PTE Speaking – Read Aloud Strategies
Tips for Read Aloud:
- We get around 4-5 questions in this section.
- Fluency, pronunciation and content are analyzed during speaking so speak without any hesitancy.
- Be clear and confident. Speak with enthusiasm.
- Speak at a pace that is comfortable for you and try to sound as natural as possible. I feel if you try to impose a speed that is not comfortable to you, it may do more harm than good.
- Search for difficult words and pronounce it clearly and loudly before it starts recording.
- Fluctuation in the tone and stress for some words is important.
- Watch for plural words, don’t pronounce them wrongly.
- Use the given 35 seconds to read through the text and identify the difficult words with which you might struggle.
- Pay attention to flow of the sentences. Take care of the commas (,) colon (:) semicolons (;) inverted commas (“—–“) and give an appropriate pause and stress as and when required.
- While reading aloud, you should not speak in a flat tone. Just remember the way a radio Jockey or announcer speaks i.e. clearly and in a rhythm. The listener should feel that the information you are giving is interesting, and is able to understand easily. When there is a full stop, your voice should also fade away to make the listener feel that your sentence has ended.
- Try to read the sentence like a news reader with some intonation and purpose.
- Take care of inappropriate stress and incorrect pronunciation of some words.
- Before it starts recording, read the entire sentence once.
- Don’t speak too fast and too slow (record at an appropriate speed)
- Also, do not speak loudly. Speak at a normal pitch. Firstly, when you speak loudly the computer cannot understand. Secondly it will disturb the other candidates and in return they would also speak loudly, which will disturb you.
- Time for this section is more than sufficient.
- Start speaking as soon as the recording bar appears or when you listen to the beep. If you do not speak for 3 seconds during the process, the computer will stop recording your voice.
Do not try to speak in foreign accent. Speak in a neutral accent i.e. in your natural way.