I know many students’ families may be thinking, why should we practice reading a lot when we study this in school? Likewise, many of my students have said, “I can read but I can’t speak.” However, did you read almost every day? Did you try and read a lot even if you didn’t understand? And most importantly did you read out loud? If you answered “No” to any of these questions, I’ll tell you 5 reasons how reading out loud can make it a completely different experience from the studying you did in school.
1) Build your English Muscles
This is like the musical scales and etudes of language learning. In other words, it is building the muscles in your mouth, face, and body! It’s a different goal from understanding which is why it’s NOT always important to understand what you are reading.
2) Immerse yourself in new vocabulary and review grammar without studying it!
Reading out loud lets you really feel a huge variety of sounds, words and sentence structures throughout your body that you wouldn’t regularly speak. This is especially true for children who, naturally, love to talk about the same things over and over.
3) Fix your fossilized errors
I’m a teacher that is not picky about pronunciation. Honestly, if you put the word into a grammatically correct sentence, there’s a 95% chance that I’ll understand what you said. However, if you drop your “s” on plural nouns, mess up basic tenses, and/or use the wrong type of preposition, confusion is much more likely.
4) Teaches natural emotional prosody
Prosody is a big word so simply put, it helps us sound more human. When we first start studying a language we can often be quite robotic. Therefore, reading out loud with a teacher can help with intonation, natural pauses, loudness, etc. which will help you with communication in the long run.
5) Builds your confidence
This is probably the most important one for my students in Japan as so many of them are shy. Being confident in your own abilities will only boost your self esteem to take risks that are needed to become a fluent English speaker.
The Transposed Classroom
Motivating families and students to enjoy, work hard, and excel in their English journey!
Students can be located anywhere in Japan! Lessons up to 4 days a week!
Interested in trying? Fill out the Trial Form
Have a question? Ask devonsenglishclassroom[at]gmail.com
Join us on Facebook!
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay