the number of syllables per minute minus the time taken up by pausing.
Usually, the longer and more frequent the pauses, the slower the speech rate.rate of utterance n
another term for rate of speech
rater n
a person who assigns a score or rating to a test taker’s oral or written
performance on the basis of a set of rating criteria.
see also inter-rater reliability, intra-rater reliability
rater agreement n
see rater reliability
rating n
assessing learner performance using pre-established scales, particularly
when assessing spoken language performance.
rating criteria n
in language assessment, the aspects of a learner’s second language per-
formance on which teachers will assess their students.
rating scale n
(in testing) a technique for measuring language proficiency in which aspects
of a person’s language use are judged using scales that go from worst to best
performance in a number of steps. For example, the components of fluency
in a foreign language could be rated on the following scales:
naturalness of language unnatural 12345 natural
style of expression foreign 1 2 3 4 5 native-speaker-like
clarity of expression unclear 1 2 3 4 5 clear
For each component skill, the listener rates the speaker on a scale of 1 to 5.
Overall fluency can then be measured by taking account of the three scores
for each speaker.
see also scale
rational cloze n
seecloze test
rational deletion n
see cloze test
rationalism n
see empiricism
rationalism