http://daphne.palomar.edu/handbook/ aloud.

htm
2.2 Look at the Essay through a Reader's Eyes ==="Land of Silence and Darkness" about people who are both deaf
and blind. Also a brilliant piece of work.

Reading Aloud
A simple, but surprisingly effective strategy for improving student writing is having them read their words aloud. This technique is so effective, that asking students to read their work out loud is a standard part of most sessions at the UWC. While students are often surprised by the request, most quickly come to realize the value of giving voice to their words. Why does reading aloud improve writing? Reading out loud gives students a chance to hear the sound of their words. That may seem simple, but its significant. Good writing flows. It has a compelling rhythm. Students often fail to understand thatuntil they hear themselves speaking aloud the words theyve put on the page. Reading out loud helps students hear what they cant see. Sometimes students have been looking at a paper so long or writing so fast that they fail to see what theyve actually written down. When students read out loud, they usually find quite a few errors all on their own. Most

are obvious mistakes like misspellings or omitted words, but sometimes students also spot bigger concerns like paragraphs that veer off tangent or evidence that doesnt say what they thought it did. Reading out loud slows them down. The brain is faster than the mouth, so when students read silently, they tend to zip right along. But when they say their words out loud, theyre forced to read more slowly. That can help them pay attention to things theyve been speeding past and give them a fresh perspective on their efforts. Reading out loud is multi-sensory. People tend to remember more about a subjectand engage with it more deeplywhen they involve more of their senses. When students see and hear their words, those words resonate more loudly with them. Reading aloud makes students more accountable for their work. When students turn a paper in, the idea that someonethe instructoris actually going to read it can be pretty remoteand easy to dismiss. But when their reader is right there in front of them, its harder to gloss over the fact that they didnt put much effort into a paper or didnt bother to proofread. Five Ways to Use Reading Aloud with Your Students Encourage students to read aloud when proofreading their papers. If you mention this in class, most students wont bother with it. If you mention it repeatedly, though, a few of them might at least give it a try. For instance, when you find lots of simple surface errors in a completed paper you might ask in your comments, Did you read this aloud to yourself? Eventually, students will get the idea. Incorporate reading aloud into a peer response session. After you describe the procedures for the peer review, students can break into small groups and read their work aloud to each other before discussing it. (If

some students are especially uncomfortable with reading in front of others, you might allow them to let someone else read for them.) Read examples of professional writing aloud to students in your class. Let them hear the smooth cadence of an effective paragraph and the jarring disconnects of a clunky one. (This activity could also be part of a video or audio podcast you produce for students to access outside of class.) Assign students the task of finding examples of good writing to read aloud in class. The assignment will encourage them to consider what they believe constitutes good writing and can also be a way to familiarize them with some of the books and journals that are part of your disciplines canon. Ask students to read their writing to you when they come in for a conference. It will remind you to listen to what your students are saying and it will encourage students to put more thought into what theyre writing.

READING ALOUD
What this handout is about
This handout explains some of the benefits of hearing your writing read aloud. It offers tips on reading your draft yourself, asking a friend to read it to you, or having your computer read it.

Why read out loud?

If you come to the Writing Center for a tutoring session, you will probably hear your tutor say, "We always read papers out loudwould you like to read yours, or would you like to hear me read it?" Reading aloud has many benefits that we want to share with writers. Most

people have far more experience listening to and speaking English than they do reading and editing it on the printed page. When you read your draft out loud or listen to someone else read it, your brain gets the information in a new way, and you may notice things that you didn't see before: As listeners, we need the order of ideas in a paper to make sense. We can't flip back and forth from page to page to try to figure out what is going on or find information we need. When you hear your paper read out loud, you may recognize that you need to re-order the information in it or realize that there are gaps in your explanation. Listeners also need transitions to help us get from one main idea to the next. When you hear your paper, you may recognize places where you have moved from one topic to another too abruptly. We all make errors in our sentences. Sometimes we leave out a word, mess things up as we copy and paste text, or make a grammatical mistake. These kinds of errors can be hard to see on the page, but sentences that contain them are very likely to sound wrong. For native speakers of English (and some nonnative speakers, too), reading out loud is one of the most powerful proofreading techniques around. Sometimes sentences aren't grammatically incorrect, but they are still awkward in some waytoo long, too convoluted, too repetitive. Problems like these are often easily heard. Hearing your paper can also help you get a sense of whether the tone is right. Does it sound too formal? Too chatty or casual? What kind of impression will your voice in this paper make on a reader? Sometimes hearing your words helps you get a more objective sense of the impression you are creatinglistening puts in you in something more like the position your reader will be in as he/she moves through your text.
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What are some strategies for reading out loud?

