How Fast Should You Read in PTE Read Aloud? Words Per Minute, Explained

Pearson's Read Aloud advice is about naturalness, not a number. Speak at a normal pace, the way you would on a phone call. Do not slow down to fill the recording time, and do not race through the text either. Pause where the punctuation tells you to, at commas and full stops, and make stressed syllables a little higher, louder and longer.

Speed matters because it feeds oral fluency, which Pearson scores on smooth rhythm, phrasing and stress, and because rushing costs pronunciation when word endings disappear. Silence matters too: in the test the microphone closes if you stay silent for three seconds, so a long hesitation can end your answer early. The format, timing and an annotated example are in our PTE Read Aloud strategy guide.

The 120 to 150 range is coaching advice, not an official rule, but it matches how people actually speak. Audiobook narrators usually aim for around 150 to 160 words per minute, and a 2019 review of nearly 200 reading studies by the psychologist Marc Brysbaert put the average adult reading English aloud at about 183 words per minute.

PTE asks for a little less than that average for a good reason. You are reading an unfamiliar academic text after 30 to 40 seconds of preparation, in your second language, and every word has to be clear enough for the scoring system to recognise. A pace you can hold without slipping beats a fast pace that falls apart in the second sentence.

Your mouth works in syllables, not words. "I make a cup of tea" is 6 words and 6 syllables. "Universities encourage collaboration" is 3 words but 13 syllables, and it takes about twice as long to say. Read both at the same comfortable rhythm and the first sentence will score a far higher words-per-minute figure, even though you did not speed up at all.

That is exactly what happened in our test. Real Read Aloud passages are academic, and we measured them at about 1.65 syllables per word. Our easy practice passages average about 1.28. The reader in our example said 48 words, 58 syllables, in 15.7 seconds: 183 words per minute on that text. At the same rhythm, a 60-word academic passage of about 99 syllables would take roughly 27 seconds, which is 134 words per minute.

So if you time yourself on easy material and get a big number, do not panic and slow down. Compare like with like: either practise on Read Aloud style texts, or adjust for word length. Speech researchers usually measure speaking rate in syllables per second for this reason.

For a real Read Aloud passage, there is a quick rule. Divide the word count by 2.5 for the fast end of the target and by 2 for the slow end. A 50-word passage should take about 20 to 25 seconds; a 60-word passage about 24 to 30. Check the table below while you practise, and keep a phone stopwatch running.

If the passage is easier than a real test item, with lots of one-syllable words, expect to finish a little faster than the table says, and that is fine. Our free speaking speed test does this adjustment for you. It counts the syllables in the passage you read and shows your Read Aloud pace, plus the exact target time for that passage.

Fast readers usually know their score is not matching how fluent they feel. The giveaways are on the recording, not in the number, so listen back to one take before you change anything.

• Word endings vanish: "walked" becomes "walk", "results" becomes "result". Finish every -s, -ed and -t, and if -ed endings trip you up, work through How to Pronounce -ED: /t/, /d/, or /ɪd/?.
• Commas get skipped, so two phrases blur into one. Take a short breath at every comma and a slightly longer one at each full stop.
• You run out of air before the end of a long sentence. That is a pacing problem, not a breathing problem; slow the first half.
• Every word sounds equally loud. Speed flattens stress, so pick the key word in each phrase and let it stand out.

Slow reading in PTE is rarely about speed. It is usually reading word by word, or stopping to fix mistakes.

• Pauses land inside phrases instead of at punctuation, as in "the main / challenge / for solar". Use your preparation time to mark the chunks, then read each chunk in one breath.
• Long silences on hard words. Practise the names and long words during preparation, and if you stumble in the recording, keep going instead of restarting the sentence.
• Stretching words to use up the time. Pearson specifically warns against this; stop when the text ends.
• A slow start. Begin speaking as soon as the recording starts. Three seconds of silence closes the microphone, and hesitating at the start sets a halting rhythm for the rest.

Reading the advice is easy; hearing your own pace is harder. Open the free speaking speed test, read one of the passages aloud, and you will see your Read Aloud pace, your target time for that passage, where you paused and any silences longer than a second and a half. It runs in your browser and the recording never leaves your device, so you can repeat it as often as you like.

If your pace is fine but your reading still sounds flat, the free voice pitch test shows how much your voice rises and falls, which is the other half of natural-sounding Read Aloud. For a full practice routine, go back to the PTE Read Aloud strategy guide.