If You Find a Rock Read Aloud

What this handout is near

This handout explains some of the benefits of hearing your writing read aloud. It offers tips on reading your draft yourself, asking a friend to read information technology to you, or having information technology read by a text-to-speech program or app.

Why read out loud?

If yous come up to the Writing Center for a tutoring session, you will probably hear your tutor say, "We always read papers out loud—would you similar to read yours, or would you lot like to hear me read it?" Reading aloud has many benefits that we desire to share with writers. Most people have far more feel listening to and speaking English language than they do reading and editing it on the printed folio. When you lot read your draft out loud or listen to someone else read it, your encephalon gets the data in a new manner, and you may notice things that you didn't run into before.

As listeners, we need the guild of ideas in a newspaper to make sense. We can't flip dorsum and forth from page to folio to try to figure out what is going on or find information we need. When y'all hear your paper read out loud, y'all may recognize that you demand to re-guild the information in information technology or realize that at that place are gaps in your explanation. Listeners also need transitions to help u.s.a. go from ane main idea to the next. When y'all hear your paper, you may recognize places where you have moved from one topic to some other too abruptly.

Y'all may also hear errors in your sentences. Sometimes we leave out a discussion, mess things up as we copy and paste text, or brand a grammatical mistake. These kinds of errors can be hard to see on the page, but sentences that contain them are very likely to sound wrong. For native speakers of English (and some non-native speakers, besides), reading out loud is one of the most powerful proofreading techniques around.

Sometimes sentences aren't grammatically incorrect, only they are nevertheless awkward in some way—too long, too convoluted, likewise repetitive. Problems similar these are frequently easily heard. Hearing your newspaper can as well help y'all get a sense of whether the tone is right. Does it audio too formal? As well chatty or coincidental? What kind of impression will your voice in this paper make on a reader? Sometimes hearing your words helps you get a more than objective sense of the impression yous are creating—listening puts in you in something more like the position your reader will exist in as he/she moves through your text.

What are some strategies for reading out loud?

Reading your newspaper out loud has a lot of benefits, but it presents a few challenges, besides. One issue is that a lot depends on how you read. It is very easy to read too quickly or to let your brain automatically "smooth over" mistakes, fill in missing words, and make footling corrections without you always becoming consciously aware that it's happening. If you don't read exactly what is on the printed page, y'all won't become an accurate sense of what is in your paper. Hither are some strategies to assist you read out loud effectively:

• Try working from a printed copy. This volition allow you to make marks at places where something sounds wrong to you so you can render to them later.
• As yous read, follow along with your finger, pointing at each word. This can aid you stay focused and not skip annihilation.
• Effort to read at a moderate pace.
• If you are proofreading, consider reading your newspaper out loud one judgement at a time, starting at the end and working back to the beginning. This volition help you focus on the structure of each sentence, rather than on the overall flow of your argument.
• Try roofing upward everything but the section or sentence you are working on at the moment so you can concentrate on information technology and not get lost.

Another great strategy to endeavour is to ask a friend to read your paper out loud while you listen. Brand sure that your friend knows to read exactly what is on the printed folio. Pay close attention to places where your friend seems to stumble or become lost—those may be places where you need to make things clearer for your readers. As your friend is speaking, you can jot notes on a printed re-create of the paper. Y'all don't accept to be in the aforementioned room to practise this—you could email a copy of your newspaper to your friend and ask him/her to call you lot and read to you over the telephone.

How can technology aid?

Yous don't necessarily need to recruit a friend to read to yous. There are a number of text-to-voice communication software applications and web-based services that will assistance you become your computer, smartphone, tablet, or e-book reader to read your paper out loud to yous. One advantage of this approach is that an automated reader will definitely not cover upwards any errors for you! Yous tin likewise control where it starts and stops, speed information technology up or deadening it downward, and take information technology re-read the same paragraph equally many times as you desire.

If you decide to experiment with this approach, in that location are many free text readers available. MS Word has a text-to-speech characteristic built in. Recent Android and iOS phones besides have text-to-speech capabilities, which y'all tin can find under accessibility settings. Yous may also find text-to-oral communication software among your Windows or Mac calculator'due south accessibility features.

If you make up one's mind you want to acquire specialized software, "text to oral communication," "TTS," and "text reader" are search terms that can help yous observe what is available.

Hither are some differences to continue in mind as you choose the best reader for you:

• Phonation quality and selection: how many voices can you choose from, and how natural do they sound?
• Controls: tin can you decide the speed and pitch of the speaker, where the reading starts and stops, etc.? Is there a break push button?
• Applicability: tin yous convert your text file into an audio file, download it, and listen to it on your phone or music thespian?
• Text treatment: does the software highlight each word equally it is read (which may be particularly helpful for non-native English speakers and students with reading/writing disabilities)? Do you need to copy text and paste it into a new window, or can the program work directly within an application (like Word or Powerpoint), or does information technology but read the text on your screen?
• Speed: how many pages of text or words tin can be converted to vocalisation at one time? How quickly does the conversion happen?
• Type of program: do yous need an active internet connection to use the program, or tin can you run it without cyberspace admission once it has been installed?

While synthetic voices continue to better, they will likely not sound completely natural to you lot. But you lot may find that if yous choose a favorite voice, you can become used to its intonation and pacing over time.

I feel kind of silly doing this…

Reading aloud (or listening to your writing being read) takes some getting used to, but give it a try. You lot may be surprised at how much it can speed up your revision procedure!

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
You lot may reproduce it for non-commercial use if y'all apply the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Middle, Academy of Due north Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/

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