Bad news: it does NOT improve comprehension<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\nLet’s pause to summarize these studies so far:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First: if the goal is for individual students to remember some words <\/strong>or passages better than others, they should read those important passages out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSecond: if the goal is for students to remember all the words <\/strong>or passages, then reading aloud is just as good as reading silently.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThird: if the goal is for students to understand the concepts<\/strong>, reading aloud provides no extra benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Final Step<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If reading passages out loud doesn’t enhance understanding of underlying concepts, what does?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although this question invites a very long answer, I’ll offer two short-ish ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n- We should focus less on the mode of presentation<\/em>. In most cases, whether ideas are spoken out loud or written down (or acted out, or…) has little effect on understanding.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Instead, we should focus on the quality of the thinking <\/em>before <\/strong>students do their presenting. Are they elaborating? Are they self-explaning? Are they comparing and contrasting? Are they thinking critically? Are they thinking beyond the initial information they took in?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
Students who do undertake such mental activity — students who think hard<\/em> about the material — are much likelier to understand it than others who don’t. They may write down their ultimate thoughts and conclusions. They may explain them out loud to their peers. But that final step will have much less effect on understanding than the thinking that came before.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn a sentence: speaking and writing are both good. Thinking matters more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nMacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., & Ozubko, J. D. (2010). The production effect: delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition<\/em>, 36<\/em>(3), 671.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRoberts, B. R., Hu, Z. S., Curtis, E., Bodner, G. E., McLean, D., & MacLeod, C. M. (2024). Reading text aloud benefits memory but not comprehension. Memory & Cognition<\/em>, 52<\/em>(1), 57-72.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A colleague recently asked me this thoughtful question: I’ve seen research on the ‘Production Effect.’ It tells us that students remember words better when they say them out loud. Following this logic, will students understand ideas better if they explain them out loud? For instance: will an oral presentation to the class help my students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6670729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,268],"class_list":["post-6670587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-production-effect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6670587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6670587"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6670587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6670730,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6670587\/revisions\/6670730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6670729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6670587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6670587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6670587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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