Having students read out loud in adult literacy classrooms

In k-12 education, this practice is called round robin reading, and it is where a teacher has students take turns reading out loud in front of the class. I am curious about how common this practice is in adult reading classes, the pedagogical purpose of it, and the pros/cons of this practice. 

Comments

I hope this may be helpful. I do use this practice, and I'll describe how I do so and what I see as the pros & cons. I am an ELL teacher with adults; my ELL students range from high-beginning to advanced proficiency in English.  

SO....  I like to "invite" my students to take advantage of the fact that here we all are together for the very purpose of helping them practice and improve their English (or if one teaches native English speakers, then for practicing and improving their reading fluency), and this class is the ideal place to give it a try, make mistakes, and get help and coaching! I point out that when I myself read something out loud--to my husband, perhaps--I typically slow down a bit from my conversational speed of speech, so that my listener can very clearly hear each word and can also take in the information without the advantage of seeing the words in print. So I remind my students to take a breath and then take their time; they should be sure not to rush through the text but instead make sure to read/pronounce everything that a listener needs to hear as well as not to add things that are not in the text. My students have a tendency to both add in and overlook articles, word endings (-s, -ed, -ing), and prepositions, in addition to anticipating the wrong word based on the first couple of letters. (Sometimes they need repeated encouragement to 'breathe, breathe--slow down...' even when they aren't necessarily reading fast so much as carelessly.)

We keep a supportive, upbeat, and fun atmosphere, which I foster both by noting well-read words/parts with smiles, nods, and maybe sometimes a quick, "yes!" as they get through potentially tricky parts AS WELL AS by openly and uncritically pointing out each error (my students soon learn that when they hear me hum a short "hm?" it means they need to look again at the word or words they just read, and re-read them. I only go beyond a simple "hm?" when they have a real question about a tricky spot). Once they realize that I am not going to rush through this exercise, they relax and take their time. Soon, the students gamely give and accept help from each other as they hear "hm?" from me. The odd 'tongue-twister' spots are fine for stopping for a laugh, sharing some sympathy, and then taking a breath together, and trying again.

I have found that reminding the group on each of the first few times we do read-alouds how read-alouds work (as above) and that the students can and should take their time with it, whole classes truly do become better and better at reading out loud, sometimes dramatically so. One other thing I usually need to point out is that we drop our voices at the end of declarative sentences. I'll model how it should sound (exaggerated, even), and point out funky end-of-sentence intonation when I hear it from them as they read. That has also been very effective at bringing about more natural-sounding reading.

Besides helping students notice the parts of each word and of sentences, and besides making them generally better at a skill that many will be called on to do in other situations (work, home, further classes), a big pedagogical advantage about practicing read-alouds is that fluent reading is a strong indicator of the reader's comprehension.

CONS: I don't have "cons" so much as observations on when I do and when I do not prefer to have the class read out loud. I consider having students read out loud to be very, very valuable and important, but it is not the way to go with every text. Some texts, for example, are wonderful for giving the students the experience that many avid readers had as children: hearing a good 'story' read aloud by someone who is good at doing so. Then texts that might otherwise be tough to navigate suddenly make sense thanks to the appropriate intonation that the students hear. (This is not unlike the written example of the importance of a properly placed comma: "Let's eat, Grandpa!" versus "Let's eat Grandpa!")  Also, I don't always want to spend the time on a given text that I know I will need if I have the students read it out loud. That text may be part of a lesson, but not a critical part that I want to focus on.

When I am the one reading out loud, my students get to hear a fluent reader; when they are the ones reading out loud, they get to practice becoming fluent readers.

Them's my two cents!

Thank you so much for sharing how you use this in your classes with your ELL students.  It sounds as though you take a lot of care to make this a safe and positive learning experience. With your students, do you have knowledge about their reading skill level in their native language, formal schooling experiences, and did any of them have difficulty learning to read in their native language? Do you have any experience using this practice with native English speaking adults who struggle with reading? I am really curious about how native English speakers who struggled with reading development feel about reading out loud in classes. I am also curious about how it supports learning for these adults.

I do apologize, Chris, for this very long delay to respond to your question! The past few months have been a whirlwind... To answer your questions: some of my students are literate (& widely varying degrees of it) in their first language (L1), and a small number of them are not. As is so commonly the case, any given class/level includes students with strengths in various language areas: some are better with written language, some with spoken. There is a marked difference, as I presume you are anticipating, between students' fluency with English & ease of learning it, and their level of education in their L1. I do not have any information or obvious indications of which of my students may have had difficulty learning in their L1, to say nothing of outright learning disabilities. In one or two cases I might guess at that -- but such guesses are a far cry from a truly professional assessment of LDs.

