A tip to improve reading aloud consistency

[Adam Playfoot]

Sometimes when you read aloud and practicing crutches, you have no idea what you are reading. This is particularly true with crutch 8 as you are so focussed on raising and lowering your voice on each sentence. Leah’s approach as my coach was that if I didn’t like a crutch I didn’t have to use it – which I really liked because to be honest, whispering is not my go to haha. Anyways, so once you find the crutches that work for you then that is when the real speech journey begins. Now you have to read aloud for (I would recommend) 1 hour a day. But in order to make reading aloud a habit we have to enjoy it. And if you don’t know what you are reading, how can you enjoy it?

My tip for this is to start reading in general. Start making it a habit, something you like to do. Pick up books you are interested in. Once you have read them once, now you can practice reading aloud on them. I find I kill 2 birds with one stone when I use soft voice, slowly, and pauses (along with crutches when need be) because I can interpret the text better and I am teaching myself to speak with those elements in it. I find if I read a book and really liked it, I have no problem with enjoying reading it aloud over and over. This has been my way to succeed in reading aloud for an hour. I’m posting this because sometimes you read aloud and yes you feel better with the crutches and they are more fresh but sometimes it feels like a chore, something you really don’t want to do. And we need to eliminate that. Instead of motivation or discipline (which are great attributes in particular situations) we should make it a habit to read aloud. And to make a habit we must make it enjoyable in my opinion.

One book I highly recommend to start is Atomic Habits by James Clear.

[Gábor]

Great tip, thank you!

I made the mistake that I’ve read some depressing books aloud (e.g. science fiction like Metro 2033 – I mean I like these kind of books, too, but not really motivating/uplifting to use them for speech practice :D)

And I’ve just bought Atomic Habits, so I’ll read it aloud.

[Javier]

Great advice Adam!!
I used to hate reading aloud, but when I read in Lee’s book that I had to do it every day for at least 1 hour, I had to do it. So I’d better find ways to enjoy it. So reading good books and reading passionately, and realising how well you read aloud helped me a lot. Many people should read your post, you give really good advice!!

[Author]

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