論 文

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading Aloud

Harumi Nishida

1. Introduction
要旨

英語教育がコミュニケーション力育成重視に移行して以来，学生のリーディング力に低下が見られるようになったと指摘されている。原
因としては，初級学習者はボトムアップ処理ができていないことが考えられる。リーディング研究では，優れた読み手は語彙認識処理の自動化（LaBerge and Smuels, 1974; 赤松, 2000）が行われており，ボトムアップ処理が自動化しているのでトップダウン処理ができる（ネオボトムアップ理論，門田，2002）という指摘があり，リーディング
力育成にはボトムアップ処理の自動化が不可欠である。しかし日本のEFL環境では英語がインプットされる機会は少ない。そこで，語彙力と文法力を身につけてリスニング力を育成するために授業に音読指導を取り入れた。リスニングの処理過程はリーディングの処理過程と高次レベルにおいて同じであることから，リスニング力はリーディング力に転移すると考えられる。結果はリスニング力・リーディング力共に有意な差が見られた。
キーワード：音読，音読利用指導，リハーサル効果，チャンク理解，リスニング力からリーディング力への転移― 117 ―

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 16It has long been the target of English education at Japan’s junior high schools,
high schools and universities to “develop practical communication skills”. In 2002, theMinistry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology hammered out a“Strategic Vision for Developing ‘Japanese Who Can Use English’”, which set English
education in Japan on a direct course for developing practical communication skills.
However, if we look at the actual situation, it remains diﬃcult to say, since there is nodata to prove as much, that students are acquiring better practical communication
skills today than before. English communication skills today are either at the samelevel as before or possibly at a lower level. This comes despite the emphasis oncommunication that has become the trend of English education. Worse yet, it is quite
thinkable that reading comprehension and knowledge of grammar, which have been
neglected in the shift of emphasis to communication skills, could have declined.
Current TOEFL scores for reading comprehension have fallen. However, it is a factthat there are some students with a high level of English proﬁciency and many of theschools that produce these advanced level students have an English program thatemphasizes communication skills development. Also, some of the universities havemade the acquisition of communication skills a curriculum target and are using various
teaching methods to achieve that. It would not be an overstatement today to claimthat teaching methods depend on the number of teachers; there is no single sure-ﬁreapproach. That is to say, there is no single standard teaching method at present.
Regarding reading comprehension, because of the practical necessity, there aremany universities with programs that develop skimming skills that help readers
understand information in English by quick reading as used in taking the TOEFL or
reading a newspaper, as well as scanning skills that enable readers to search for
information as used on some reading comprehension questions of TOEIC. These skills
are extremely important for living in the information age of today, but the ability toaccurately understand a text as well as skimming and scanning skills is needed. Many
students can understand comparatively simple English texts but cannot comprehendor go any farther than guessing at the rough meaning of diﬃcult texts. A high level ofEnglish reading comprehension might be obtained in other ways.

― 118 ―

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading Aloud

2. Problems Students Have in Reading
The following four problems can be raised as possible problems that students
have in reading:1) The students cannot comprehend the text because they do not know thevocabulary.
2) Though the students know the vocabulary, they get the wrong meaning of a text
because they do not understand the sentence structure.
3) Though the students know the vocabulary and understand the sentence structure,
because the content is complicated, they translate it word-for-word into Japanese
and, resultantly, they cannot make heads or tails out of the Japanese.
4) The student can understand the content, but it requires time.
What should be targeted with reading comprehension is the ability to read
English in the given word order and quickly gain an accurate—not rough—understanding of the text. For this reason, this study provided training that included
reading aloud.

3. Previous Studies
Why is it that reading aloud improves reading skills? This study focuses on thefollowing three eﬀects that reading aloud has on improving reading skills.
1) By reading aloud, the students can identify meaning units (chunks) and smoothly
and accurately read English in the given word order and understand the text.
When having students read aloud, it was astonishing how few of them could readcorrectly. Naturally, it is not expected that they read on the level of a native speaker.
However, when checking to see that they pause in the correct location while reading,often they stop where they should not or do not pause. This inconsistent pausingshows that they do not understand the meaning as they read the text. If they correctly
understood the content as they read it, they would pause in the proper location. It issurmised that they are simply following the letters.
― 119 ―

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 16

Placing pauses in the proper location and understanding the content as thelearner reads are prerequisites to reading quickly and accurately. Correctly pausing is
an indication that the learner has understood that chunk. A correct understanding of
chunks leads to a correct understanding of structure and is absolutely essential towards
correctly interpreting the text. Chunks play an important role in the mechanism forunderstanding sentences.
Many previous studies into the information processing units of reading
comprehension have been based on syntax information such as phrase structure, andhave suggested that most understanding is done in units of phrases or more thanphrases.
Nonetheless, the processing unit of reading comprehension is not restricted to asingle constant syntax unit such as a phrase, but actually changes according to factors
such as the comprehension skill of the reader, the degree of diﬃculty of the text,
reading speed and the degree to which background information such as schema isused, for example.
The information‐processing unit used in comprehension is thus ﬂexible. Rather
than divide the processing unit based on syntax information such as phrase structure,
focusing on the meaning information of the text, the reader processes a text in units ofthe meaning and concepts-that is units of chunks.
According to Blachowicz (1977), and Franks and Bransford (1976), the reader
immediately forgets what format and grammatical structure (e.g., whether the passive
voice or the active voice was used) the text had once having comprehended, but themeaning remains. Furthermore, Kadota (1982) visually presented English text of, ﬁrst,
ﬁve syllables and gradually increased thereafter two syllables at a time to Japanesecollege students who were studying English as a foreign language. Kadota required
them to write down the English text and meaning each time, and measured theirmemory span. It was learned that meaning information was accurately reproduced
more than the format of the text, indicating a long memory span. These studies support
the position that Bransford and Franks (1973) take with regard to the foundations of
meaning information, which is that, in order to understand and memorize a language,
people integrate each fragment of meaning information into a more abstract idea.
Moreover, a role of reading aloud for reading comprehension is to acquire prosody(rhythm, intonation, etc.). If learner can read meaning chunks aloud with the correct― 120 ―

