TOEFL SpeechRater Tips

1 Comment / Speaking / By Michael Buckhoff

Learn TOEFL SpeechRater Tips to help you score higher on the speaking section of the TOEFL Exam.

What is TOEFL SpeechRater?

At ETS’s website, you can complete TOEFL practice tests. The company spent millions of dollars designing an artificial intelligence scoring program to score speaking practice tests that you complete. As of August 2019, ETS begin using this scoring engine to score your TOEFL speaking tasks. In addition, human raters are also used to score your speaking tasks.

What does TOEFL SpeechRater assess?

In particular, SpeechRater assesses your delivery in several important areas of fluency and pronunciation. In addition, it looks at the vocabulary depth to your ideas.

Because SpeechRater evaluates your overall fluency, keep in mind the following tips:

Speaking Rate: Make sure you are speaking between 100-150 words a minute. Moreover, make you that you are speaking clearly so that is easy for others to understand you.
Sustained Speech: Develop a speaking style in which you are pausing after 4-5 stress words. Also, try to avoid filler words such as “um,” “er,” and “you know.”
Pause Frequency: Make distinct pauses at the end of each of your sentences. Use a slightly lower tone when you get to the end of your sentences. Do not pause when you are in the middle of an idea. Instead, try to break your sentences into meaningful, grammatical thought groups.
Repetitions: Do not repeat words or phrases unnecessarily such as “Good roommates, good roommates are honest.”

Furthermore, SpeechRater evaluates your pronunciation; therefore, follow these pronunciation tips:

Rhthym: Place appropriate stress on the correct syllable on multi-syllabic words. Make that stressed syllable clearer, louder, longer, and higher pitched. In addition, develop a natural rhythm to the sentences that you speak. Place more stress on content words such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. Place less stress on function words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and determiners.
Pronunciation: Enunciate vowel sounds similar to a native speaker. Make sure you distinguish among short vs. long vowels and simple vs. complex vowels.

Finally, SpeechRater evaluates your language use such as vocabulary depth. Therefore, follow this important TOEFL SpeechRater tip:

Make sure you are using a variety of less common, precise words.

TOEFL SpeechRater Tips

Watch the below 20-minute video to get a complete explanation of how SpeechRater will be used to score your speaking tasks. That way you can better prepare now so that you have better control of your delivery and language use when you take the TOEFL exam.