如何提高阅读速度（二：朗读的重要与必要）

How to Read Faster (2: Why Reading Aloud Matters)

> By Li Xiaolai · 2009-01-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20110906164959/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/5150.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

So-called "lip reading," labeled a "bad habit," is actually just quiet "reading aloud." No one has ever thought, and no one would agree, that "reading aloud is a bad habit"—so why has "quietly reading aloud" become a bad habit? **Treating "quietly reading aloud" as a "bad habit" is obviously as absurd as it gets.**

It's the same for anyone: the difficulty of the reading content is inversely proportional to the speed of reading comprehension; that is, the more difficult the content being read, the lower the reader's speed of understanding. And the means of input we are using ("scanning," "silent reading" and "lip reading") will inevitably match the speed of understanding; so, once the reader starts using "lip reading," it shows that the difficulty of the content being read has already reached a certain degree, and at this difficulty the reader's "speed of understanding" is already less than or equal to the speed of "lip reading"—if the speed of understanding is a bit worse still, the reader may also need to "read repeatedly" several times, or even go back to some earlier point (the previous sentence, the previous paragraph, even the previous page) before possibly finding the clue that lets him find his way back from going astray.

**Writing itself has sound. Most people are neither deaf nor mute, so in understanding writing it is impossible to avoid sound**. You might examine your own so-called "scanning" process, and you'll find that *the voice in your head is actually always there*. In essence, the reason that voice is sometimes "intermittent" during "scanning" is only that in the course of reading you've "skipped" some "content that can be correctly guessed even without reading it all"; and that voice only "reads" the content that "must be read in order not to affect understanding"—which may be sentences, or may be scattered words and phrases. Going a step further, **as long as a person is normal, he "can at most deliberately avoid 'lip reading,' but simply cannot avoid 'silent reading.'"** [[1](#footnote_0_5150 "I have always been skeptical of all "speed reading" theories—the reason is simple: no normal person can read text apart from sound.")]

In the lower grades of primary school, most students can't take any article at random and "read it aloud fluently." In fact, many adults can't do it either—even professional announcers, before reading any material aloud, first have to spend some time getting familiar with the content before they can read it aloud basically without mistakes.

**"Reading aloud" is an ability**, and so of course it has to be mastered through exercise[[2](#footnote_1_5150 ""Stuttering" is another topic, unrelated to the topic we are discussing.")]. Although not everyone needs to take it to the extreme (except those who end up as announcers or actors), if one can't even pass at this, it may well lead to low "comprehension ability," to the point that every subject may be affected. Readers might think back over their own growing up: every class had at least one or two students who were laughed at by teachers or classmates because of terrible reading aloud[[3](#footnote_2_5150 "They are simply unlucky—in fact, very unlucky—nobody pays attention to the real reason they're in this predicament, and nobody is willing to offer appropriate help; and so, inexplicably, they "fall behind" until they "disappear from sight" from among most people.")], and their grades in other subjects were most likely not ideal—because learning any subject requires reading texts and requires comprehension ability, but these kids couldn't even master fluent reading aloud, so their comprehension ability was naturally much worse, and so they might fall behind others in every subject because of it.

In fact, **reading aloud is the most basic method of improving "comprehension ability."** Because when a person can read a sentence aloud fluently, it means he is completing the process of "taking apart" and "reassembling" the sentence—this is a complex systems project: information is input through the eyes, recognized, understood and processed by the brain, then formed into correct sounds using the various organs of the mouth, and then fed back to the brain through the ears; and at the same time, the brain is carrying out all sorts of processing without a moment's rest: what the sentence elements are, which characters and words make up what kind of element, what each of these elements means, what exactly the relationships between the elements are, what meaning these elements form when combined, and so on.

The reverse is also true: if a reader, faced with a grammatically correct, logically rigorous sentence, can't read it aloud fluently, it shows that the reader's "taking apart" or "reassembling" is wrong. After getting the sentence structure, the meaning of the elements and the relationships between them clear again, the meaning of the sentence naturally becomes clear, and reading it naturally becomes "smooth"; then read the sentence a few more times—which is in fact "practicing the process of understanding and consolidating comprehension ability through repetition."

