Speaking
Read a short text of up to 60 words aloud, clearly and accurately.
Read the passage below aloud.
The migration of monarch butterflies spans thousands of kilometres, a journey no single individual completes in its lifetime — instead, it unfolds across several successive generations.
Mark the pause after 'kilometres' and treat the dash as a full stop. Reading it as three phrases rather than one long line is what keeps the pace even.
The moment the text appears, read it silently once from start to finish. You are looking for what it is about and where the sentence turns, because a phrase you understand is a phrase you can deliver without hesitating mid-clause.
Spend the rest of the 40 seconds of preparation marking where you will pause and which content words carry the stress. Note any proper nouns or technical terms and decide their pronunciation now, while there is no microphone running.
When recording starts, begin at once and read chunk by chunk rather than word by word, dropping your pitch at each marked boundary. Up to 60 words fits comfortably in 40 seconds at a natural speaking pace, so there is no reason to rush.
If you misread a word, carry on from the next word instead of going back. Oral fluency is judged across the whole reading, and a repair breaks the rhythm of everything after it. Finish the final phrase before the recording closes.
Use the preparation time to mark stress points and phrase boundaries rather than rehearsing silently. Read in meaning groups, not word by word, and keep moving if you stumble — a self-correction costs more fluency marks than the original slip cost pronunciation marks.
Chasing perfect pronunciation at the expense of pace. A steady, evenly-paced reading with a mild accent outscores a hesitant, careful one.
A reliable delivery has three moving parts you set up in the preparation time: mark the phrase boundaries, usually at punctuation and before conjunctions; underline the one stressed word in each phrase; and settle the pronunciation of any name or technical term. Then read boundary to boundary, dropping your pitch slightly at each mark and lifting the stressed word. It is a rhythm you can apply to any passage, not a script to memorise.