Oral Fluency & Pronunciation Scoring Criteria

Oral Fluency & Pronunciation Scoring Criteria : Oral Fluency & Pronunciation influence your PTE scores in a big way. Improving these skills can sky rocket your PTE scores.

Oral Fluency is nothing but the flow, speed and correct use of grammar in your response. Pronunciation is the clarity and natural articulation of every word that you speak (the sound made by combination of words).

Most of the test takers are able to form the content but struggle with these two skills.

So, what are those common or rather unconscious mistakes that you might be doing that are negatively affecting your overall score.

And most importantly what is the solution.

Let us look in depth few recommendations that you must keep in mind; those that will help you better your score by improving your oral fluency and pronunciation.

PTE Speaking is scored on 3 key traits:

• Content
• Oral Fluency
• Pronunciation

We have time and again, discussed the importance of content in PTE Exam. In this post, we will discuss the impact of Oral Fluency & Pronunciation on your scores.

Oral Fluency Pronunciation Scoring Criteria

Let’s check out the Oral Fluency scoring rules:

• 5 points:  When speech shows smooth rhythm and phrasing. Without hesitation, repetitions, false start or non-native phonological simplifications.

The best scenario: This means that your message should loud and clear. The speech rolls on at an even pace and there are no bumps, repeated words, “ums”, “ahs” or redundant sounds.

• 4 points: Speech rhythm is acceptable with appropriate phrasing and word emphasis. No more than one hesitation, one repetition or a false start.
• 3 points: Uneven but acceptable speed. More than 1 hesitation. There are few repetitions or false starts.
• 2 points: Speech may be uneven or staccato. Speech (if >= 6 words) has at least one smooth three-word run, and no more than two or three hesitations, repetitions or false starts. There may be one long pause, but not two or more
• 1 point: Speech has irregular phrasing or sentence rhythm.
• ZERO: Speech is slow and labored with little discernible phrase grouping, multiple hesitations, pauses, false starts, and/or major phonological simplifications.

Oral Fluency Pronunciation Scoring Criteria

The worst scenario: “The graph shows… em… the errr… the features of, the features of the… uh, features of the econ-… economic structure.”

Now let’s discuss Pronunciation Scoring Rules:

• 5 points: All vowels and consonants are produced in a manner that is easily understood by regular speakers of the language. Stress is placed correctly in all words and sentence-level stress is fully appropriate.
• 4 points: Advanced Vowels and consonants are pronounced clearly and unambiguously. All words are easily understandable. A few consonants or consonant sequences may be distorted. Stress is placed correctly on all common words, and sentence level stress is reasonable
• 3 points:  Most vowels and consonants are pronounced correctly. Some consistent errors might make a few words unclear. A few consonants in certain contexts may be regularly distorted, omitted or mispronounced.
• 2 points: Some consonants and vowels are consistently mispronounced in a non-native like manner. At least 2/3 of speech is intelligible, but listeners might need to adjust to the accent. Some consonants are regularly omitted, and consonant sequences may be simplified. Stress may be placed incorrectly on some words or be unclear.
• 1 point: Many consonants and vowels are mispronounced, resulting in a strong intrusive foreign accent. Listeners may have difficulty understanding about 1/3 of the words. Many consonants may be distorted or omitted.
• ZERO: Pronunciation seems completely characteristic of another language. Many consonants and vowels are mispronounced, misordered or omitted. Listeners may find more than 1/2 of the speech unintelligible.

Importance of Oral Fluency & Pronunciation

Now let’s take an example of Describe Image:

In ‘Describe Image’, you get approx 6-7 questions & your score depends upon Content, Oral Fluency & Pronunciation.

The maximum raw score you achieve for every item is 15 ( 5 for content + 5 for oral fluency + 5 for pronunciation).

Now if your are only concentrating on your content part, then you may achieve 5 out of 5 for content,

but if your oral fluency and pronunciation is not good then they can bring your score down.