hey what's up Stefanie the English coach here from EnglishFullTime.com
in this video I'm going to answer the question will reading out loud help me
improve my pronunciation and speaking skills now the simple answer is that yes
it will help in some ways but there are better methods and I don't recommend
that you primarily use this method reading out loud to improve your
pronunciation and your speaking skills so I'm going to explain why in this
video okay so several months ago I wrote an email about this to all of my
subscribers and one person wrote back and he was so angry and he was like how
can you say that reading out loud isn't the best method for improving our
pronunciation and our speaking skills this is what we've been taught this is
what our teachers have shown us this is what we all do and first of all I was
kind of like okay just because that's what everybody does and that's what
you're being taught doesn't mean that that's the best method right the reason
why reading out loud is not the best way to practice your pronunciation is
because words in English and I say this all the time are not pronounced the way
that they are written in fact words in English often have nothing to do their
pronunciation has nothing to do with the way they're written
we have silent letters we have confusing letter combinations you know when we're
speaking we cut off the ends of words we add sounds we eliminate sounds and when
you are reading text on a page that text is flat you can't read what intonation
you're supposed to speak with you can't read what emphasis you're supposed to
put on which syllable you can't read any of that information so reading the words
on a page you could be reading them incorrectly and who's gonna be there to
correct you right who's gonna be there to say hey no you keep messing up right
there you keep doing that that's not how it's done if you're just reading out
loud you could be practicing something incorrectly and then practicing it
consistently incorrectly and then you're gonna solidify an incorrect language
pattern in your mind simply put you cannot read sounds you can hear
sounds so if you're trying to improve your pronunciation you should not be
reading and then trying to pronounce you should be listening and then imitating
what you hear because your ears will not deceive you but your eyes will you'll
read a word and you'll see a silent letter there and you won't realize it's
silent so you think you have to pronounce it right your eyes are
deceiving you they're making you think that you need to pronounce a word in a
certain way when you don't so rather you should listen to words
listen to sentences listen to audio clips and just imitate what you hear
right many of you know this as shadowing you're shadowing what you hear you're
saying it as you're hearing it or you're pausing the audio pausing the video and
then repeating what you just heard and then replay those audios again and again
listen repeat listen repeat and that way you will learn to start sounding and
speaking more like a native speaker and less like a textbook a lot of foreign
speakers when they speak in English they actually sound like a book like very
choppy you know like they're reading one word at a time and pronouncing
everything perfectly but nobody speaks like that right so reading out loud is
not a great method because your eyes are gonna see separations between words
they're gonna see the spaces and it's gonna give you this idea that oh my gosh
there's a space here between these words so I need to make spaces in between my
words when I speak and that's simply not true we run all the words together
practically okay you guys we use so many contractions in English
so again if you're listening and then repeating what you hear you're more
likely to develop a natural sounding English now the other reason why reading
out loud won't necessarily help you with your speaking is because the way that
sentences are constructed in a book are not the way that they are spoken in
conversation okay and I'm going to give you an example of this so I have a book
here it's called the e-myth revisited and here on chapter 3 the very first
sentence goes like this it is self-evident that businesses
says like people are supposed to grow and with growth comes change that's a
great sentence but it's a great sentence for a book I do not talk like this okay
so instead of saying it is self-evident I would say like hey it's obvious it's
obvious and instead of starting my sentence like that I might not even say
it's obvious cuz when something is obvious we just say it we don't have to
say it's obvious so I would just say you know businesses are like people they
have to grow that's it that's how I speak I don't have to speak in this
fancy way that this book is written and this book isn't even that fancy but as
you can see from this sentence here it still has some pretty complex sentences
and again these sentences are very well-written but nobody talks like that
so if you want to learn to speak in a natural way you have to imitate people
and not even people giving speeches because the way you speak when you give
a speech is a lot different than the way you speak in a conversation so in
conclusion reading out loud will help you improve reading out loud okay if you
want to improve your pronunciation listen and repeat what you hear and if
you want to improve your speaking skills then do that same thing listen and
repeat but engage in conversations with other people where you can practice your
speaking skills and where you can get feedback because in a conversation
someone's gonna say oh I'm sorry what what do you mean by that or I don't
understand what you mean or could you explain that more or something like that
that shows you how you're doing and likewise if nobody asks that if nobody
says oh what do you mean if they just carry on with the conversation and keep
going then that confirms to you that they understood you and you're doing
great with your English okay so if all of this makes sense please let me know
in the comments and I would love to do more videos like this where I answer
frequently asked questions so if you have a question that you'd like me to do
a video about please let me know in the comments just type it out there in the
comments and if you want to give me some context also that would be really
helpful tell me why you're asking what you're struggling with and what your
goal is what you're trying to achieve okay alright so that is it if you want a
guide on to senior English with native speakers
meeting native English speakers online interacting with us so you can practice
your English improve your English learn new vocabulary build your confidence etc
I have a guide on my website I'm going to link it here in the description I
always share this guide because it is literally the most popular one on my
entire website EnglishFullTime.com that's it you guys have a great day and
I will see you in the next video bye