Read Aloud – Format + Marking
Task: A text appears on screen. Read the text aloud.
Skills assessed: Reading and speaking
Prompt length: Text up to 60 words
Time to answer: Varies by item, depending on the length of text.
| Skills | Marks |
| Reading and Speaking | Content – 5 Pronunciation – 5 Fluency – 5 —————– Total – 15 |
Read Aloud – Tips
The recording status box displays a countdown until the microphone opens. You have 30-40 seconds to prepare, depending on the length of the passage. You hear a short tone. After the tone, start speaking immediately. Do not start speaking before the microphone opens because your voice will not be recorded.
You should speak clearly. There is no need to rush.
Finish speaking before the progress bar reaches the end. The word “Recording” changes to “Completed”.
You are only able to record your response once.
TIP: If you remain silent for longer than 3 seconds, the recording will stop.
MAJOR ATTRACTION: 20 / 90 in reading come from Read Aloud
What to be remembered while speaking?
- Pause at Punctuation
- Stress on Key Words
Punctuation
You have 30-40 seconds to look at the text before the microphone opens, so use this time to break the text up into meaningful chunks, using the punctuation as a guide. This will show you the places where you can make a tiny pause and alter your intonation – going up when you begin reading a chunk and falling a little when you end a chunk.
Using appropriate pausing helps you to read more fluently and give the full meaning of the text. This will improve your score. Look at where the pauses / are indicated in the example:
Photography’s gaze widened during the early years of the twentieth century / and, / as the snapshot camera became increasingly popular, / the making of photographs became increasingly available / to a wide cross-section of the public. / The British people grew accustomed to, / and were hungry for, / the photographic image.
Stress on Key Words
When you read the text, stress the words that help to convey meaning, by reading them in a slightly louder voice and adding emphasis to key syllables, e.g., development. Also use rising and falling intonation patterns to show how the ideas are linked or are coming to an end. Look at the patterns in this text; the stressed words are underlined:
The development of easy-to-use statistical software has changed the way statistics is being taught and learned . Students can make transformations of variables , create graphs of distributions of variables , and select among statistical analyses all at the click of a button . However , even with these advancements , students sometimes find statistics to be an arduous task.
For Classroom activity, a lot of posts have been added. Please refer to them under reading Aloud Heading.
