds and Conversations) or the system moves on and scores the silence.
• A partial answer still counts. "If you do not complete an answer in the allowed time, your partial response will be saved and scored as it is." Half a sentence beats no sentence.

Which Versant test will you actually sit in 2026?

Worth checking before you prepare, because 2026 is a transition year. Pearson's current test catalogue lists the classic English Speaking Test as "Retiring soon, replaced by English Speaking and Listening Test".

The replacement keeps the recognisable tasks : repeats, retellings, opinions : but reorganises the scoring. The old test reported Sentence Mastery, Vocabulary, Fluency and Pronunciation. The 2024 Speaking and Listening test reports Speaking, Listening and Manner of Speaking instead, where "Manner of Speaking" covers pronouncing English sounds close to typical norms and speaking "at a normal conversational pace, without too much hesitation or unusual pauses". It also adds a genuinely new task: listening to a passage and answering three comprehension questions about it, rather than only retelling it.

Practically, ask your recruiter two questions: which Versant product is assigned, and whether the session is remotely monitored. Do not infer the product from an employer's industry. Employer-specific evidence is covered in our guides to the Versant test at Accenture, Concentrix, Teleperformance, TCS and Cognizant, Deloitte USI, and Amazon.

Current six speaking and listening tasks

Pearson's current official guide lists 40 items. These original examples demonstrate the shape only.

Part A: Short answers

You hear a simple question and answer with a word or short phrase. There are eight items and the response time is 15 seconds.

Original example: "Do people normally wear gloves on their hands or feet?" A sufficient answer is "Hands." Do not add a long explanation when the task asks for a short fact.

Part B: Repeat the sentence

You hear one sentence and repeat it. There are sixteen items with 15 seconds for each response.

Original example: "The delivery should arrive before the office closes." Repeat the complete sentence, preserving its meaning, word order, stress, and rhythm. If one word is lost, continue rather than abandoning the response.

Part C: Questions about conversations

You hear a short exchange, then answer one question. There are six items and each response has 15 seconds.

Original example: One speaker asks whether a room is booked for two or three. The second says that two was unavailable, so it was booked for three. The question asks, "What time is the room booked?" The answer is "Three o'clock."

Both times may appear in the audio. Listening for the final decision matters more than repeating the last number you heard.

Part D: Questions about passages

You hear a short passage and answer questions about its details. There are six items with 15 seconds per answer.

Original example passage: "Maya planned to take the train, but a signal failure stopped service. She shared a taxi with two colleagues and arrived ten minutes late." A question could ask why Maya did not take the train or how she reached work.

Practise identifying people, events, causes, choices, and outcomes after one listen.

Part E: Retell a passage

You hear a passage and retell it in your own words. There are two items and each response allows 30 seconds.

Original example: A cyclist's chain breaks near a park. A runner stops, uses a small tool kit, repairs it, and leaves without taking payment. A useful retell preserves the main person, problem, action, and result. It does not need the original wording.

Part F: Give your opinion

You answer an everyday opinion question. There are two items with 40 seconds for each response.

Original example: "Is it better to work from home or in an office? Give reasons for your answer." A simple structure is position, reason, example, and conclusion. The goal is a coherent response, not memorized specialist knowledge.

The current test reports Overall Ability, Speaking, Listening, and Manner of Speaking. That combination is why a practice routine must include listening questions as well as pronunciation and fluency.

The written tasks: fill in the blanks, dictation and passage reconstruction

If your test runs 30 or 50 minutes, you are sitting a four-skills version and typing is part of your score. These are the tasks people search for as "Versant fill in the blanks" and "Versant dictation".

Sentence Completion, the fill in the blanks task (18 items on 4SE, 20 on VEPT, 25 seconds each)

You see a sentence with one word missing and type exactly one word. It scores Reading.

Our examples:

• "The flight was delayed for three hours, so we ______ in the terminal until midnight." → waited
• "She apologised ______ arriving late to the interview." → for
• "Because the main road was closed, the driver took a longer ______ to the warehouse." → route
• "There is not ______ time left to finish the report before the deadline." → enough

Two of those four are pure collocation and preposition knowledge, which is exactly the point. Pearson's tip: "Look at the words either side of the gap", "Pay attention to spelling and capitalization", and "Only type one word." Typing two words scores zero even if both are right.

Dictation (14 items on 4SE, 16 on VEPT, 25 seconds each)

You hear a sentence once and type it word for word. On the Placement Test it scores Listening; on the 4 Skills Essential Test it scores Listening and Writing, because "appropriate grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization" are assessed.

Our examples:

• "The meeting has been moved to Thursday at ten o'clock."
• "Please send the invoice to the address on the second page."
• "Nobody answered the phone, so I left a short message."

The official tip is counter-intuitive and worth obeying: listen to the whole sentence before you start typing. Typing while listening splits your attention and you lose the ending. Hold the meaning, then type fast.

Conversations (12 items on 4SE, 12 on VEPT)

You hear two people talk, then answer one question with a word or short phrase.

Our example: A: "Did you book the meeting room for two or three o'clock?" B: "Three : two was already taken by the finance team." Question: What time is the room booked? → Three o'clock.

Distractors are deliberate. Both times get said; only one is the booking.

Passage Reconstruction (2 items on 4SE, 3 on VEPT, 90 seconds each)

You read a short passage, it disappears after 30 seconds, and you rewrite it in your own words.

Our example passage: Maria forgot her umbrella at the office. It started raining hard on her way to the station. A stranger walking beside her offered to share his umbrella until they reached the platform. Maria thanked him and only afterwards realised she had never asked his name.

Pearson's instruction is precise: "Do not write a quick summary : include all the details you can." Detail density scores; elegance does not.

