In a bender element test, the most key problem is associated with the determination of travel time of shear waves. The objective and accurate measurement of shear wave velocities remains a challenge. A new side-mounted bender element testing system in which each set of bender elements consists of one transmitter and two receivers has been developed. Bender element tests are carried out on Shanghai soft clay by using the newly-developed system. Three different methods, i.e., first arrive time method, peak-peak method and cross-correlation method are used to calculate the shear wave velocities. The test results show that the first arrive time method is the most subjective method and the shear wave velocities are highly dependent on input frequency. Picking the second peaks of received signals gives rise to consistent shear wave velocities. Cross-correlating two received signals generates most objective and consistent shear wave velocities in the frequency range of 20-30 kHz provided the similarity requirement is fulfilled.