TOEIC Speaking Task 1 and 2: Read a Text Aloud
Two texts, ninety seconds each, and two separate scores. Most TOEIC speaking and writing practice tests stop at the timer, so this guide adds a 45-second marking pass, a delivery checklist for endings and stress, a number table, a marked sample and a five-day drill.
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Every TOEIC Speaking test opens with two texts to read aloud, and both run on the same countdowns: 45 seconds to prepare, then 45 seconds to read. The text stays on screen the whole time, so nothing in the task is hard to follow. That is why candidates treat it as free marks and then lose the same marks twice, through endings that disappear and a pace that starts too fast.
The published criteria for Questions 1 and 2 are narrow. One score covers pronunciation, a second covers intonation and stress, and both reward a listener who does not have to work. What follows is a marking pass that fits inside 45 seconds, a delivery checklist, a number table, one marked sample and a five-day drill.
Format facts come from the ETS TOEIC Speaking and Writing Examinee Handbook, read on 4 November 2026. The practice texts are invented, not test content.
What Questions 1 and 2 measure
The test has 11 questions, takes about 20 minutes and is reported on a scale of 0 to 200. Questions 1 and 2 give 45 seconds to prepare and 45 seconds to read aloud, and each response receives two separate ratings.
| Score | Pronunciation | Intonation and stress |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | highly intelligible, minor lapses allowed | emphasis, pauses and pitch fit the text |
| 2 | generally intelligible, some lapses | mostly fits, with some lapses |
| 1 | intelligible only at times, strong first-language influence | emphasis and pitch do not fit the text |
The pair can therefore produce up to 12 raw points before the total is converted into the scaled score. No descriptor asks for a native accent. They ask for speech a listener can follow, and for pauses and pitch that follow the meaning.
The 45-second preparation
Forty-five seconds covers a marking pass, not a rehearsal. Do the same four things in the same order and the pass settles at about 30 seconds.
- Read the first and last sentences silently. They carry the frame: what the notice is and what the reader should do.
- Mark the full stops. Each becomes a pause you can hear, usually a breath of about half a second.
- Circle the numbers, the names and the abbreviations. Reading aloud breaks there.
- Choose one sentence, normally the one holding the main instruction, to read slowly.
ETS allows note taking and the test center supplies scratch paper, so you cannot bring your own. Four pencil marks beat memorising four items, and they survive the moment the narrator says "Begin reading aloud now." What not to do is read the whole text aloud: candidates who do arrive at the recording with their pace already spent.
What TOEIC speaking and writing practice tests leave out
The gap is not more texts. Most sets hand you a timer, a passage and a model reading, which trains recognition rather than delivery.
What they rarely hand you is a marked copy: pause marks, stressed words and a note on the three places you rush. Nor a way to hear your own habits. Reading a passage silently and deciding it sounds fine is not evidence; a recording is. So the useful unit is small: one paragraph, one recording, one habit per week. Endings first, then stress, then pace, because the same rushed consonants return in the picture and opinion tasks.
Delivery rules: sentence stress, endings, and the three rush points
Content words carry the beat and function words compress. A reader who stresses every word equally sounds flat; a reader who stresses nothing sounds rushed.
Take this invented line: The west entrance closes at half past nine on public holidays. Four words carry the message: west, closes, half, holidays. The rest travel between them at speed. Mark those four and the sentence grows a shape without any change to your pronunciation.
Endings are the second habit. Final consonants and the -s and -ed endings vanish when a reader chases the next word, and the listener pays with effort. Slow by roughly ten per cent and most endings come back.
The rush points are predictable: the first sentence, because you are still settling; the line with a number or a price, because the eye jumps ahead of the voice; the last sentence, because you can see the end and want it. Control the pace there and the middle looks after itself.
Reading numbers, dates, prices and abbreviations aloud
Digits never appear as words, so decide the spoken form during preparation, never during the recording.
| On screen | Say it as | Common slip |
|---|---|---|
9:30 a.m. | nine thirty a m | pronouncing the colon |
$1,250 | one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars | skipping "thousand" |
15% | fifteen percent | reading the symbol |
Room 204 | room two oh four | two hundred and four |
2026 | twenty twenty-six | two thousand and twenty-six |
Ave. | avenue | spelling out the letters |
Two rules cover most of it: say a number the way a receptionist would, and expand an abbreviation into the word it stands for. Keep one pace for digits and another for prose, and the listener hears structure instead of a list.
A sample text with markup and a read-aloud analysis
An invented announcement of about 95 words, a comfortable size for 45 seconds.
Attention passengers. The west entrance closes at half past nine on public holidays, and from Monday the ticket desk moves to the north hall. Tickets bought online are still collected at the machines beside the escalator. Passengers holding a printed reservation should use the desk on level two. Please allow an extra ten minutes while the new layout settles, and ask any member of staff if you need help finding the lifts.
| Sentence | Pause after | Stress | Trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attention passengers. | one beat | Attention | starting too fast |
| The west entrance closes at half past nine on public holidays | one beat | west, closes, half | the time said as digits |
| and from Monday the ticket desk moves to the north hall | one beat | Monday, moves, north | running "moves to" together |
| Tickets bought online are still collected at the machines | one beat | online, still, machines | the end of bought |
| Please allow an extra ten minutes while the new layout settles | one beat | extra, ten, settles | the final s in settles |
| and ask any member of staff if you need help finding the lifts | full stop | any, staff, lifts | trailing off |
Read the passage once with the marks and once without, and record both. The marks are not decoration; they are the difference between reading words and reading a message.
A five-day routine that runs on any news paragraph
Any paragraph of 90 to 100 words from a news site will do, because the task's passages are announcements rather than literature. Fifteen minutes a day.
| Day | Fifteen minutes | Fixed habit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | mark one paragraph, read twice, record the second pass | full stops as pauses |
| 2 | same paragraph, endings only, ten per cent slower | final consonants, -s, -ed |
| 3 | new paragraph, mark four stress words per sentence | sentence stress |
| 4 | new paragraph with two numbers, say them in words | number handling |
| 5 | full pass under 45 seconds of preparation, then a text cold | the routine under time |
After each recording, mark four things: were the pauses where the full stops are, did the endings land, did the numbers come out as words, and did the last sentence get faster. Three out of four is a pass. Anything lower means the same paragraph gets a second day.
Frequently asked questions
How long is TOEIC Speaking Task 1?
Each read-aloud question gives 45 seconds to prepare and 45 seconds to read, so one question occupies 90 seconds of test time and the pair occupies three minutes. The preparation clock starts when the text appears, and the recording starts when the narrator says "Begin reading aloud now."
Is TOEIC Speaking scored by a person or a machine?
Recordings go to the ETS Online Network for Evaluation and are scored by certified ETS raters rather than by an app. Each read-aloud response receives two ratings, one for pronunciation and one for intonation and stress, both on a 0 to 3 scale, and every rating across the 11 questions is summed into one scaled score out of 200.
Keep the read-aloud pass in every practice test
The pair is the only part of the test where the words are handed to you, which makes it the cheapest place to build delivery habits that then carry into the picture, question and opinion tasks. Fifteen minutes a day, one marked copy, one recording, one habit per week.
HiBay's AI speaking practice records your answers and returns feedback split by criterion, the way exam rubrics are split, so the four-point check above gets a second reader.