reading aloud

recently, i’ve been reading aloud. yes, reading aloud, like a child when called on by their teacher to read for the class, except i'm not a child and i'm not reading to anyone but myself. it's exactly as strange as it sounds, but more useful than you might expect.

why am i doing this?

there's a reason children learn to read by reading out loud. it engages your mind and body in ways that silent reading doesn’t.

it commands your full attention. when reading silently, it’s quite easy to skim across words or skip ahead. if you’re like me, your mind can wander elsewhere - especially when reading on your phone or computer, where notifications are ever-present. as a result, you may think you’ve “read” something, when you’ve only half-absorbed it. reading aloud forces you to move at the pace of your own voice, word by word, sentence by sentence. it’s impossible to skip ahead, and very hard for your mind to wander.

it exposes the gaps in your vocabulary. when reading in your head, if you come across a word you don’t know, it’s easy to glide right over it. when reading aloud, there’s no escape. you’re forced to wrestle with words you can’t pronounce or comprehend. the physical struggle makes your lack of comprehension that much more apparent. for me, the sheer humiliation of mispronouncing or stuttering over a word that i thought i knew ("leviathan", "corporeal", & "quiescent" to name a few) is enough to motivate me to lock it into memory.

it sharpens your speaking skills. reading aloud forces you to practice the mechanics of speaking: enunciation, pacing, breath control, and intonation. over time, that practice makes you sharper and quicker in real conversations and presentations. you’re essentially rehearsing the skills of public speaking in a low-stakes, private setting. while i’m a pretty confident public speaker, i still found it challenging to read aloud to myself with precision and punch.

what have i noticed?

i’ve been doing this for about a month now. although i can’t say this habit has transformed my life, i’ve noticed a few things.

i’m writing more easily. while it’s subjective (and you can be the judge), i think reading aloud has made me a better writer, or at least made it easier to write, which perhaps amounts to the same thing. reading good prose out loud trains your ear for rhythm and style in a way that reading in your head doesn’t. since i’ve been reading moby dick, with its sprawling, musical sentences, and paul graham essays, which are stripped down and precise, i find i now have a better reference for what “good” sounds like - both in a classical and practical sense.

i’m enunciating better. through this exercise, i’ve realized how poor my enunciation can be. i’m especially sloppy early in the morning and late at night. reading aloud has forced me to work through this. while the first few pages still tend to be a little slow, reading aloud warms my voice up for the day, making me sharper and more intentional in my communication all day long.

i’m remembering more of what i read. when reading aloud, i’m much more likely to remember what i’ve read than when reading in my head. this is partially because i have a tendency to skip over details when reading in my head, but it’s also because i have a more visceral memory of the content when i’ve spoken it out loud. in fact, this is a real physiological phenomenon called the production effect: the superior retention of material read aloud relative to material read silently.

what’s been hard?

there’s quite a lot of friction in making reading aloud a habit. i found these to be the most poignant.

it’s disruptive. one of the main benefits of reading in your head is that you can do it anywhere, but you can’t really read out loud on the subway or in your office without sounding crazy. you need to have a quiet, private place to do it.

it's time consuming. when reading aloud, you’re limited not only by how quickly you can process the words, but by how quickly you can read them out. your mind often runs faster than your mouth, which makes silent reading far faster. if you normally read a page a minute in your head, reading aloud might cut that pace in half.

it’s tiring. another benefit of reading in your head is that you don’t need a lot of energy to do it. reading aloud, on the other hand, requires quite a bit of energy. if you’re like me and also spend a lot of the day talking already, sometimes you just want to come home and shut up for a bit.

that being said, i believe these points of friction make it a more worthy pursuit. the fact that it is somewhat uncomfortable and impractical makes me more serious about scheduling time for it.

should you try this?

i don’t know, to be honest. if you are a prolific reader, writer, or public speaker, you might not stand to gain much from reading aloud. but if you’re curious, i encourage you to at least try. it was certainly humbling for me to stumble through words i haven’t seen since SAT prep or realize how long it actually takes me to read a page.

on a more meta note, i just really enjoy trying weird, new things. i like challenging myself to pick up new (or old, in this case) skills and stick with them consistently. at some point, i will reevaluate whether it’s a worthwhile exercise to continue doing. but for now, i’m still very much enjoying, learning, and growing as a result.