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The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

spectator.co.uk

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Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#21

Post by triplesec »

petercooper wrote: post #13

I love reading, but since having kids (I'd never had to read aloud before) have discovered I find the sensations around reading aloud to be extremely unpleasant. Anything that rhymes/has a sing-song meter is OK.. but I find normal prose gruelling and can't wait for it to be over. It feels like a sort of claustrophobia, but trapped by the slowness rather than physically. I often end up paraphrasing or dropping unneces…

This may be an opportunity to grow, and discover why you don't like it, so that you can read more to your kids?

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#22

Post by dragonwriter »

jasode wrote: post #9
dangayle wrote: post #5

It's been long established that reading aloud to your children is one of the best ways to advance their early learning. ( https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2267171 )

The (controversial) economist Steven D. Levitt pointed out that there was no correlation between parents reading to children and reading test scores.[1] I don't know which studies are accurate. I just remember that story because the findings were counter-intuitive. [1] "Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which tracks the progress of more than 20,000 American schoolchildren from kindergarten through the fifth grade."…

The only thing I find to be less valuable than popular media news stories about scientific research results is popular media editorials interpreting research results.

Worse yet is such an editorial reporting conclusions from public data, without details of the analytical methodology.

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#23

Post by ashark »

petercooper wrote: post #13

I love reading, but since having kids (I'd never had to read aloud before) have discovered I find the sensations around reading aloud to be extremely unpleasant. Anything that rhymes/has a sing-song meter is OK.. but I find normal prose gruelling and can't wait for it to be over. It feels like a sort of claustrophobia, but trapped by the slowness rather than physically. I often end up paraphrasing or dropping unneces…

The fun for me's in getting all the intonation and emphasis just right. You don't have to "do the voices" or anything over the top, but just try to read it how a good narrator might.

Try reading them adult books (if you're not already—and especially classics, they tend to have really nice prose that you want to run your eyes over several times just for the sensation, anyway) or classics of children's literature (e.g. The Jungle Book). Might help. Lots of childrens' books are just plain bad.

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#24

Post by jasode »

dragonwriter wrote: post #22
jasode wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (controversial) economist Steven D. Levitt pointed out that there was no correlation between parents reading to children and reading test scores.[1] I don't know which studies are accurate. I just remember that story because the findings were counter-intuitive. [1] "Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which tracks the progress of more than 20,000 American schoolchildren from kindergarten through the fifth grade."…

The only thing I find to be less valuable than popular media news stories about scientific research results is popular media editorials interpreting research results. Worse yet is such an editorial reporting conclusions from public data, without details of the analytical methodology.

>The only thing I find to be less valuable [...] is popular media editorials interpreting research results

In this case, the medium is not the message here. That page wasn't an "editorial" in the sense that a dilettante newspaper editor put his own spin on research he didn't know.

Instead, Levitt himself was writing an article that was short enough for the editorial space alloted. His longer text is chapter 5 in his Freakonomics book. (In other words, the so-called "editorial" was advertising hype for his book.)

I just linked the USA Today page because I thought it was more convenient than trying to deep-link a copyrighted book.[1][2]

It was a government study so presumably, Levitt got the raw data and reports from here: https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/getpubcats.asp?sid=024

[1] best link I could do but it's not the whole book so it's incomplete: https://books.google.com/books?id=pGJ-BwAAQBAJ&pg=PT25&dq=fr...

[2] Google Books doesn't let you deep-link to Chapter 5 of Freakonomics: https://books.google.com/books?id=wNPnl5zYA-cC&printsec=fron...

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#25

Post by jff »

petercooper wrote: post #13

I love reading, but since having kids (I'd never had to read aloud before) have discovered I find the sensations around reading aloud to be extremely unpleasant. Anything that rhymes/has a sing-song meter is OK.. but I find normal prose gruelling and can't wait for it to be over. It feels like a sort of claustrophobia, but trapped by the slowness rather than physically. I often end up paraphrasing or dropping unneces…

Personally, I'm just fine at impromptu public speaking, or giving a presentation, or just talking intensely for an hour or more, but 5 minutes of reading aloud gives me a dry mouth and tired jaw. Like you, I can't wait to be done. It's probably a practice thing; we'll see how I do when I have kids.

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#26

Post by jmcgough »

A ex and I used to read favorite novels to each other, a chapter or so every night one of us stayed over. There's something very intimate about it, and it's fun to be able to discuss characters and the books' deeper concepts as you go along. Maybe I romanticize it because I was read to a lot when I was a child.

On nice days my partner and I've been going to a nearby park, where I'll read Snow Crash to them.

It's a bit like putting a record on a record player. You make a conscious decision to focus on the experience and cut out other distractions.

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#27

Post by jasode »

b_emery wrote: post #18
jasode wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (controversial) economist Steven D. Levitt pointed out that there was no correlation between parents reading to children and reading test scores.[1] I don't know which studies are accurate. I just remember that story because the findings were counter-intuitive. [1] "Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which tracks the progress of more than 20,000 American schoolchildren from kindergarten through the fifth grade."…

The editorial you site is from 2005, while the other paper is from 2014. The latter looks like a large and well designed study. Here is a quote from the conclusion: "What are the implications of our findings? Our main finding is that it is important that young children are being read to. This is an early-life intervention that seems to be beneficial for the rest of their lives. We show that there is an important role…

>The Levitt study suggests that smart parents end up with smart kids, reading or not.

To clarify, it wasn't a "Levitt study" per se. It was government study. The government had questionnaires asking parents "how often do you read to your children?" and it had the children's reading test scores. Levitt found no correlation in those 2 datapoints.

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#28

Post by komali2 »

jmcgough wrote: post #26

A ex and I used to read favorite novels to each other, a chapter or so every night one of us stayed over. There's something very intimate about it, and it's fun to be able to discuss characters and the books' deeper concepts as you go along. Maybe I romanticize it because I was read to a lot when I was a child. On nice days my partner and I've been going to a nearby park, where I'll read Snow Crash to them. It's a bi…

Snow Crash is amazing, this is a fantastic idea. Do you get into it with character voices? I feel like I could up my D&D DM exposition skills with this :P

Re: The Lost Pleasure of Reading Aloud

#29

Post by jmcgough »

komali2 wrote: post #28
jmcgough wrote: post #26

A ex and I used to read favorite novels to each other, a chapter or so every night one of us stayed over. There's something very intimate about it, and it's fun to be able to discuss characters and the books' deeper concepts as you go along. Maybe I romanticize it because I was read to a lot when I was a child. On nice days my partner and I've been going to a nearby park, where I'll read Snow Crash to them. It's a bi…

Snow Crash is amazing, this is a fantastic idea. Do you get into it with character voices? I feel like I could up my D&D DM exposition skills with this :P

Yes! I used to do stage productions in school, so I love getting really into the characters and giving them unique voices.
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