Oral Reading Fluency in English - Introduction - How to Improve Your English

Oral Reading Fluency

Introduction

Reading is a wonderful skill.

and there are different types of reading.

You can read silently to get information.

Or you can read silently for pleasure.

What about reading aloud?

This is called oral reading.

Often when I write a letter, and email message, or blog post,

I read my text aloud to make sure it sounds good.

When I read my own writing, I'm checking for mistakes.

Or I'm looking for ways to make my ideas sound better.

With my children, I read aloud almost everyday.

I read to them. They read to me. They've become better readers

and listeners because of this.

Oral reading, though, is not just helpful for young learners.

As language learners.

adults can benefit from oral reading, too.

When you learn to read a text,

smoothly and clearly, you become more confident

as a speaker. Your pronunciation improves

because you're taking the time

to form each word and say each phrase

as one thought. You become more aware

of new words and how they're used.

And because you're reading more slowly

than you would if you read silently, your understanding of sentence structure

can deepen because you're paying attention to how words are put together

and how punctuation is being used.

In this series, we're going to read

short texts aloud to develop your fluency.

They're short because I want you to read

each text several times.

We'll read each text four times.

First, you listen as I read.

I'll read at a natural pace.

Second, you listen and repeat after me.

Third, we read together slowly.

Fourth, we read together again

at a more natural pace. But you shouldn't stop

after four readings. I encourage you

to read at least once more on your own.

Also consider

recording yourself on day one. If you practice each day,

then record yourself again on day 7. You should hear your own progress.

Remember it's okay to sound different from me.

You should find your own voice when you read these texts.

I'm just giving you possible model.

Reading aloud well is

only possible if you understand what you're reading.

For that reason, I'll start with a very easy texts.

Then I'll increase the difficulty level.

I'm going to use high frequency words.

That means these are words worth knowing,

worth studying because they're used often

in communication. Reading can be very helpful when you want to improve your

vocabulary.

Take the time to look up the definitions of new words

in the dictionary. Look at the examples

in the dictionary. Then look again

at how I use the words in my texts. I'll help you by including short vocabulary

notes

up some key words in each reading.

If you're a teacher,

you can keep track of the words of the words I'm using and the difficulty level of the

texts

by reading the video descriptions. I'll note

the range of words that have chosen from the General Service List,

and I'll include a readability score.

Now let's start reading.

Read with me and become more fluent and confident in English.