Read An Essay Out Loud

What this handout is about

This handout explains some of the benefits of hearing your writing read aloud. It offers tips on reading your typhoon yourself, asking a friend to read it to you, or having it read by a text-to-voice communication plan or app.

Why read out loud?

If you lot come to the Writing Center for a tutoring session, y'all volition probably hear your tutor say, "We always read papers out loud—would you lot similar to read yours, or would you lot like to hear me read information technology?" Reading aloud has many benefits that we want to share with writers. Most people have far more experience listening to and speaking English than they do reading and editing it on the printed folio. When you read your typhoon out loud or heed to someone else read it, your brain gets the data in a new manner, and you may notice things that you didn't run across before.

Every bit listeners, we need the club of ideas in a paper to make sense. We tin can't flip back and along from page to page to effort to figure out what is going on or detect information we need. When you hear your newspaper read out loud, you may recognize that y'all demand to re-order the information in it or realize that at that place are gaps in your explanation. Listeners also demand transitions to help the states get from one main idea to the next. When you hear your paper, you may recognize places where you have moved from ane topic to another too abruptly.

You may also hear errors in your sentences. Sometimes we leave out a word, mess things upward as we copy and paste text, or make a grammatical mistake. These kinds of errors can exist hard to run across on the folio, simply sentences that comprise them are very likely to sound incorrect. For native speakers of English (and some non-native speakers, likewise), reading out loud is one of the most powerful proofreading techniques around.

Sometimes sentences aren't grammatically incorrect, only they are still awkward in some mode—too long, besides convoluted, too repetitive. Issues like these are oft hands heard. Hearing your paper can also assistance you get a sense of whether the tone is right. Does it sound also formal? Too chatty or coincidental? What kind of impression volition your vocalization in this paper make on a reader? Sometimes hearing your words helps you get a more than objective sense of the impression you are creating—listening puts in you in something more like the position your reader will be in as he/she moves through your text.

What are some strategies for reading out loud?

Reading your paper out loud has a lot of benefits, but it presents a few challenges, besides. I issue is that a lot depends on how you read. Information technology is very piece of cake to read too quickly or to let your brain automatically "shine over" mistakes, make full in missing words, and make little corrections without y'all ever becoming consciously aware that it's happening. If you don't read exactly what is on the printed page, yous won't go an accurate sense of what is in your paper. Here are some strategies to help you read out loud effectively:

Try working from a printed copy. This will let you to brand marks at places where something sounds wrong to y'all and so you can return to them later.
As you read, follow along with your finger, pointing at each word. This tin help you stay focused and not skip anything.
Effort to read at a moderate pace.
If you are proofreading, consider reading your paper out loud one sentence at a fourth dimension, starting at the end and working back to the beginning. This volition help yous focus on the structure of each sentence, rather than on the overall menstruum of your argument.
Try covering up everything only the department or sentence you are working on at the moment so you can concentrate on information technology and not get lost.

Another dandy strategy to try is to ask a friend to read your paper out loud while yous mind. Make sure that your friend knows to read exactly what is on the printed page. Pay shut attention to places where your friend seems to stumble or become lost—those may be places where you lot need to make things clearer for your readers. As your friend is speaking, you can jot notes on a printed copy of the paper. You don't accept to be in the same room to do this—you could e-mail a copy of your newspaper to your friend and ask him/her to telephone call you and read to you over the telephone.

How can technology help?

Y'all don't necessarily need to recruit a friend to read to you. There are a number of text-to-spoken communication software applications and spider web-based services that will assist you go your calculator, smartphone, tablet, or e-book reader to read your paper out loud to you. One reward of this approach is that an automated reader will definitely not cover upward any errors for yous! You lot can likewise control where information technology starts and stops, speed information technology upward or ho-hum it downwards, and accept information technology re-read the aforementioned paragraph equally many times every bit you want.

If you decide to experiment with this approach, in that location are many free text readers available. MS Word has a text-to-speech characteristic congenital in. Recent Android and iOS phones also have text-to-speech capabilities, which y'all tin can find nether accessibility settings. You may likewise find text-to-speech software among your Windows or Mac estimator's accessibility features.

If you decide you want to acquire specialized software, "text to speech," "TTS," and "text reader" are search terms that can aid you lot observe what is available.

Here are some differences to go along in listen every bit you choose the best reader for you:

Vocalism quality and option: how many voices tin you cull from, and how natural do they audio?
Controls: tin can you determine the speed and pitch of the speaker, where the reading starts and stops, etc.? Is there a intermission push?
Applicability: can you convert your text file into an audio file, download it, and heed to information technology on your telephone or music player?
Text handling: does the software highlight each discussion every bit it is read (which may be especially helpful for not-native English speakers and students with reading/writing disabilities)? Do y'all demand to copy text and paste it into a new window, or tin the program piece of work directly within an awarding (like Word or Powerpoint), or does it but read the text on your screen?
Speed: how many pages of text or words can exist converted to voice at once? How quickly does the conversion happen?
Blazon of program: do you need an active net connection to use the plan, or can you run it without cyberspace admission one time information technology has been installed?

While synthetic voices continue to meliorate, they will likely non sound completely natural to y'all. But you may find that if you cull a favorite vox, yous can become used to its intonation and pacing over fourth dimension.

I feel kind of empty-headed doing this…

Reading aloud (or listening to your writing existence read) takes some getting used to, but give it a try. You lot may be surprised at how much it can speed up your revision process!

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