Reading aloud, the production effect and memory

For this blog, I've been dipping in for a second time into the book The Science of Learning: 77 Studies that Every Teacher Needs to Know (Busch and Watson, 2019). Study number 34 is entitled "The one about reading out loud". We are referring here to pupils reading out loud, not teachers.

The authors begin with a question: is there a way to read better that means that you are more likely to remember things? The researchers of the study in question (Forrin and MacLeod, 2018) asked students to study a list of words in four different ways:

1. Reading them out loud
2. Reading them in silence
3. Hearing a recording of themselves reading them
4. Hearing a recording of someone else saying the words

Can you guess what they discovered?

Well, the researchers found that the most effective study conditions to the least effective were, in order

1. Reading out loud the words
2. Hearing a recording of themselves reading them
3. Hearing a recording of someone else saying the words
4. Reading them in silence

The gap between reading aloud and hearing a recording of themselves reading aloud was quite small (3% difference in the final test). The biggest gap was between studying by reading aloud and reading in silence (12% difference in performance).

The authors go on to explain that the improved memory performance can be put down to what's called the "production effect". This is caused by producing something immediately with the new information to anchor it in the mind, rather than allowing it to drift away owing to other distractions. Reading aloud is does this by using a combination of three processes: it is active, it requires some visual processing and is self-referential. (I might add a fourth - namely that it arguably engages the phonological loop of working memory more when you read aloud than when you just say the words "in your head" - even though the latter does activate the phonological loop.)

The classroom implications the authors mention are that it's a good idea to tell students about the value of reading aloud and to remind them of what the research paper authors wrote;

Studying and rehearsal are "so valuable in learning and remembering as we do it ourselves and we do it in our own voices. When it comes time to recover the information, we can use this distinctive component to help us to remember."

Finally, the authors note that, although re-reading material is valuable, it is less effective as a revision tool than retrieval practice (testing oneself with questions).

Let me add a few points of my own of particular relevance to language teachers:

• Reading aloud was often discouraged in the past as a waste of classroom time, perhaps because it was often used by getting one pupil to read while the others listened. So it was both inefficient and potentially embarrassing to the reader aloud. The quality of reading aloud can sometimes be very low, as researchers have also discovered.

• There is plenty of evidence now that reading aloud is beneficial in terms of developing phonological awareness, pronunciation, phonological and orthographical memory, intonation and general self-confidence, as well as improving memory. Anecdotally, some teachers report that when a pupil reads aloud and questions are asked afterwards, then the reader aloud does worse at comprehension. My own experience was the opposite. Why might this be? My suggestion is that when the effort to decode is so huge, weaker students cannot focus both on the decoding and reading for meaning, so neglect to hold on to meaning. Whereas, already confident decoders can devote more space in working memory to focusing on meaning, and actually do so more effectively than the non-readers aloud (whose minds may be wandering and who are less invested in the process).

• Some naturalistic accounts of second language learning refer to the "silent period" (that period when first language learners do lots of listening before they actually utter words, phrases and sentences). This evidence is used to discourage the use of forced output (e.g. reading aloud) in the classroom. While I think that pupils need to her lots of input before they are pushed to say too much, I also believe it's simplistic to equate first language acquisition with classroom ("instructed") second language learning. Advocates of the silent period may want to consider the value of the production effect in learning.

• What about the issue of reading aloud being embarrassing and too pressured for students? For me, this is a question of delivery. Reading aloud can be scaffolded by using choral reading aloud of displayed text, choral and individual repetition, before students are asked to read individually. If reading aloud focuses on whole chunks and sentences rather than just isolated vocabulary, then decoding skill will quickly increase and students will soon take pleasure in reading aloud. In addition, the reading aloud can be done in pairs or individually, for example with pupils putting their fingers in their ears - a practice I saw successfully used at the Michaela Community School. So once students have become effective decoders through phonological awareness work, phonics training and plenty of regular listening and speaking, they can then enjoy and benefit from reading aloud. Many schools make it work successfully.

• The critical teacher may object to extrapolating too much from memory studies such as the one referred to here. Why? Well, you might argue than memorising lists of words or facts is not the same as developing proficiency in a language. That's true, but I am happy to go along with the idea that setting language to memory is part of language acquisition and that anything which leaves words and phrases in long-term memory is valuable. When you also look at the functioning of working memory, and in particular the phonological loop, then speaking and reading aloud make sense. If reading aloud and the production effect are of value then why not take advantage of them?

For more about the merits of reading aloud, with classroom activities try these blogs by myself and Gianfranco Conti, e.g.

Steve: Reading aloud https://frenchteachernet.blogspot.com/2014/08/reading-aloud.html (from 2014)

Gianfranco: My favourite read-aloud tasks and how I use them  https://gianfrancoconti.com/2018/03/16/my-favourite-read-aloud-task-and-how-i-use-them/ (2018)

Steve: Three ways to practise reading aloud https://frenchteachernet.blogspot.com/2014/08/reading-aloud.html (2018)

Reference

Forrin, N. and MacLeod, C. (2018). This time it's personal. The memory benefit of hearing oneself. Memory, 26/4, 574-579.