The Placement Test adds two tasks nobody else has: a 60-second Typing passage (unscored, but administrators see it, and you need above 12 words per minute with 90% accuracy for a valid Writing score) and an 18-minute Summary and Opinion essay pair, 25 to 50 words of summary plus at least 50 words of your own argument.

What the current tasks measure

Pearson's report combines the tasks into Overall Ability, Speaking, Listening, and Manner of Speaking. Do not transfer a diagnostic score model from the retiring 63-item English Speaking Test onto the current product.

Current reports use Pearson's Global Scale of English and CEFR references. The Council of Europe CEFR level descriptions explain the framework, while Pearson's report and product guide explain the score actually issued. Employers and institutions decide how they use it.

For practical interpretation, read good Versant scores and levels. No preparation site can publish a universal employer cutoff when the organization has not stated one.

How we researched

We rechecked the article on August 28, 2026. Pearson's current Versant catalogue establishes which spoken product is current and which older product is retiring. The English Speaking and Listening official guide supplies the 40-item format, response times, task order, reporting categories, and setup.

The official 4 Skills Essential and English Placement guides are used only for the written-task section. The older English Speaking Test guide and validation report are used only when this article explicitly labels a task or result as legacy.

Every example question is original. We matched the public constraints without copying Pearson's sample items or claiming access to a live item bank. Item wording, employer cutoffs, and a candidate's assigned product remain unknown unless Pearson or the test administrator publishes them.

Versant test demo: what is official and what is not

Both official guides end the same way: request a free unscored sample test, and optionally buy a scored practice test that returns a real score report. Access usually runs through your test administrator, so ask them for the demo link before test day : it is the only way to see the actual interface, timing bars and examiner voice.

What is not official: the flood of "Versant test questions and answers 2026" PDFs, YouTube dumps and Telegram files. They fail for a structural reason, not a moral one. Pearson draws items "at random from a large item pool", so "most or all items are different from one test administration to the next", and proprietary algorithms pick each item on difficulty and similarity. Memorising a leaked list buys you nothing, and unscored trial items are seeded into live tests specifically to keep the bank refreshed.

The one thing worth rehearsing from a demo is the interface: the countdown, the beep before your recording starts, the impossibility of going back. Combine that with a proper equipment check : covered in our guide to Versant test setup, camera and headphones : and you remove most of the avoidable failure modes.

Where practice helps, and where it honestly does not

This is the section most Versant guides skip, and it comes straight from Pearson's own data.

Format familiarity alone barely moves your score. In a test-retest study for Pearson's older English Speaking Test, reported in its validation report (n=140), correlations between administrations were 0.97 with a practice test, 0.97 without one, and 0.97 across the repetition-effects comparison. Mean scores across three sittings differed by less than one point : "increasing familiarity with the tasks does not result in any consistent change in Versant English overall scores". Translation: taking six practice tests this weekend will not add points. What raises a Versant score is a genuine increase in how automatically you process and produce spoken English.

When something else beats a speaking app:

• Your test includes typing. No conversation app improves your words-per-minute or your comma placement. If you are sitting the 4 Skills Essential or Placement Test, spend part of your week on typing drills and written accuracy.
• You have a specific grammar gap. If you cannot form past-perfect clauses at all, conversation surfaces the gap but a grammar course closes it faster.
• You need an official score prediction. Only Pearson's paid practice test gives you a real score report. No third-party tool, ours included, can output a Versant score.
• Your bottleneck is nerves, not English. Then the fix is exposure, not content : start with our guide to overcoming the fear of speaking English.

Where daily speaking practice genuinely helps: the automaticity required for repeats, retells, and opinions. Conversation and passage questions also need separate listening work. A useful plan combines speaking volume, one-listen comprehension, and review of the specific sounds or pauses that reduce clarity.

A one-week practice plan by task type

Use this plan for the current 40-item Speaking and Listening product.

• Monday: Answer twenty simple short questions in one word or phrase.
• Tuesday: Repeat sentences of increasing length and review omitted words.
• Wednesday: Listen to ten short dialogues and state the final decision or outcome.
• Thursday: Listen to short passages once, then answer who, what, why, and how questions.
• Friday: Retell two passages in 30 seconds using your own words.
• Saturday: Give four 40-second opinions using position, reason, example, and conclusion.
• Sunday: Combine all six tasks into one 17-minute run and complete the audio setup check.

Daily conversation can support response speed, but it does not replace task-specific listening. SpeakShark provides three free sessions per day. Premium costs $10 for one month, $25 for three months, or $69 for one year. It adds longer sessions, teacher choices, more topics, advanced feedback, and history.

For more structure, use how to prepare for Versant, Versant setup and headphones, and phone-call English practice. The employer guides for Accenture, Concentrix, HCLTech, Deloitte USI, and TCS and Cognizant explain why company and product claims must remain separate.

FAQ

SpeakShark details

• Site: speakshark.com
• Support: speaksharksupport@gmail.com
• Free tier: 3 AI conversation sessions per day with no card required

Sources

1. Pearson Versant test catalogue, checked August 28, 2026 for current products and the retirement status of the older English Speaking Test.
2. Pearson English Speaking and Listening official guide, checked for the 40 items, six tasks, timing, reporting categories, and setup.
3. Pearson 4 Skills Essential guide, used for the separate multi-skill task descriptions.
4. Pearson English Placement Test guide, used for the separate placement-product task descriptions.
5. Council of Europe CEFR level descriptions, used only for the proficiency framework context.

We are a speaking improvement tool. SpeakShark is not an exam preparation provider and is not affiliated with Pearson or any exam board. For official rules, formats, samples, scores, and test-day instructions, go to the exam body, test provider, or administrator. Use SpeakShark to make your spoken English stronger, and use official material to learn the test.