The most rewarding personal activity (4) - Reading aloud helps improve comprehension

By Xiaolai Li, rewritten in English by Mr. Y

It’s a pity, but most people don’t pay much attention to reading aloud training - whether they are learning their native language or a foreign language. It's simple, effective, and can solve many problems that countless people have spent a lot of money on various training classes to try to solve.

Reading aloud is the most effective way to improve your comprehension. Imagine you're asked to fluently and loudly read a sentence consisting of twenty words.

First, you need to be able to recognize each word you see. Some words look very similar, like "principle" and "principal," "quite" and "quiet” - even the presence of spaces is a factor to consider, like "some time" and "sometimes," or "everyone" and "every one."

Secondly, most words have multiple meanings, and which meaning it holds in the current sentence depends on what its adjacent words mean. For example, the word "scale" has multiple meanings. If followed by "~ of the economy," it means "extent or scope"; if followed by "~ of fish," it means "fish scales".

Furthermore, some word combinations, when put together, convey meanings almost entirely different from their literal interpretations, such as "strike home", "even Steven," and "paint the town red", etc. It's one thing to be completely clueless, but sometimes the true meaning is the exact opposite of the intuitive feeling, which is quite problematic. For example, "birds of prey" - a student who only knows the word "prey" and hasn't specifically looked it up in a dictionary might easily interpret this phrase as "birds that are preyed upon" when the correct meaning is "Carnivorous birds, birds that prey on other animals". (Don't be surprised, believe me, you're not alone.)

In addition, any sentence longer than ten words is more likely to be a complex sentence, containing phrases, clauses, inversions, emphatic sentences, or omitted grammatical elements. These grammatical phenomena are not always easy to handle and sometimes require some effort to complete correctly. The reason why reading aloud is the most basic method for improving "comprehension" is that when a person can fluently read a sentence, it means that they are completing the process of "deconstructing" and "reconstructing" that sentence - a complex systematic project.

Information is input through the eyes, recognized, understood, and processed by the brain, and then formed into correct sounds through various organs of the mouth. It is then fed back to the brain through the ears. At the same time, the brain is constantly performing various processing steps: what are the components of a sentence, which words constitute what kind of components, what are the individual meanings of these components, what are the relationships between the components, and what kind of meaning these components form when combined, and so on.

Conversely, if a reader cannot fluently read a grammatically correct and logically rigorous sentence, it means that the reader has misinterpreted or mis-reconstructed it. Once the sentence structure, the meaning of its components, and the relationships between them are clarified, the meaning will naturally become clear, and the reading will become smoother. Then, reading the sentence several more times - this is essentially "repeatedly practicing the comprehension process and consolidating comprehension skills".

In fact, most people find it difficult to read any sentence fluently in their native language—even though most believe they can. For example, most people might be able to read aloud any sentence from Reader* magazine relatively fluently without any preparation, because it's essentially a literacy magazine; however, only a minority (presumably a very small minority) can read aloud any sentence from Reading** magazine fluently without any preparation, because this magazine conveys knowledge that truly requires intellectual understanding. Even professional broadcasters need to spend some time familiarizing themselves with the content before broadcasting any material to ensure they can read it with minimal errors.

My comments on Reader and Reading magazines are merely my personal opinions. Also, it seems Reading has ceased publication.

"Reading aloud" is even a skill, and naturally, it requires practice to master. While not everyone needs to excel at it (except for those who ultimately become broadcasters or actors), failing at this can easily lead to poor comprehension, potentially affecting all subjects. Readers could recall their own childhood: in every class, there were at least one or two students ridiculed by teachers or classmates for poor reading aloud. Their grades in other subjects were usually not ideal either - because learning any subject requires reading texts and comprehension ability, but these children couldn't even read aloud fluently, so their comprehension was naturally much weaker, which could cause them to fall behind in all subjects. This is almost an ironclad rule: early literacy training influences a person's thinking ability throughout their life, and consequently, their quality of life.

Notes:

*: Reader (also translated as Duzhe) is a bimonthly Chinese general interest magazine. It is among the most widely circulated and the leading magazines in the People's Republic of China.

**: Reading (also translated as Dushu), the content mainly consists of book reviews, mostly academic discussions.

Copyright & Republication

Original Chinese text by Xiaolai Li (copyright released). English translation ©2025 Mr. Y.

Republication of this translation is permitted, provided that both the original author (Xiaolai Li) and the translator (Mr. Y) are credited, and a link to the original translation on blossomsblog.com is included.

For other matters concerning this translation, please contact: info@blossomsblog.com