Rethinking reading aloud: Simon

Mumford gives renewed voice to

reading.(PRACTICAL IDEAS).

Modern English Teacher 18.3 (July 2009): p33(2). (1628 words)

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Author(s): Simon Mumford.
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Perhaps one of the main reasons that reading aloud (RA) is regarded with suspicion is
the fact that it has been traditionally associated with slow, fiat, dull reading around the
class. Such an activity is considered very difficult and inauthentic by Grellet (2002: 10),
who notes that efficient readers do not read every word. However, because this is
necessary in RA, it tends to work against developing effective reading skills.

More recently RA has been reassessed as a learning technique. Gibson (2008) points out
a number of beneficial effects, such as promoting autonomous learning, improving
pronunciation, helping to give anxious students the courage to speak, and its
effectiveness as a proofreading technique. However, although arguing for a
reconsideration of RA, she notes the disadvantages and recommends its use in the
classroom only 'sparingly'.

Typical perceptions of RA, therefore, seem to be of a rather unhelpful technique where

one student reads while others act as passive listeners, as a method of practising
pronunciation, or as some other highly specialised, and therefore infrequently used
activity, such as proofreading.

Scrivener (2005: 189) points out that RA and silent reading need not be mutually
exclusive, but can be integrated to produce hybrid activities, giving as one example
silent reading as a preparation for students acting out the text. As an extension of this
way of thinking, if we take the attitude that RA is an element that can be incorporated
into different kinds of activity, this leads to many more possible ways of employing this
well-known, but perhaps underexploited resource. Here are some ideas for using RA in
a variety of contexts, as the basis for pronunciation, pre- and post-reading activities,
skimming and scanning activities, for stress and intonation practice, and in vocabulary
activities.
Reading around the class

Prepare two versions of a text which can be divided into blocks of 2, 3 or 4 words. One
version should show the divisions, e.g. One day, l while 1 was going / to school / I met /
a man / with a dog. / He asked me / where 1 was going./ I said / I couldn't stop / because
1 was late./etc. The other should be exactly the same but without the divisions. Give out
the latter version, one to each student. Each student in turn should read a block or
phrase of 2, 3 or 4 words. At the end, give out the text with your divisions and see if
they are the same as the students'. Stress that there may be valid alternatives to the way
you have divided the text. This activity encourages students to think about meaning
while reading aloud.

Every third word

By asking students to read aloud every third or fourth word of a text, we may be able to
encourage the kind of looking ahead while reading that good readers are known to
engage in. Other possibilities include reading aloud only long words (more than five
letters) or only main verbs and nouns, thus focusing them on the more important content
words. By asking students to deliberately ignore other words in this way, we may be
able to help them skim texts and increase reading speed.

Scan drill

Choose a short sentence or part of a sentence from a text to be read and change one
word, in such a way that the sentence is still logical, for example, replace one word with
a synonym. Drill it until students can remember it. Tell the students that one word has
been changed, ask them to find which it is, and refer students to the text. Repeating the
sentence to themselves, they scan the text until they find the original and note the
difference. Repeating to oneself is a way of holding information in the short-term
memory.

Guessing the order

This is a way of revisiting a longer text once the class have finished reading it. Choose
two or more sentences from the text at random and read them aloud without telling the
class which one comes first. Ask students to remember the order in which they appear
without looking at the text. When they have answered, let them scan the text and check.
Then put students in groups of three, two with the text, and one without. The two
students with the text read one sentence each at random, and the third tries to remember
which comes first. Students swap roles after several turns.

Showing your opinion

This is a post-reading activity for a text which contains controversial opinions. Ask
students to read out sentences/ extracts in a way that reflects what they believe i.e. with
intonation that reflects a positive, negative or neutral attitude (this can be practised
before). Each extract can be introduced with phrases such as Listen to this ... It says here
... and ended with a suitable comment: Interesting!, Rubbish!, That's true, Hmmm (=
undecided). This reflects the way people read extracts to each other when they want to
make a comment, e.g. It says here 'Internet censorship is ineffective and a denial of
liberty' ... Rubbish!; Listen to this... 'Globalisation has helped many people escape from
poverty' ... Hmmm.

