What the examiner is looking for:

• Clarity and natural pronunciation: Your speech should be clear and understandable with minimal effort on the part of the listener. Even though an accent is not penalized, mispronunciation of common sounds can affect clarity.
• Use of word stress, sentence stress, and intonation: It’s important to correctly stress certain words within a sentence to make your meaning clear. Sentence stress and intonation patterns help convey meaning, emotion, and attitude.
• Limited mispronunciations: While a few errors in pronunciation are acceptable, frequent mistakes, especially on key words, may impede understanding.