1.3 Section A - Reading Aloud (8 Sentences)

What is tested. A sentence appears on screen and you read it aloud. The engine compares what it hears against the expected words, so your score is driven by how many words come out recognisably, how evenly you pace them, and how cleanly you finish them. This is the purest pronunciation and clarity task in the assessment.

How it is scored. Every word you produce correctly counts; every word you skip, merge, or swallow counts against you. Word endings matter more than they look: the final -s of "benefits" and the final -ed of "completed" carry grammar the engine listens for. Pace is scored too - both racing and crawling read as disfluency.

Technique 1 - Read before you speak

Use the moment the sentence appears to read it silently from end to end once. Most stumbles happen when the eyes are still decoding while the mouth is already moving. One silent pass costs one second and removes almost all mid-sentence surprises.

Technique 2 - Chunk and breathe at the slashes

Split every sentence into three or four meaning groups in your head, and allow yourself a tiny breath between them. "The marketing team | will present its quarterly results | to the regional managers | on Friday morning." Chunked reading sounds natural, protects you from breathlessness on long sentences, and keeps your pace even.

Technique 3 - Land at about 100-120 words per minute

That is a calm conversational speed - slow enough that every syllable survives, fast enough to sound fluent. If you notice you are finishing eight-word sentences in under three seconds, you are racing, and racing is where dropped endings live.

Technique 4 - Punch the stress on multisyllable words

Long words are scored largely on whether the stressed syllable lands in the right place. Give the stressed syllable slightly more time and volume, and reduce the rest. The trap-word table below lists the words that most often cost Indian candidates marks; drill them until the stress is automatic.

Technique 5 - Finish the sentence

The last two or three words of a sentence often carry its meaning, yet they are the first casualties of trailing off. Deliver the final word with the same energy as the first, then stop. A clean stop also signals the engine that your answer is complete.

Practice material: Part 2 gives you 24 reading sentences in three difficulty sets, with the trap words marked.