Password / Skills Plus Practice & Vocabulary
Password / Skills Plus — free practice with graded vocabulary, dictation, intensive listening, cloze and SRS spaced repetition. An English proficiency test accepted by hundreds of UK universities. Official practice tests are paid (£40 each) and free material is almost non-existent — that's where we come in.
Three difficulty levels (L1 Foundation A1-A2, L2 Intermediate B1-B2, L3 Advanced C1-C2) across six practice modes: vocabulary, dictation, intensive listening, cloze, pronunciation and writing.
An English proficiency test accepted by hundreds of UK universities. Official practice tests are paid (£40 each) and free material is almost non-existent — that's where we come in.
Password: the UK university pre-sessional test almost no one has heard of
Password Skills (and the harder Password Skills Plus) is accepted by hundreds of UK universities as a pre-sessional English assessment. Yet outside admissions offices its public visibility is low: there are no large-scale prep books, no coaching school marketing pipelines, no influencer ecosystem. Many students discover Password only after their university nominates it as the assessment they must take for pre-sessional placement.
That obscurity is precisely the opening this tool stack tries to fill. The Password reading sections reward exactly the comprehension skills our intensive-listening and cloze tools train: rapid scanning for specific information, inferring connotation from collocation, and identifying argument structure across a paragraph. The writing assessment uses CEFR-style criteria (Task Response, Coherence, Lexis, Grammar) which our writing word counter aligns to via self-rubric — particularly the B2 essay format around 150 words.
Two structural facts about Password worth internalising. First, the test is **almost entirely receptive** at the Skills level — reading and listening — with writing added at Skills Plus. So if your weak skill is speaking, Password is structurally a kinder test than IELTS or Cambridge; if your weak skill is reading speed, it will hurt you. Second, scoring is on a CEFR-aligned 0–9 scale, but the granularity around B2 (the most common admission threshold) is finer than IELTS's half-band steps. A 5.5 vs a 6.0 on Password matters more than on IELTS.
Preparation strategy: prioritise extensive reading at your target CEFR band, dictate sentences using our intensive-listening tool to build parsing under time pressure, and for Skills Plus, write a 150-word B2 essay every other day using the word counter self-rubric. The single highest-leverage habit is **reading 30 minutes a day at exactly the level above your current band** — drop down only when you genuinely cannot follow.
Frequently asked questions
Is Password Skills the same as Password Skills Plus?
No. Skills covers reading and listening only. Skills Plus adds a writing component. Most pre-sessional placements use one or the other depending on the university — check the specific letter you received.
Where can I sit a Password test?
Password is computer-delivered and supervised by the institution that requires it — usually online with remote proctoring. There is no public test-centre network like IELTS.
Does Password results get accepted for UK visa?
Generally no — Password is for academic admission, not UKVI SELT. For visa purposes you need an SELT-listed test like IELTS UKVI or LanguageCert IESOL.
What Password score do I need for a UK pre-sessional?
The threshold varies: most foundation programmes require a 5.0 overall on Password Skills; main-stream pre-sessional admission usually wants 6.0; some Russell Group pathway programmes require 6.5. The CEFR alignment is roughly B1 at 5.0, B2 at 6.0, B2+ at 6.5. Always confirm with the specific institution.
Can I retake Password if I miss the target?
Yes — most universities allow retakes within their pre-sessional booking window, though slot availability is limited and the institution may charge the full fee per attempt. Unlike IELTS or LanguageCert, you cannot book independently — the retake has to be arranged through the same institution.
How does the Password score compare to IELTS?
Approximately: Password 5.0 ≈ IELTS 5.0–5.5; Password 6.0 ≈ IELTS 6.0–6.5; Password 6.5 ≈ IELTS 6.5–7.0. The mapping is closer at B2 and less precise at C1 because Password's upper bands are tested less frequently.
Data sources
Fees, format and recognition figures on this page are checked against the exam provider's official site: Password English Language Testing official site · Last verified