Learning to Read Out Loud

If you're reading this, you're most of the way there! Reading out loud is one of those skills that comes in handy more often than you might expect. Here are a few pointers on ways to do it well. 

Do you have a skill you want to learn? Or one you want to help me teach other dads? Get in touch at skillsfordads@gmail.com or on instagram @skillsfordads. 

Transcript

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So I started reading this book about anti-gravity. Yeah, I I found it just impossible to put down. Welcome to Skills for Dance, the show where each week we look at one skill that can be useful in our lives as parents. My name's Will, and I'm not an expert in any of these things. That's the whole point. We all have things we can learn and ways we can help each other grow in little consistent ways that are good for us and for the people around us. Thanks for joining me. Well, I know I say in the intro that I'm not an expert in any of these skills, but in this week's episode, I really guess this is one that I understand more than the average person, maybe. That's just because of the work that I do. I happen to be a pastor in real life. And actually, that's part of why I'm going with this particular skill for this week. Originally, I had thought that after last week being a little bit more of a kind of practical, hands-on sort of skill with the building a campfire, that it'd be good to maybe dive into some kind of a communication skill or some kind of a social or emotional sort of uh skill. But I seem to have committed myself to recording a weekly podcast. And this week I'm also preparing to lead a funeral, and our church has vacation Bible school right after that. So I'm gonna go with a skill that I already know a bit about. And actually, it's one that I'm gonna be doing a lot of during both of those things that I just mentioned. And if you want to get really meta, it's actually the thing that I am doing right now as I record this podcast. So what I'm talking about this week is reading out loud. Now, parenting can now parenting can give us lots of opportunities to use this skill. The most obvious example that comes to mind is probably reading stories to our kids. You know, that's something that I do at least at bedtime, you know, every night that my kiddos hear. But but this can be a useful skill in a lot of other ways. We might find ourselves reading everybody the rules of a new board game, or maybe you need to give prepared remarks on a special occasion in your kid's life, maybe during awards or recognition ceremony for some kind of an activity that your kid participates in. Or maybe, maybe you have kids that are fully grown and you're getting ready to give, you know, say a wedding toast or something like that. So here are some tips about ways to read well out loud. Obviously, if you're listening to this podcast, you've got you know some basic reading skills to be able to navigate, you know, the world of the internet. But reading out loud is one of those skills that most of us kind of struggle with. And and it makes sense because we learn to read, first of all, reading out loud, and then you know, we have to kind of force ourselves to then learn to read silently in our head, and from then on, that's the way most of us do most of our reading. So, if you're gonna read out loud, what should you do? Well, to start out with, if you can, you should review the thing that you're going to read before you go and read it. Now, I'm pretty comfortable just sight reading something that I haven't seen before. But if I can, I still like to read through stuff. I like to read through my sermons for church ahead of time by myself in my office. And, you know, when I was a guest reader in my daughter's kindergarten classroom, you better believe I took a few practice runs at Owl Moon before I actually went and read it to the kindergarten class, and I'm glad I did. If you're reading something that you wrote, this has the added bonus of letting you know whether it feels natural to read what you've written, whether the thing that you've put on paper really feels like your own voice. It also gives you a chance to highlight anything that you might want to emphasize or underline it, and and to look up how to pronounce anything that's not familiar. By the way, on that point, if you're reading out loud and you have to pronounce something that's totally unfamiliar, and there is zero chance that anyone in your audience knows the actual pronunciation, just say it any way you want. As long as you say it confidently. Now remember, I mentioned that I'm a pastor, and so this is a conversation I have a lot of times with people who are reading in church. You know, somebody will say, Hey, Pastor, how do you pronounce this? And it's like, well, I could tell you the way that we were taught. You know, you might have pronounced it in ancient Hebrew, but nobody here speaks ancient Hebrew. So pronounce it like you speak English, because that's sort of the convention in those kinds of texts. Now, obviously, I'm not talking about like the actual name or home of a real person, especially somebody that's living now, or especially somebody that's in the room with you. But you know, if we're talking about an ancient city or a fantasy character, maybe in a novel that you're reading to your kids, just say it however you want and enjoy it. Okay, so now it's time to actually read to your audience. Hopefully you've had a chance to read through things. And so now, what do you do? Well, whether that audience is a wedding rehearsal or a Cub Scout arrow of light ceremony, or if it's just you and your kiddo at bedtime, the first step in reading anything out loud is not actually reading anything. The first step is to breathe. Now that's one of those like duh kind of things, but but it's really easy to ignore in the moment. So if you're about to start reading something out loud, take a good breath. You know, and and while you're doing that, that gives you a chance to look at what you're about to read and gather yourself and and compose yourself. And then do not just look at the first word and start talking. What do I mean? Well, in order to do this well, to read out loud well, one of the things that you have to do is actually to read ahead of what you're speaking. So if you play an instrument, for example, or if you sing written music, the same thing is true for sight reading words as for sight reading music. So if you're playing an instrument and you're just looking at the notes or the tabs or the chords that you're playing right now, as you're playing them, your fingers are going to get