How Read Aloud works
A passage of up to 60 words appears on screen and a countdown starts. You get 30 to 40 seconds to read it silently and plan, then a tone signals that recording has begun. You then have 30 to 40 seconds to read the passage aloud. You can record only once, so there is no second attempt if the first one goes badly.
The task feeds your Speaking score. Because the words are given to you, it measures how you speak rather than what you know, which makes it one of the most trainable tasks in the test.
What is scored
Pearson lists three scoring factors for Read Aloud:
- Content: how closely what you say matches the text. Skipped, added or replaced words work against you.
- Pronunciation: whether your speech is easy for a range of listeners to understand, including word stress and clear sounds.
- Oral fluency: a smooth, even rhythm with natural phrasing, without hesitations, restarts or long gaps.
Since August 2025 some responses are part-scored by trained human raters as well as AI, but humans never score pronunciation or fluency. The practice tool on this page compares a speech recognition transcript with the original text and marks matched and missed words. That gives you a good check on content, but it does not measure pronunciation or fluency the way Pearson's scoring engine does, and speech recognition can occasionally mishear a word you said correctly.
How to answer
- Read the whole passage once for meaning. You phrase a sentence better when you know where it is going.
- Plan your pauses. Pause briefly at commas and full stops, and group words into thought units, for example "the new policy / was introduced / after a long debate".
- Spot the hard words early. Say long or technical words under your breath during preparation so they are not a surprise.
- Start promptly after the tone and read at a steady, conversational pace. Sixty words in 30 to 40 seconds leaves room for a natural speed, so there is no need to rush.
- Stress the content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives) and let small words like "of" and "the" stay light. This is what makes speech sound natural rather than flat.
- Keep going if you slip. A single wrong word costs far less than stopping, backtracking and repeating the phrase.
Common mistakes
- Reading word by word with the same weight on every word, which sounds robotic even when every word is correct.
- Going back to fix an error. Restarts and repetitions break the flow of the whole response.
- Rushing to finish early. Fast speech tends to blur word endings such as -ed and -s.
- Pausing in the middle of a phrase, for example between "the" and its noun, instead of at a natural break.
- Letting the volume drop at the end of sentences, so the last words are hard to hear.
- Starting several seconds after the tone because you are still rereading the text.
Handling unfamiliar words
Sooner or later a passage will contain a word you have never said aloud. Break it into syllables during preparation, make your best guess at the stress, and then say it once, confidently, at the same pace as the words around it. A slightly wrong vowel in one word does much less damage than a hesitation, a false start and a second attempt. If you find certain word types keep catching you (science terms, place names, words ending in -tion or -ical), collect them and practice them aloud between sessions. Read Aloud also builds skills you need for Repeat Sentence, since both reward clear phrasing and steady rhythm.