Read Out Loud?

4 Benefits (and more) of Reading like the Ancients

Dr. Sue Fisher at The Lukeion Project

    When was the last time you read out loud? If you have small children around you, you probably do this on a regular basis, but as those children get older and can read for themselves, this practice generally drifts away. Reading becomes a solitary affair, usually undertaken in silence except for the occasional sharing of a quip or a quote.

    For this reason, it often comes as a surprise to my students that it was the customary practice for the Greeks and Romans to read out loud. In the pre-technological world, recitations were common forms of entertainment and public speeches were an important part of civic life. Reading aloud was not just for public affairs, however. Reading out loud privately was a customary practice well into at least the 17th century.

    Today, however, reading out loud after childhood is associated with incapability. The image of a dim-witted gomerel attempting to sound out easily pronounced words is an image all too readily conjured up. Anyone who has enjoyed a well-narrated audible book, however, knows that literature in the hands of a skilled reader can enhance the text and bring that book to life in ways that simple reading often cannot.

    While the modern world does not always afford the time and place for reading aloud, there are both practical and esoteric advantages to be gained when one adopts this practice. 

 

Better Focus:

    When reading a difficult text or something that is not necessarily of deep interest, it is all too easy for our minds to wander off. Soundbite culture has only added to this problem. The practice of reading out loud is an easy remedy to this problem because it incorporates more than one sense to get the job done. Engaging your mouth and your ears along with your eyes and your brain makes it harder to lose attention. 

 

Better Speaking:

    Reading out loud forces the speaker to pronounce the words they are encountering. Science has shown that people recognize words in blocks rather than by syllable. This is what makes it easy to mix up words that begin and end the same way. When reading silently it is easy to identify the word as a block and quickly move on. A reader may not be able to pronounce those words gracefully if at all. Likewise, out loud reading forces a speaker to slow down, take pauses that allow for processing of the text, and also imbue the words with feeling. All of these practices are foundational for good public speaking. 

 

Better Appreciation:

    Some works are written to be heard as well as read. Imagine Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech or Lewis Carrol’s Jabberwocky. You likely imagined them being spoken or heard rather than reading them. Impassioned words, meter, rhyme, and other literary devices all can be seen with the eyes but were created for the ears. This is where their interest lies, and they simply cannot be fully appreciated without being read out loud. 

 

Better Editing:

    Reading out loud is the simplest and most effective tool for editing your work. The very thing that keeps most of us from reading aloud, the fact that it slows you down, is the very thing that makes reading out loud such an effective tool for editing. Reading out loud provides an opportunity for the ears to hear what the eyes might miss. For instance, while reading aloud, a person naturally pauses in places and these pauses can be excellent indicators of where commas or periods are needed. Running out of breath is a good indicator that a sentence is a run-on and needs to be divided. Lack of clarity becomes more apparent. The list goes on and on. 

 

    While these are some of the practical, academic reasons for targeted out loud reading, there are some less measurable benefits as well. The greatest of these, in my opinion, is the opportunity it provides for camaraderie. Studies have shown that reading to children is as much about bonding and relationship as it is about the story and skills themselves. This is not something that disappears when people reach a certain age. Sharing a story, or an article, or a poem or a speech out loud provides opportunities for common experiences and discussions that strengthen relationships; the benefits of this, in turn, are immeasurable.