Background and Aim: The purpose of this research is to study the standardization of speaking and reading rates in a group of normal speaker of female students, and to compare them. As the rate of speech is an important variable in the evaluation and treatment of stuttering, cluttering, dysarthria and apraxia.

Materials and Method: One hundred of second grade students of primary school and an equal number of fifth grade students participated in this study. All subjects were native speakers of Farsi, who passed an informal, screening test of articulation and speech. None of the subjects had a history of speech, hearing, or neurological disorders. The subjects were asked to read from the 180 words portion of their Farsi book and tell story. Their speech was recorded by using a tape recorder. Then the data were analyzed for word and syllable rate. In transcribing the samples, single morpheme was counted as single word and compound words were counted as two words if they had two free morphemes. Non-word interjections were excluded from word and syllable counts while word interjections and repeated words were included in the count. Independent t-test and paired t-test were used for analyzing.

Results: In the second grade students the reading rate is, on the average, 189.4 syllable per minute (SPM)(94.9 word per minute(WPM), 3.1 syllable per second(SPS)) and the talking rate is 189.8 SPM (99.1 WPM, 3.1 SPS) and in the fifth grade student the reading rate is 223.9 SPM (119.0 WPM, 3.7SPS) and the talking rate is 210.26 SPM (109.5 WPM , 3.4 SPS).

Conclusion: The result highlight that in the fifth grade students, reading rates are higher than talking rates while in the second grade they are not, because they do not have enough skills for whole word reading. A remarkable finding in this research is that, reading and talking rates in the fifth grade students are higher than the second grade students.

Background and Aim: Children with speech and language disorders can have reduced diadochokinesis (DDK) rates. Although a relationship has been proposed between DDK and the rate of speech, there is no consensus among the experts and its credibility remains questioned. The purpose of this study was to compare oral DKK with the rate of speech and reading in normal students.

Methods: One hundred second grade female students participated in this descriptive-comparative study. The subjects were asked to read a text of their book, tell a story, and perform some oral DDK tasks. The elapsed time was measured by Cool Edit software. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the data. Data analysis was performed using Student t-test.

Results: Time history durations of DDK tasks /tâ/, /pâ/ and /kâ/ were 4.10, 4.15 and 4.74 ms, respectively. The rate of reading was 3.1 syllables per second and rate of talking was 2.8 syllables per second. No relationship between the rate of speech and DDK was found, still, we found a significant association between the reading rate and DDK in /kâ/ (p=0.03) and /pâtâkâ/ (P<0.01).

Conclusion: Relevant DDK tasks can be utilized in order to improve the reading rate. Reading rate was higher than speech rate and the rate of bilabial diadochokinesis in mono syllables is the highest rate that may be expected during the treatments.