Do you guys think it is possible to develop speaking skills by just reading out loud?
Of course. It will strengthen your vocabulary and pronunciation for the words and phrases too. And if you donāt know the word/ phrase, but you have said it enough. You will recall it. And it will be easier for you to retain the meaning for that word/phrase.
Sure, the pronunciation piece anyway. However, constructing sentences to speak is a whole 'nother skill.
I consider the pronunciation piece huge. I still donāt speak, but I listen/repeat/shadow a couple hours a day.
In order to understand French, I must be able to hear it properly. While Iām practicing my listening, I might as well practice my pronunciation. So I do.
When I get around to conversation, Iāll have the confidence to understand what others say and speak my response clearly.
If you want to improve your speaking skills, part of the process should be to train the muscles of the mouth to the new target language.
A student should learn how to pronounce each sound of individual letters and various important combinations, and repeat them until the mouth is trained to do the job.
Reading out loud is like going to the gym, but you have to know what you are doing. It would be important to learn to articulate and stretch the words to their limits so that you learn to be understood by the natives. Once youāve achieved that, and if you speak your target language regularly, thereās no need to continue doing it.
As @jt23 pointed out, constructing sentences to speak is another skill. So is the ability to avoid dead ends when speaking.
As he mentioned French, for example, letters like āuā and āouā donāt have the same sound for French people and act on different mouth muscles. If you learn the technique for pronouncing the āuā, then you can stretch it when you read.
A side technique would be to stand in front of a mirror and pronounce all these sounds to check the movement.
If youāve never pronounced certain sounds before, such as the French āuā, your mouth will hurt for a few days, until it gets used to it, just like going to the gym. Practice, persistence and patience.
Mentioning these difficult sounds brings back memories of forcing my inflexible tongue to trill. It took about 5 days of practicing for 10 hours a day to roll my first ārā, after that it was months of practicing the single and double ārā, placing it before and after certain vowels and letters and repeating until it sounded less like a lawn mower and more like the related sound.
I read out loud regularly, just as another way to engage with the content and keep it interesting. I donāt know the science or the efficiency behind it but just singing along to songs of different genres and tempos has been great for my speech, ear, vocab and singing ability.
like jt said, sentence construction on the fly is a different skill. you need quips, idioms, words and turns of phrase that only comes from real conversations. If you want to get good at that, put 1000s of hours into listening to and having conversations.
Great point. Im working on my German game plan lol
Yeah i notice this helps in portugese so i was hoping it would be a good technique for german.
Yeah I definitely agree here. I think this might have more to do with onesintuition in the language.
Yes.
As mentioned earlier, you need to train your mouth and brain to articulate the sounds in your target language. That takes time and practice to build up the muscle memory, itās akin to playing a musical instrument. You also have to develop the music of the language e.g. timing and intonation.
In addition, speaking allows you to practice constructing phrases, allowing you to use the structures that you understand, but perhaps struggle to construct. It will also highlight gaps in your knowledge, especially vocabulary, which you can then work on later.
Krashen et al seem to suggest that a student can learn to speak perfectly using just comprehensible input. I havenāt seen any proof of that, but talking to yourself will help you improve your output.
I wish you much success with it. I know you CAN and WILL do it.
Now that is something I have been doing! Practicing the language by talking about my day, what I am currently doing, what I did, or what Iām about to do. And youāre right it does improve the flow in your conversation. Just saying step by step things as far as my daily activities. To myself out loud, while Iām doing it or have plans to do so. Has helped a lot. Sometimes I look up the accuracy if I get stuck. And canāt finish what Iām saying. Then Iāll repeat that phrase or word. So I can have a better flow next time, I have to use that word or phrase again. Thank you for your response and suggestions. And I wish you much success in your language learning journey.
It is extremely helpful. I think itās like playing piano by reading music. It definitely helps you with your motor skills and technique and speed/fluidity and reading comprehension, but if you want to play by ear or write your own compositions you will eventually also have to practice doing those.
I try to read out loud sometimes just to bolster my pronunciation. I donāt think it helps at all with active recall but it certainly helps with pronunciation at least
Yes.
For years, very much in the spirit of a monastic Christian tradition, I ākept the office.ā Usually, I read aloud, solo Morning Prayer / āLaudsā and Evening Prayer / āVespersā. It was around 45 minutes a day of reading aloud including repeated prayers, songs, and scripture readings of the day.
I did this in my mother tongue, English, sometimes using contemporary English and sometimes reading the English of 400 years ago.
While my personal spiritual development was and continues to be quite dubious, I do have much better spoken English for having done this.