Happily, I can say that the strategies used in an ELL classroom are typically found to be of benefit to ALL students - native English speakers as well as ELLs (also in K-12 ed). So much of it involves explicit instruction (a plus for all), actively taking note together both of target points as well as of 'discovered' areas of challenge; putting words and phrases in writing on the board as they come up, for students to see; etc. I would not hesitate to practice reading aloud as I've described here, with a group of native English speakers. My guess is that the differences would be what sorts of challenges they found with the practice (as opposed to the particular challenges for ELLs in reading English aloud), while the overall experience would be similarly rich and beneficial.

Beverly, I currently teach an ESL course online to teachers of adults, and we are covering transitioning skills for students entering English-only environments. The topic of providing reading practice through a book club and other ideas came up. I would like to share your ideas with them with your permission. Thanks.

Leecy
Moderator, Reading and Writing Community

Beverly, we are glad to have you back! You are so right in your comment to Chris, "Happily, I can say that the strategies used in an ELL classroom are typically found to be of benefit to ALL students - native English speakers as well as ELLs (also in K-12 ed)." Differences begin to show up only when levels of literacy come to play. So glad to see this discussion continuing.

We have another discussion going this week on story telling as an avenue to literacy. I recommend that everyone take a peek at David's and Edna's  post regarding ""The African Griot: Study Finds Storytelling Is the Key to the Literacy of Black Preschool Children." Leecy

Beverly started this discussion back in April, and I just came across a wonderful article in the Washington Post site (June 2nd), "Why I read aloud to my teens." Deb Werrlein, a mother and former adjunct English professor who tutors students with dyslexia, begins with "A few weeks ago, my son and I finished reading Stephen King’s “11/22/63: A Novel.” The unusual part is the fact my son will be 18 years old in less than a month...I also read with his sister, who is 14."

I am passing the article on to my son and daughter-in-law as an idea to be used with my 12-year-old grandson.

Any additional thoughts to expand on this inviting thread? Leecy

Leecy Wise
Moderator, Reading and Writing, and
Diversity and Literacy Communities

 

Have you tried giving the students the passage in advance of the reading if you are working with lower-level or less proficient readers? I work in an AEL classroom, and although my readers are in a similar range, there are fluency issues along with some LD and anxiety issues that may make some students resist reading aloud. I tried having my students read aloud with Bull Run by Paul Fleischman, and had each of them choose a character. They were able to preread their sections to gain some confidence before it was their turn to read aloud. We practiced listening skills by posing questions about the other characters.

Right on, Virginia! You make an excellent point with great examples. Preparing students to perform takes away the fear of reading aloud, especially if the passages are short so that they can really practice. I love that you gave students characters, which reminds me of our dialogue on using theater in the classroom.

What do you think of using a tool like audacity so that students can either record themselves or read with someone who records for them prior to performing?  http://bit.ly/1JmpDS2

Leecy

Thanks, Beverly and Chris for opening the dialogue on the benefits of reading aloud in a safe environment. There are many practices listed that could easily be adapted to native speakers as well. As Beverly noted, this practice can really improve fluency among native speakers as well. Chris asks, "I am really curious about how native English speakers who struggled with reading development feel about reading out loud in classes."

Has anyone used this strategy among native-speaking adults? I know that research shows that it can be effective with young readers. If you have tried having your English-speaking adults read aloud, what benefits or challenges have you experienced?

Leecy
Moderator, Reading and Writing Community
Moderator, Diversity and Literacy Community

 

Sure. Students are either provided with scripts or can create their own from fiction or non fiction texts. There are no costumes although there could be a few props (a hat or a cane, etc.). There is no acting. Students stand or sit at the front of the room. Instead of memorizing the lines, students read the lines during the performance. Students need to read and reread their parts so they can be fluent when they perform. Students could perform for each other or another class. Here are a couple of videos of readers' theater. The first one is of adult ESOL students. The second is of a professional group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS-yvsZhk7o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwHp4IrbxA

Yes, yes, Di! You are so right to mention Readers' Theater (among other terrific options that you noted as well). I have not done a great deal of Readers' Theater with my adult classes, but I had a wonderful opportunity to do it with one class. It was with a high-intermediate group of ELLs - and a very diverse group: from Asia, Africa, and Europe, ranging in ages from 30s-60s, some highly educated, some not, and all of them employed as custodians. I read to them (and displayed via ELMO/doc cam the pages from...) the beautiful edition of Stone Soup with watercolor images by Jon J. Muth. That particular version of the story is not baby-ish, and they found it moving and beautiful. They immediately wanted to hear & see it again.

I read it to them in two class periods, twice in each, and we talked about & looked at new vocabulary together. After all that, I asked them to work in pairs or trios to recall and jot down as many details of the story as they could. Then I explained (which took some time and demonstration) the idea of writing a script. I asked them what roles would be in a script for this story - which gave me the opportunity to introduce the concept of a 'narrator.' Once they had identified what roles would be needed, I had them as a group suggest the lines for a script, while I wrote it all out for us to see, on the white board (it was a very big white board! :). The next time we met, I had typed up the script onto a hand-out, and we all practiced reading through it together. Then they began taking turns reading the separate roles. They enjoyed the challenge of following a script - knowing when it was their turn to read, and realizing that they should not read aloud the name of their role each time (even though, of course, it appears in print preceding each spoken line, in order to ID the speaker).