Synonyms

Choose a paragraph containing a number of unknown words. Write simpler synonyms

for the new words in random order on the board, and ask students to think about these
and look at the paragraph for a minute or two. Ask one student to read the paragraph
aloud, but replace each unknown word with a synonym by guessing. Each time the
reader correctly uses a synonym, say correct and pass the reading to another student.
The class keep reading until all the synonyms have been found, going through the
paragraph several times if necessary. Students have a reason to listen to their classmates
reading, which is to confirm their own guesses.

Reading against background noise

Have the students read a text silently to themselves, then play music or make other
noise and gradually increase the volume so students have to read aloud to keep their
concentration. After a short time, reduce the volume so students can go back to silent
reading, then increase the volume again, and so on. People often read in situations
where there is background noise, e.g. people chatting, television, music, or traffic.
Reading aloud to oneself is a strategy that may help readers concentrate on the text in
the presence of distractions.

Read aloud drill

Ask the class to read a sentence silently two or three times. After each sentence ask
them to close their books. Read the sentence aloud slowly, and ask students to join in
with as much as they can remember. Continue with the next sentence. In this way they
can focus on meaning and pronunciation separately, in two distinct stages of the
activity, one silent, and one aloud.

Read aloud back-chain

Choose a sentence from a text for students to work on. Working alone, they can build it
up in their memories as follows: 1. They cover the whole sentence with a piece of paper,
then reveal the last word, cover it again and say the word. 2. They reveal the last two
words, cover them again, and say the two words. 3. They reveal the last three words,
and so on, until the whole sentence can be remembered. Finally, ask for volunteers to
say the whole sentence without looking at it.

Reading the news

Give the class a short news text and underline expressions and phrases, especially those
that are important to the story. Write the phrases on the board in the order they appear in
the text and practise them. Now ask the class to read the text aloud, either
simultaneously as a class, or individually in turn. When they get to an underlined
phrase, they should look up and read it from the board, and also make eye contact with
the teacher, who stands next to the board. This can help students to emphasise important
points and look at their audience occasionally while reading aloud.
Reading with emphasis

Give out copies of a short text to everyone in the class. Read the text aloud to the class,
emphasising words and phrases you consider important, and skipping over unimportant
parts, using the phrase bloh, bloh, blah or etcetera, etcetera in place of the words. This
reflects the way people often read out newpaper articles to other people. Ask students to
underline the stressed words and cross out the unimportant ones. Then in pairs or groups
ask them to reproduce your reading, using their underlinings as guides.

Conclusion

RA does not have to mean dull and difficult reading round the class, it can be more
profitably and more frequently employed if seen as an element to be used in a wide
range of activities, rather than as an end in itself. It is true that most texts are not
designed to be read aloud. However, in real life, texts often are read aloud for a number
of reasons, and this can be exploited in class. Even for texts whose length means that
they would never be read aloud in their entirety, we can design activities which include
a limited amount of meaningful RA. This can help students interact with texts in
different ways, and, perhaps, increase motivation and interest.

REFERENCES

Gibson, S. (2008) Reading Aloud: A useful learning tool? ELT journal 62: p 29-36
Grellet, F. (2002) Developing Reading Skills Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Scrivener, J. (2005) Learning Teaching Oxford, Macmillan

Simon Mumford enjoys designing classroom activities and has published many articles.
His other interests include academic writing, and he works in the Academic Writing
Centre, Izmir University of Economics, Turkey, where he works with faculty staff on
their papers for publication. He holds the Aston University MSc. TESOL.

Email: simumford@ayahoo.com

Source Citation
Mumford, Simon. "Rethinking reading aloud: Simon Mumford gives renewed voice to
reading." Modern English Teacher 18.3 (2009): 33+. Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Apr.
2012.
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