Will reading out loud improve your pronunciation & speaking skills?

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