Spanish Only

It seems popular to think that reading out loud it a good way to get better at certain things. Things like fluency, pronunciation, and don’t forget that the student is getting some more input. I haven’t seen many bloggers saying that reading out loud is a good idea, but many teachers think it is. After all, it sounds good. Right?

As someone who studies a foreign language, linguistics, and didactics, I find these ideas extremely interesting. I’m one of those people who always believed that reading out loud in a foreign language is a good idea, especially when there’s a teacher to correct those nasty pronunciation errors. But then I read a book about modern foreign languages and how we teach them by the Dutch linguist Erik Kwakernaak.

Kwakernaak is one of the few people who don’t say people learn because of language teachers, but despite those annoying people that tell us what to say or what to do. Only because of saying that I think he’s cool, but he had some other cool things to say. One of those being about reading out loud.

First I want to get something straight: I’ve used reading out loud to become better at… reading out loud. I even dare to say that it somewhat helped me at speaking faster because of reading some tongue twisters, but I’m not sure how much it helped me with my pronunciation. After all, there wasn’t someone to correct me and I already had a pretty good pronunciation because of all that listening I did before.

Kwakernaak rightfully says that we can only pay attention to one thing at a time. If we read something out loud, we either concentrate on the content, or concentrate on our pronunciation. The first thing is actually a bad thing, as it can cause us to get a bad accent. The latter isn’t as bad as the former, but it still doesn’t guard you from getting a messed up pronunciation, and it still doesn’t prove to be a good way to get some more input. At its best reading out loud is a good way to get better at reading out loud. It’s possible that you need that skill, but not very likely.

My advice is to first listen a lot to get an idea of what you should sound like. I’ve said this countless times, so I guess that’s something you already know. To get a better pronunciation reading out loud is an option, but certainly not the best. I’m still not sure what the best method is, but practicing individual sounds and putting them in words and sentences when I spoke to actual people helped me the most. Now, it’s not always possible to find something to talk to that actually understands you, but recording yourself is an option.

So, should you read out loud? Only if that’s a skill you want to master. If you want to get more input, you better watch some more TV or read a good book. If you want to gain fluency, you listen and speak. If you want to get a better pronunciation, you listen to yourself, correct yourself and ask people for corrections. In all those cases reading out loud is not the way to go.

Still, I’m curious: do you use reading out loud to become better at something? If so, what do you use if for, and is it helping you?