Reading Aloud

Every subject in school requires us to have different skills. For maths we need to be good with numbers, for any of the sciences we need to be able to think logically and for the humanities, we need to be good with learning information. However, learning and understanding text is not something we only need in a few subjects but is a skill that we will need throughout our lives. Even after being such an important skill not being able to learn and understand text is a problem that innumerable students around the globe are facing. Some say their head feels like it is about to burst when they start reading and try to learn and some say they just can't focus because learning takes too much time. However, reading text aloud is a solution to this problem.

The research published in the journal ‘Memory’ states that the dual effect of both speaking and hearing information helps encode the memory much better than either speaking or listening. The reason for this is that pronouncing a word produces a memorable experience that is called the ‘production effect’ and listening to one’s own voice creates a stimulus of self-recognition. Both these experiences help readers memorise the content better. In addition, a recent study conducted by researchers Colin Macleod and Noah Forrin at the University of Waterloo proved this. In this study, 95 students were told to learn 120 nouns. These 95 students could either read silently, read aloud or listen to audio. The audio could be either of their own voice or someone else’s. The result of this study was that people who read aloud could memorise these words better. Therefore we can say that reading aloud is very beneficial. 

Furthermore, it is not always possible to read aloud. For example, Reading aloud in a library is not respectful. However, there is a solution to this as well. This solution is nothing other than simple mumbling. Mumbling is actually more beneficial for some people than reading aloud. While people are reading and trying to learn they feel like there is a lot of pressure on their head and feel very stressed. This makes them get tired very fast. However, mumbling makes people feel like the pressure is being released from their head. Moving on, sometimes reading tough texts can slow your pace down and that can be very frustrating, however mumbling lets you read faster and understand better. Therefore we can say that mumbling is also a good way to learn and understand the text.

To conclude, learning and understanding text is a big challenge that many children are facing. People with photographic memory can easily learn things just by looking at them because they are extremely good at making memory links through visual pathways. In contrast, normal people have difficulties in learning just through visual memory links and need auditory links as well. Therefore reading aloud is a perfect solution to this big obstacle that is coming in the way of many students’ learning across the globe. 

To test this select a tough text from your textbook and then try learning and understanding it by reading it silently, mumbling and reading aloud. You can also listen to an audio of the text first in someone else’s voice and then in your voice to understand, how listening to your own voice helps you learn better than listening to someone else’s voice.

Source- https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/518457/why-reading-aloud-helps-you-remember-more-information