A method and apparatus for measuring oral reading rate are described. Oral reading rate represents how fast a reader can decipher printed text and correctly speak the written words. The rate can be a representation of speed only, or in the case of accurate oral reading rate, it can measure the rate of oral reading for only words read correctly. In the method described, a passage of text is subdivided into units. The duration of speaking each unit is measured and these durations are mapped to values that are used in a polytomous probabilistic model. Through a series of steps using this model, a new value of each reader's reading rate called the Unified Reading Rate (URR) is estimated. An apparatus that measures the URR using the above method is also described. This apparatus is software that runs on one or more computational devices and includes a speech recognition engine as well as other components that produce the URR.
METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MEASURING ORAL READING RATE