Speech reception thresholds (SRT) were measured in the presence of spectrally matched masking noise using an English language speech comprehension test that has been developed to address some shortcomings of current speech tests as measures of hearing handicap [M. J. Nilsson et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 88, S175 (1990)]. Following procedures used with Dutch materials [R. Plomp and A. M. Mimpen, Audiology 18, 43–52 (1979)], Leq of the sentence materials was matched and then adjusted to compensate for relative differences in difficulty between sentences. Lists of 12 sentences were created with nearly equal distribution of phonemes. SRTs were measured using normal‐hearing subjects with unmodified as well as high‐ and low‐pass filtered conditions in an effort to measure the repeatability of the lists for different signal bandwidths. Results of these tests will be presented and the use of these materials in hearing aid research will be discussed.