Peer-reviewed research
Towards an integrated understanding of speaking rate in conversation
Jiahong Yuan et al., Interspeech 2006 (ISCA), 2006 · DOI 10.21437/Interspeech.2006-2
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A large study of conversational telephone speech in English and Chinese that measured how speaking rate changes with the length of a speaker's turn, the topic, the relationship between speakers, and the age and sex of the speaker. It is the basis for the claim that short spoken phrases are delivered at a different rate than long runs of speech.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed conference paper using large corpora of real conversations. It describes telephone speech, not dictation into a computer, and the abstract is what we read; the full paper's figures were not checked.
Facts taken from this source
- In large corpora of conversational telephone speech in English and Chinese, speaking rate rises rapidly as a speaker's turn grows from one word to seven words, then levels off for medium-length turns.
“We find that speaking rate as a function of "turn" length rises rapidly for turns from one to seven words” (Abstract)
Pages that rest on this source
- Typing Speed: Average WPM and How to Type FasterTopic
- How to Dictate: Techniques for Clean, Usable TextGuide
- Speaking Speed: How Many Words per Minute People TalkGuide
- How do you calculate your speaking speed in words per minute?Question
- How do you dictate a letter?Question
- How many words per minute do people normally speak?Question