Reading your paper out loud has a lot of benefits, but it presents a few

challenges, too. One issue is that a lot depends on how you read. It is very easy to read too quickly or to let your brain automatically "smooth over" mistakes, fill in missing words, and make little corrections without you ever becoming consciously aware that it's happening. If you don't read exactly what is on the printed page, you won't get an accurate sense of what is in your paper. Here are some strategies to help you read out loud effectively: Try working from a printed copy. This will allow you to make marks at places where something sounds wrong to you so you can return to them later. Try working from a printed copy. This will allow you to make marks at places where something sounds wrong to you so you can return to them later. As you read, follow along with your finger, pointing at each word. This can help you stay focused and not skip anything. Try to read at a moderate pace. If you are proofreading, consider reading your paper out loud one sentence at a time, starting at the end and working back to the beginning. This will help you focus on the structure of each sentence, rather than on the overall flow of your argument. Try covering up everything but the section or sentence you are working on at the moment so you can concentrate on it and not get lost. One great strategy to try is to ask a friend to read your paper out loud while you listen. Make sure that your friend knows to read exactly what is on the printed page. Pay close attention to places where your friend seems to stumble or get lostthose may be places where you need to make things clearer for your readers. As your friend is speaking, you can jot notes on a printed copy of the paper. You don't have to be in the same room to do thisyou could email a copy of your paper to your friend and ask him/her to call you and read to you over the phone.
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Recently I read in an alumni magazine that my tenth-grade boarding school roommate whom I hadnt seen in a quarter of a centuryhad just died of

ovarian cancer at the age of forty-five. I put down the magazine, sat on my deck overlooking a mountain, and wrote down my memories of her: Her freckles, pointed chin, sharp blue eyes, and tangle of curly red-gold hair. The Wheat Thins and orange juice she snacked on as she studied Chaucer in her green flannel nightgown. How we skipped Sunday chapel together by hiding under our beds, dust bunnies in our noses. How one midnight as a prank, in a pointless gesture of defiance against an even more pointless rule, we sneaked out of our room to spray-paint orange footprints across the painted elephant on the asphalt driveway that only seniors were allowed to step on. I wrote as a small, ritual way to honor her memory. And because I believe that writing enables me to touch my life more deeplyand that by sharing stories, I can touch the lives of others. Well, thats the theory, anyway. But then theres the cramped reality of the writers life: The long hours staring at a humming computer screen. The neck that cranes forward as the head yearns irresistibly into the monitor. The shoulders that creep toward the ears. The breath that grows shallow and tight as the energy pools and throbs at the crown of the head. The visual field that narrows down to a square of black-and-white pixels. In a single morning, a single sentence, I can evoke a Costa Rican rainforest, an Indian ashram, and a stable in Kansas. Or, as a kind of ritual, I can evoke a single, tiny memory of a friend who is no longer alive. Such as this: My boarding school roommate, age fourteen, on a cold October night in the Berkshires. Were crossing the campus, furtive as spies, clutching cans of orange spray paint and cardboard cutouts of our footprints. As headlights light up the road, we dive for a ditch and lie on our bellies in dead leaves crunchy with frost.

Some days, my writing helps me touch the present more deeply. Other days, it takes me deep into my remembered past. Sometimes it reveals the world of an

imaginary charactera world that, as I explore it, gives me a deeper understanding of my own. In a single morning, a single sentence, I can evoke a Costa Rican rainforest, an Indian ashram, and a stable in Kansas. Or, as a kind of ritual, I can evoke a single, tiny memory of a friend who is no longer alive. Such as this: My boarding school roommate, age fourteen, on a cold October night in the Berkshires. Were crossing the campus, furtive as spies, clutching cans of orange spray paint and cardboard cutouts of our footprints. As headlights light up the road, we dive for a ditch and lie on our bellies in dead leaves crunchy with frost. We have no idea what lies in the unwritten decades ahead for us. Were ignorant of how fast time will pass, and how much we will ultimately have to let go of. We dont know yet about her career as an international banker; my marriage and divorce; her deadly cancer; my stillborn baby. We dont even really know why we are out there in the night in this absurd, small-scale rebellion. We lie in the ditch, damp and chilly, as the headlights pass over our heads and move on. Then we roll on our backs, look at the starry sky, grab onto each others hands, and laugh so hard we cry.

We have no idea what lies in the unwritten decades ahead for us. Were ignorant of how fast time will pass, and how much we will ultimately have to let go of. We dont know yet about her career as an international banker; my marriage and divorce; her deadly cancer; my stillborn baby. We dont even really know why we are out there in the night in this absurd, small-scale rebellion. We lie in the ditch, damp and chilly, as the headlights pass over our heads and move on. Then we roll on our backs, look at the starry sky, grab onto each others hands, and laugh so hard we cry.