I had a particularly happy circumstance with this "unit" because the Vermont Humanities Council was able to provide a free copy of the book for each of my students. When we had gone through the script many times and it felt familiar and like "their own," I presented them with the free copies for them to keep. Their eyes lit up with complete delight. One of them said he had gone online to learn about possibly ordering a copy for himself (on his custodian's salary), and another student (in her 60s!) noted that it had special meaning to have a copy of this book after they had read it so closely and worked on it as we had done. That same student looked forward to reading it together with her grandchild. The whole experience was thrilling for me.

Love this useful response and great story, Beverly. More! More!!!

Speaking of theater, what do you, Di, and others think of Charades as a teaching tool? Ever tried it? Instead of teaching specific grammar instruction (yuck), charades does the job with a lot of theatrical fun.

Interestingly, my onsite students who rarely participated in class interaction around language structure activities (questions, blackboard, sharing outcomes),  all of the sudden, and to my totally stunned surprise, performed amazingly when we played charades in groups! Why? Why would that be true? I never figured it out. Ideas?

Leecy

OK, Di. I'll add a few more to your "fun" response, which is the best reason to use games like charades.

Charades, in small, well chosen increments, also supports collaboration or friendly competition. It appeals to kinesthetic learners. Also, responses must be accurate, so when I used it with writing students, the sentences had to be perfectly constructed. That's a much better way to teach sentence structure, in my opinion, than to burden students with grammatical details that bore them to death. My students loved it, but, of course, we played only occasionally, toward the end of our sessions together, and only for about 10 minutes.

I have always found games to be great breaks during class periods. In my interactive live-video language classes, I use many of the great PowerPoint games that teachers can construct from templates, especially for reviews. We used to say that if students were laughing and having fun, they were not learning. Now, research tells us quite the contrary. When we are laughing, we are learning.

What do you and others think of games? What suggestions do you have for using them among adult learners hoping to read and write better? Leecy

 

Beverly,

Thanks for sharing your great experience with readers' theater. I think it affirms the idea that we can "steal" activities and strategies from K-12 and successfully adapt them for our adult students. Kudos to you and your class.

Di

Great questions, Chris, especially considering the first reaction I hear from teachers re asking students to read aloud in front of others, "Native speakers, especially adults, are afraid to show that they have trouble reading in front of others." Let's hear from those of you who had tried this approach.

Leecy
Moderator, Reading and Writing Community

I have long wanted to explore having students practice oral reading using "speech to text" software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or Dragon Dictate.   I know there was a product that had this idea built in -- heard about it at a dyslexia conference about 10 years ago -- but it was for little folks and it got absorbed into some other company and I lost track of it.   

I also think reading aloud is important and invaluable.   

Susan, I'm so glad that you brought up  "speech to text" software, and I suspect others here have had success with similar programs. Hopefully, they will share their experiences. I have used the inverse process effectively: text to speech. Both are useful in their own ways.

Dictation fell out of "vogue" sometime back because it was so overused and ineffectively used.However, dictation can be so effective in many ways, including helping students with punctuation in my experience!

Since we are talking around the issue of oral reading, how about having students record their readings? How might that overcome some of the fears connected to students reading aloud? "Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. The interface is translated into many languages." To explore and try out, go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/. What think, one and all?

Leecy
Moderator, Reading and Writing Community

Thought you all might like some options for capturing speech, and doing speech to text. Audacity is really good for audio capture and for editing audio, but not for speech to text.  So here are a couple of options:

http://www.nuance.com/dragon/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_speech_recognition_software

And a search for "open source speech to text" produced other possibilities. Try any open source ... search, and you may be amazed at what is available.

 

Arthur@2learn-English.com

Hello, 

 

I just wanted to share my experiences with having adult students read out loud in class. While this initially may be difficult for the student, I believe that the benefits out weigh the difficulty. The level I teach is non-readers to very low level readers.

The process I use is to read any sight words or vocabulary words that I believe may cause the students decoding or comprehension difficulties. Next, we look at the title and any pictures included, to predict what the story might be about.  I will then give the students time to read the story silently.  We talk about our predictions, were they correct or not. After this, I will either use echo reading or choral reading. In echo reading, I read the story line by line and the students repeat after me. This gives them the opportunity to hear the words pronounced correctly and they also hear oral expression and fluency. We may read the story this way two or  three times.  Finally, I ask for volunteers to read the story out loud to the class. At this point, the students have had contact with the text three to four times and are fairly comfortable decoding. We have discussed the meaning of the passage so comprehension is also enhanced. For the most part, the students are excited to try reading out loud. 

Grayla

Grayla, charming, effective, and as I mentioned in responding to Di, non-threatening. People only learn in safe environments, and this is another strategy to build safety as students venture onto the "ice"! :)

You have all developed a very useful thread here. Let's take it further as others join the party! Leecy