A study investigated the validity of a second-language student's actual speed of delivery of a passage read aloud as an indicator of second-language fluency. The study, conducted in Hong Kong with 83 secondary school students, used the oral dialogue test in a standardized secondary school-leaving examination. The dialogues were timed and the rate of speed of delivery correlated with the students' overall subject grades and scores from the written and oral language portions of the standardized test. Results indicate that time taken to read the dialogue correlated very positively with examiners' dialogue-reading scores, as was expected, but also correlated highly with all other grades and scores. It is concluded that speed of delivery has an important relationship to both oral language skills and general language ability, and that its use as a factor in language tests is justifiable. A sample dialogue is appended. (MSE)