behind and get all tangled up and you won't be able to keep a rhythm. And that can be true of reading too. I noticed this, I mean I knew about it, but I noticed this really the other night when my daughter asked me how it was that I turned the page before I'd finished saying the words that were on that page that I was turning. I hadn't really thought about it a lot, but but that's part of what happens with reading ahead. Now you might think, well, I can't do that, but you can. Whether or not you're a musician, whether or not that example resonated with you, this is still something that I believe you can do. If you have ever safely driven a vehicle of any kind, you have used basically the same skill. So I remember when I was first learning to drive, my tendency was to want to look directly at the road right in front of the car, like, you know, just a couple yards right in front of me. And if you try to drive like that, well, for one thing, it's it's not actually very safe. You know, it's not good defensive driving. But for another thing, I remember how my driving for those first few tries, it was like really wobbly and uh unsteady. And the reason was that I was reacting to kind of the close-up view of every little variation in the road instead of taking a longer view, which which really smooths everything out. Huh. You know, that's actually a really good metaphor for for a lot of things. Let's hold on to that one that a longer view helps smooth everything out. But for today, it's what we need to know in terms of reading out loud. See, if you're trying to read the word that you're saying, or even just one or two words ahead, you're a lot more likely to kind of trip over the next word that comes after that. Especially if you suddenly hit a word that you have to think about a little bit. But if you can see the whole phrase or the whole sentence at once, it helps smooth things out. It gives you a little bit of time to process any weird or hard words. And it's also useful for understanding the tone of what you're reading. It can be really helpful to look ahead and see what kind of punctuation is coming up at you. You know, sometimes things like question marks can kind of sneak up on you, can't they? Can't can't they? Just kind of made me think of Anchorman. I'm Ron Burgundy, which I swear this is a serious podcast, and I don't think I've used an Anchorman quote in life in many years. That's the anyway, doesn't matter. I'm not gonna defend it. I'm gonna leave it in there because it's a good illustration. Alright. I have one other tip. And I know this episode's already starting to get a little bit longer than I expected. But as you're reading, don't feel like you just need to push right through it nonstop, force yourself to get going, keep going so we just get it over with, and alright, it's done now. No. There's a better way. Fellow dads, let me introduce the power of the pause. Now it's possible to overdo this. I had a professor once who was infamous for lectures that were like twenty minutes worth of words and forty minutes worth of dramatic pauses. But seriously, the pause is your friend. And when you're reading or speaking to an audience, I can almost promise you that any pauses that you're taking are much shorter for the audience than how they feel in your mind. But if you're reading a story, a pause is a magical thing. If there's a moment of suspense or wonder, don't just barrel through that. Yes, that pause is also a practical way to catch your breath and to let your brain and your eyes and your voice all catch up with one another. But it also serves a purpose. And not just in terms of reading stories, like if you're presenting an award, a pause can emphasize the different things you might be recognizing. You know, say these Cub Scouts have shown a commitment to their community. They have learned how to safely enjoy the outdoors. They have etc. Alright. Those are just a few thoughts on reading out loud for today. I I hope they might be helpful. The other really big thing is with any skill, like any skill, this gets easier with practice. I believe you can do it. And also you don't have to do it perfectly in order to enjoy it. Now, one last thought for today. I've realized that one thing about this entire podcast, not just this episode, but but sort of this podcast generally, is that when I talk about these different skills, I also want to recognize that we do each have different physical, neurological, you know, developmental realities. I do appreciate that. I understand it well as a member of the neurodiverse community myself. I was hesitant about disclosing that fact about myself, but you are listening to an impulsively created weekly podcast about random skills. So big surprise there. Anyway, this whole thing about reading aloud makes some assumptions, for example, about a physical ability in terms of a speaking voice. And I know that there must be a lot of ways that this skill might be adapted by folks whose reality in that regard is different than mine. I don't know exactly, you know, how all of that might translate differently when your speaking is a different kind of speech. I remember when I was in the Lutheran Volunteer Corps after college, we lived near the neighborhood right next to Galludet University in Washington, DC. And it was always fascinating. I don't understand ASL, I don't speak ASL, but but looking at the ways that the students from Galludet communicated using ASL in a way that was expressive differently, you know, than you know, the way I speak. So I I don't know if if some of this episode translates to things like that. I I genuinely don't know, but I would be genuinely curious to hear from any of you that do know something about that, for example, as well. I guess my point is that that I know that I speak from my own experience with this podcast. And the same thing is true when I talk about, you know, dads. This podcast is really for anybody who identifies with being in that sort of dad role in in a kid's life. So I'm not talking about, you know, any what? It's not my business to gatekeep who a dad is, but if you find this podcast helpful, I'm glad and glad to have you in this community of dads learning together. All right, that's probably enough babbling on from me. I got off script in this podcast about reading aloud, ironically. Anyway, thanks for listening. And as always, if you have a skill that you think we should talk about, and especially if you're an expert at a skill and you'd be willing to join me here to share it, please reach out to me at skillsfordads at gmail.com or on Instagram and Facebook at Skillsfor Dads. Talk to you next time.