ABSTRACT
Objective To study the characteristics and difference of speech rate in monologue and reading in normal adults .Methods Through the acquisition of spontaneous speech and reading from 30 normal adults ,the syl‐lables per minute (SPM ) and the words per minute (WPM )were separately calculated .The monologue materials in‐clude ten topics :self introduction hobby ,hometown and so on;the reading material was the stars in the sky written by Ba Jin .We also analyzed whether there was a significant difference in genders and types of expression for speech rates .Results With the expression of monologue :SPM (male)=226 .13 ± 25 .97 ,SPM (female)=198 .73 ± 40 .With the expression of reading :SPM (male)= 208 .93 .13 ± 29 .35 ,SPM (female)= 220 .53 .± 26 .52 ,WPM (male)=104 .67 ± 13 .43 ,WPM (female)=111 .80 ± 12 .73 .Pearson correlation coefficient of SPM and WPM had reached 0 .926(r=0 .926) in the spontaneous speech and 0 .969 (r=0 .969) in reading .There were no significant differences in both genders (P=0 .42) and types of expression(P=0 .72) .The interaction effect of genders and types of ex‐pression was significant (P=0 .006) .For females ,the rate of reading was significantly higher than monologue (P=0 .025);for monologue ,there was a significant difference between males and females(P=0 .035) .The male was higher than the female in the speed of monologue .Conclusion The statistics revealed a high correlation between SPM and WPM .Genders and types of expression did not play an important role on the speech rate .The interactioneffect of gender and type of expression was significantly high (P=0 .006) .