So, to improve reading comprehension ability, you must spend a certain amount of time making up the basic skill of "reading aloud." For people learning a foreign language, I think you need to keep up morning reading for at least a year (an hour a day) to count as basically passing. My experience is that the younger you are, the easier it is to progress in this respect (for example, high-school students progress faster in this than university students). If at first you can't manage "reading aloud independently" (it is a foreign language, after all, and many people are afraid of reading it wrong), then "read along" (you can refer to "[New TOEFL Listening and Speaking Training (series, 12 pieces in all)](http://www.lixiaolai.com/index.php/archives/category/everyone-can-use-english/toefl-listening-and-speaking)" (《新托福听说训练（系列，共12篇）》)).

---

Supplementary material (1):

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author as supplementary material; in English in the original and kept exactly as written; not Li Xiaolai's words.]
>
> **Facts About Reading Aloud**
>
> [http://www.rif.org/parents/articles/Fact\_readingAloud.mspx]
>
> Source: Family Reading. NCES Fast Facts. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
>
> Reading to young children promotes language acquisition and literacy development and, later on, achievement in reading comprehension and overall success in school. The percentage of young children read aloud to daily by a family member is one indicator of how well young children are prepared for school. In particular, a mother’s education is consistently related to whether or not children are read to by a family member.
>
> - In 1999, 53 percent of children ages 3 to 5 were read to daily by a family member, the same as in 1993 after increasing to 57 percent in 1996.
> - As a mother’s education increases, so does the likelihood that her child is read to every day. In 1999, 70 percent of children whose mothers were college graduates were read aloud to every day. In comparison, daily reading aloud occurred for 53 percent of children whose mothers had some postsecondary education, 44 percent whose mothers had completed high school but had no education beyond that, and 38 percent whose mothers had not completed high school.
> - White, non-Hispanic children are more likely to be read aloud to every day than either black, non-Hispanic or Hispanic children. Sixty-one percent of white, non-Hispanic children, 41 percent of black, non-Hispanic children, and 33 percent of Hispanic children were read to every day.
> - Children in families with incomes below the poverty line are less likely to be read aloud to every day than are children in families with incomes at or above the poverty line. Thirty-eight percent of children in families in poverty were read to every day in 1999, down from 46 percent in 1996, compared with 58 percent of children in families at or above the poverty line, which is down from 61 percent in 1996.

---

Supplementary material (2):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization]

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author as supplementary material; in English in the original and kept exactly as written; not Li Xiaolai's words.]
>
> Advocates of speed reading generally claim that subvocalization “places extra burden on the cognitive resources, thus, slowing the reading down.” These claims are currently backed only by controversial, sometimes non-existent scientific research; in some cases, concepts are drawn from pseudoscience and urban myths about the brain. Speedreading courses often prescribe lengthy practices to eliminate subvocalizing when reading. Normal reading instructors often simply apply remedial teaching to a reader who subvocalizes to the degree that they make visible movements on the lips, jaw, or throat.[2]
>
> There is no evidence that normal non-observable subvocalizing will negatively affect any reading process [1] At the more powerful rates (memorizing, learning, and reading for comprehension), subvocalizing is very detectable by the reader. At the less powerful, faster rates of reading, (skimming, and scanning) subvocalization is less detectable. For competent readers, subvocalizing to some extent even at scanning rates is normal.[2]
>
> It may be impossible to totally eliminate subvocalization because people learn to read by associating the sight of words with their spoken sounds. Sound associations for words are indelibly imprinted on the nervous system—even of deaf people, since they will have associated the word with the mechanism for causing the sound or a sign in a particular sign language. Subvocalizing is an inherent part of reading and understanding a word, and micro-muscle tests suggest that subvocalizing is impossible to eliminate. Attempting to stop subvocalizing is potentially harmful to comprehension, learning, and memory. At the more powerful reading rates (100-300 words per minute), subvocalizing can be used to improve comprehension.

---

Footnotes:

1. I have always been skeptical of all "speed reading" theories—the reason is simple: no normal person can read text apart from sound. [[↩](#identifier_0_5150)]
2. "Stuttering" is another topic, unrelated to the topic we are discussing. [[↩](#identifier_1_5150)]
3. They are simply unlucky—in fact, very unlucky—nobody pays attention to the real reason they're in this predicament, and nobody is willing to offer appropriate help; and so, inexplicably, they "fall behind" until they "disappear from sight" from among most people. [[↩](#identifier_2_5150)]

Copyright: © LookMinds. Our own edited text and translation, not a substitute for the original; rights in the original belong to the author and the platform. Please see the original link.