The Importance of Reading Aloud for Students

Reading aloud helps students learn how to use language to understand the world, adds to the development of literacy and active reading and improves their information processing skills. Let's know the importance of reading aloud for students and its impact on developing their skills.

Benefits of reading aloud for students

How Does Reading Aloud Help Students Develop Literacy Skills?

Reading is a means of accessing information and acquiring knowledge at all times and places. It is the window through which students view all fields of knowledge, and it has prominent importance in the life of the individual and society through which he can communicate, participate, and dialogue.

Reading helps him to solve his problems and also gives him entertainment in his spare time, so he feels comfortable and useful and fulfills his desires and tendencies.

Reading is food for the mind and soul that develops experience or builds in the student a confident, distinct personality intellectually and culturally, makes him feel himself, activates intellectual processes, and works to satisfy curiosity to know himself and others, thus helping the student to personal and social compatibility. It is a tool of communication with the product of the human mind, and an indicator of social and scientific advancement and growth. Reading becomes increasingly important for students, not only because it is an academic subject, but also because their success and progress in other subjects depend mainly on it, as well as the role of reading in helping them face the challenges and developments of our time.

What is Oral Reading?

Oral reading is the reading through which the reader utters the correct written vocabulary and sentences in their exits, precise in their movements, audible in their performance, expressing the meanings contained in it.

Reading aloud is a simple and enjoyable activity through which the student can translate written symbols and letters into spoken words and audible sounds of different significance, and through which they understand meanings and link past experiences with them

Oral reading is an emotional process that includes symbols and drawings that the reader receives through his eyes, understanding meanings, linking past experience and these meanings, deduction, criticism, judgment, taste, and problem-solving.

Oral reading depends on three basic elements: seeing the written symbol with the eye, the activity of the mind in perceiving the meaning of the symbol, and pronouncing an audible voice that expresses the significance of the symbol or letter.

Oral reading is used at all educational levels, but it takes a longer time for young students, as they rely on repetition and continuous training to be able to master its skills. Reading aloud is considered more difficult than silent reading because it includes all the requirements of silent reading from the use of sight to recognize letters and words, and the mind’s awareness of meanings, in addition to expressing aloud the meanings of words and sentences using the articulation device.

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Importance of Reading Aloud:

Reading aloud is of great importance in refining the students’ personality and making it visible to society, as it has advantages in many aspects:

On the linguistic side, when practicing reading aloud, the student acquires proficiency in pronunciation, representation of meanings, fluency in expression, enriching his linguistic dictionary and improving his literary taste.

In the social aspect, reading aloud prepares the student for life by training him to dialogue with others, face the audience, participate in social situations, develop his confidence and remove the characteristic of hesitation.

As for the psychological aspect, the student-reader feels the approval of others and gets praise; This helps him to realize himself, so he feels confident and gets rid of the pests of fear and shyness.

As for the educational aspect, reading aloud helps students exchange knowledge and information, develop their pronunciation and listening skills, and represent their meanings. Thus, it is a way for teachers to diagnose students’ weaknesses and work to treat and improve them in the best possible way.

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Oral Reading Skills:

Oral reading skills require students to be fully aware of their knowledge and the best ways to perform them and work on developing them, as they grow together and intertwine among themselves.

Oral reading skills are divided into several skills, including: the skill of reading health, which enables the student to pronounce the letters and words in a correct and clear pronunciation free from errors, to take the letters out from their correct exits, and to realize the meanings and relationships in the reading text and understand its meanings. Therefore, teachers should train students on reading health and treatment of their pronunciation defects.

The skill of reading accuracy is considered the cornerstone of the student because it means the awareness of drawing and pronouncing words and sentences with the correct commitment to each letter of the word.

As for speed reading, it is one of the skills that need continuous training. Because it requires the student to place his eye in each movement on the largest number of words, the greater the number of words that the eye recognizes in each movement, the faster the reading speed.