ELT365 · Day 171 — Reading Aloud: When It Helps and When It Doesn’t

Idea — Reading aloud by learners in class often looks like reading practice but is usually pronunciation practice at best and a source of anxiety at worst. Comprehension tends to collapse when learners focus on decoding for others.

Example — Use teacher read-aloud to model prosody and demonstrate how a fluent reader sounds. Use learner read-aloud only for short, rehearsed, meaningful tasks — not round-the-class reading.

Try — If you use round-the-class reading, replace it with one lesson. Use silent reading with a task instead. Compare learner comprehension.

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