Reading Aloud. An Educator Comments

Abstract

0 Until the early 20th century, reading aloud was the prevalent method of teaching reading in Western cultures. Subsequent to the rise of silent reading instruction in the early 1900s, three schools of thought developed about oral reading instruction. The first group saw oral reading as a means to more proficient silent reading; the second viewed oral reading as a detriment to the development of proficient silent reading; and the third approached oral reading as an art form whose techniques were worth mastering. The debate about the relative value of silent and oral reading diminished in the 1950s with the acknowledgment by some that reading aloud and reading silently involve different skills (Allington, 1984). One important benefit of reading aloud as opposed to silent reading is that reading aloud develops an awareness of sound-symbol relationships. Because of this benefit, some applied linguists recommend reading aloud for beginning-level ESL classes (Bright, Koch, Ruttenberg, & Terdy, 1982; Rivers, 1968). Learners at the beginning levels have limited experiences with the spoken language. As a result, they are not successful in predicting the pronunciation of words they encounter in printed texts. Reading aloud expands learners' auditory experiences with the target language by exposing them to words that they would not ordinarily hear in spoken form. Whereas there is evidence that oral reading may slow the reading speed of advanced ESL learners and inhibit their comprehension (Smith, 1971), the awareness that oral reading helps develop decoding strategies has led some to argue for the inclusion of some oral reading