PET exam prep — scored 75 on reading, here's what I wish I'd done differently
I took the PET last month after about three months of preparation. My overall score was a B2 pass but my reading score was 75 and my writing dragged everything down at 61. I'm sharing because when I was prepping I really wanted to hear from people who'd recently taken it rather than just official study guides, which tend to make everything sound more straightforward than it actually is.
I was studying about 90 minutes a day on weekdays and closer to three hours on weekends. For the first six weeks I focused mostly on vocabulary and grammar because my grammar had gotten rusty since I'd last done any formal English study. That was the right call. The writing section requires you to use a range of structures accurately, and drilling grammar explicitly — not just reading in English — made a noticeable difference in my accuracy.
My mistake was not doing enough timed writing practice. I'd do the prompts but I wouldn't time myself strictly, which meant my actual exam writing was rushed and I ran out of time on the second part. If I did it again I'd spend the last four weeks doing nothing but timed full writing tasks under exam conditions. The reading and listening sections are challenging but manageable with consistent practice. Writing under time pressure is its own skill entirely.
Three months at 90 minutes a day is pretty close to what I did. The listening section is the most consistent — once you know the question types it's very practice-able. Writing is where most people leave points on the table.
The writing section time pressure is brutal. I managed it okay because I'd been doing timed practice for six weeks, but a lot of people in my test room were clearly not finished when time was called. Treat it like a sport — you have to train the clock, not just the content.
A reading score of 75 is solid. I scored 71 on reading and found the longer texts in Part 5 the hardest — the vocabulary in context questions require you to understand nuance, not just dictionary definitions. Reading varied materials well above B2 level helped me with that.
Grammar drilling made a big difference for me too. I was comfortable with English but my grammatical range was limited, and PET writing specifically rewards using varied structures correctly. A Cambridge B2 grammar workbook was the most useful thing I bought.
Honestly, the schedule thing was everything for me. I work full-time and have two kids so I couldn't do marathon study sessions. What actually worked was 20-30 minutes every morning before anyone else woke up, and I'd do one practice reading passage. That's it. Didn't try to be a hero about it.
The reading score I'm pretty happy with, but I wish I'd spent more time on writing earlier. I kept pushing it off because it felt harder to practice alone. By the time I realized how much it was dragging me down I didn't have enough weeks left to really fix it. If you're in the same boat, don't wait on the writing like I did.
Congrats on passing! Your reading score is actually solid — I think a lot of people underestimate how much grammar precision matters for that section. The thing that genuinely moved the needle for me was drilling modal verbs and conditionals specifically. I'd been glossing over them thinking I knew them well enough, but working through pet/questions/modal verbs conditionals showed me I was making small errors I didn't even notice in normal conversation.
Honestly it's one of those things where you think you've got it until you see it tested in context. Even a few hours focused there made reading comprehension easier because I wasn't second-guessing the grammar while trying to process meaning. If you're retaking or just want to bump that score up, I'd start there before anything else.
Reading improvement for me clicked when I stopped circling the right answer and started figuring out exactly why the three wrong ones were wrong. Sounds obvious but I wasn't doing it at first. I'd get a question right and just move on, which felt efficient but wasn't building anything. The pet/questions/error identification correction 5 set actually helped a lot here because the distractors are really well designed and you can't just pattern-match your way through them.
Once I made that shift I started seeing the same trap logic repeat across different question types. The wrong answers aren't random, they're targeting specific misunderstandings, and if you can name the misunderstanding you've basically inoculated yourself against that whole category of mistake. Your writing will catch up too if you apply the same logic there, asking why a sentence is wrong rather than just rewriting it by feel.
I failed the first time with a 58 on writing and honestly it came down to not knowing the error patterns well enough. I thought I could wing the grammar sections but you really can't. What changed everything for me was drilling specific question types over and over until I wasn't second-guessing myself. I spent a lot of time on stuff like pet/questions/error identification correction 5 because that's the type that kept tripping me up.
Second attempt I went from 58 to 71 on writing which isn't perfect but it passed. The reading section you mentioned at 75 is actually solid, don't stress that. It's the writing where most people stall because it feels subjective but it isn't really. Once I understood what the examiners were looking for in terms of structure and register it clicked fast. Give yourself more time than you think you need on practice tests.