Voice & Speaking Pace
Read a short passage aloud and the page times you. Nothing is recorded or uploaded. Mean conversational pace is about 140 words per minute (SD 25); your pace is compared to that curve.
The microphone needs a secure (https) connection and a browser that supports it. This page cannot ask for one here.
Read this aloud
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Whether you read fast or slow, speaking speed reveals how your brain processes and transmits language in real time.”
28 words
Read the passage at your normal speaking pace and press Done reading, or let the clock run out at 15 seconds. The microphone is only used to time you; nothing is stored or uploaded.
Read the passage aloud to see your speaking pace.
Related tests
About this test
Read a short passage aloud while the module times you. The microphone is used to time the reading; the audio stays in your browser and is not uploaded. It reports words per minute against conversational English norms: mean 140 WPM, SD 25, from Tauroza and Allison (1990), Applied Linguistics, and Yuan, Liberman and Cieri (2006).
Most speakers land between 115 and 165. Podcasters aim for 150 to 160, TED speakers average about 163, audiobooks are read at 150 to 175, auctioneers pass 250. At 140 you speak about 2.7 times faster than the average person types.
What is a normal speaking rate?
Around 140 words per minute in conversational English, SD 25. Reading aloud and presenting tend to run slower, about 120 to 150; excited conversation runs faster. The module compares to the conversational figure.
Is 180 WPM fast?
Yes. 180 WPM is faster than about 95% of speakers (z = 1.6 on mean 140, SD 25). Auctioneers and sports commentators work there, and listeners start to lose detail above roughly 160.
Do languages differ in speaking speed?
In syllables per second, yes: Pellegrino, Coupé and Marsico (2011) measured Japanese at 7.84 syllables a second, English at 6.19 and Mandarin at 5.18. Information per syllable moves the other way, so the rate of meaning delivered is similar across languages, about 39 bits a second (Coupé et al., 2019).
Percentiles above come from the same parameters the Voice & Speaking Pace module uses. See the methodology for how they are calculated.