Expert: Bernardo Angulo - 9/17/2004

Question
EFL teachers are always quite concerned about asking students to read aloud in class.  most of my coordinators dislike this kind of activity, since they consider that students will rarely read texts in English aloud in their real lives.  But we teachers consider that reading aloud is one of the ways we have to measure the students improvement in pronunciation and stress, for example.  In your opinion, is Reading Aloud a friend or foe?

Answer
Hello Robertson,

Thank you for a great question.

We read texts aloud more often that most people realize.  True, not everyone becomes a newscaster or a lecturer, but from time to time we read aloud to our kids or, maybe, to someone bedridden.

Whatever the case, I believe that reading aloud provides students not only with an excellent opportunity to improve their suprasegmentals, but also it gives them the confidence they need for speaking.  

However, we should not use reading aloud as a reading or listening comprehension assesment device since it does not test a student's ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal.  Reading aloud should only be used as practice for phonology or as a proficiency booster.

Hope this helps.

Bernardo.