The Comprehension of Prose Materials by College Freshmen When Read Silently and when Read Aloud

Abstract

LOGICAL REASONING suggests that oral reading should have certain important advantages over silent reading since it is the method which re turns the skeletal written word to its original, more complex form, with the helpful modifiers of sound and gesture. Modern educational theory supports the idea that the more complete the experience, the more learning there will be. Yet, early research contradicted this in o n e important aspect: It was shown that good silent readers could go faster, and that fast silent readers made higher scores when tested for comprehension of factual content.. Since speed and comprehension are important factors in our modern world, schools readily shifted their emphasis from oral to speedy silent reading. It seems clear that this was a good thing, especially for materials of average difficulty wherein compre hension of the intellectual content was i m p or tant. However, this approach to reading has failed to take into serious consideration the potential advantage of the oral reading (sometimes merely a sort of crude muttering) that man often uses when he is presented with a need to comprehend complex patterns of thought in prose or poetry.