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading Aloudrhythm and intonation, even new words and text that cannot be understood in one
reading can be deciphered by reading aloud. Ono, Midorikawa & Robson (1999)
studied “how university students get through diﬃculties in the reading process”. As aresult, they reported that students actually use reading aloud and Japanese translation
as their main strategy and that students with particularly high comprehensive English
skills go back over the preceding or other earlier paragraphs and read aloud eachmeaning chunk.
Because meaning processing like this is done in units of chunks, it is a major
pretext to understanding English that learners understand chunks. In having students
read aloud, they can quickly and accurately read English by having them listen tomodel reading so as to conﬁrm where to pause, and then having them read aloud withpauses placed after each chunk so as to understand each chunk in the given word
order.
2) By reading aloud the students can learn vocabulary, composition and grammar.
In the reading comprehension process, learners search for necessary informationin their database kept in long-term memory and analyze the input information; but if
this analysis cannot be done, we may think that the required information is not in the
database. Accordingly, it is urgent for the learners to input the correct vocabulary,composition and grammar into the database, for which reading aloud is eﬀective.
Sound and text are simultaneously provided and sent to the working memory by
paying attention to both. Then, the information above, that is the information on how
to read the text with its meaning can be sent to the long-term memory by reading
aloud, which functions as a rehearsal. Once entered in the long-term memory,
information can be referenced as needed, so the next time the same vocabulary is
encountered, the meaning can be known.
This kind of information retention must be accompanied by vocalization. Kadota(1984) conﬁrmed that, when the long-term memory is referenced, subvocalization
occurs even in silent reading. He went on to point out that decoding is extremely
important from the perspective of vocabulary access to mental lexicons (“dual route
model”, Kadota 1998, etc.).
By learning sound changes via reading aloud, text and sound can be matched andretained along with the meaning in the long-term memory, which leads to the― 121 ―

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 16

formation of mental lexicons.
3) Listening ability that has been improved by reading aloud transfers into reading
ability.
Listening and reading processes overlap, therefore listening ability is believed totransfer into reading ability.
It can be easily understood that listening and reading on a low level such asindividual phoneme, character or word perception are somewhat diﬀerent processes
because of the diﬀerences in input mode: one being audio, the other visual. However,on the higher level of understanding texts and conversations, the two skills seem tofollow almost the same process. In other words, it is supposed that, though some
diﬀerence exists in how information is stored in phonological loops, a rather similar
mechanism is conceivably executed when the diﬀerent input mode is processed into
the working memory and information is processed. For example, the top-down
prediction-testing mechanism in the schema theory functions with both spoken
language and written language.
Another opinion that explains the transfer of listening to reading is that, inprinciple, the latter includes the former. In other words, the content of the two skills
is similar, so rather than view the two as separate processes, as the phonological coding,
the retention and use of the that coded phonological information in the working
memory is seen in reading, so a kind of spoken language processing mechanism isfunctioning in reading comprehension (Kadota, 1987, 1990, etc.; Baddeley, 1999).
By repeatedly listening to model reading and reading aloud with the intent toimitate the model reader, the students can rather successfully catch the words andmeanings and read aloud in a way very similar to the model reading. By carefully
listening to model reading, the students improve their listening abilities and, as argued
above, those transfer into reading abilities.
Research hypothesis
From the three aforementioned conceivable reasons why reading aloud improves
learners’ reading abilities, it was hypothesized that reading ability could be improvedby imparting training that included reading aloud.

― 122 ―

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading Aloud

4. Research Question
To reveal the diﬀerence in learners’ reading abilities, the following two researchquestions were put forward in the present study: 1) Will a teaching method utilizing
reading aloud show a diﬀerence of reading ability between the experimental group andthe control group? And 2) will a teaching method utilizing reading aloud show adiﬀerence of reading ability between the higher scoring group and the lower scoringgroup?

5. Subjects
Subjects in this study were 184 Japanese undergraduate students from two
universities. They were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The
experimental group numbered 97, while the control group numbered 87.

6. Procedure
The treatment was conducted from September 2005 through January 2006 (onesemester) and consisted of ten weekly sessions. The texts used in this treatment werepassages of about 150 words, and the speed at which the texts were read was between
100 and130 words per minute.
Subjects listened to the text and then answered about three multiple-choicequestions without looking at the relevant unit of the textbook. By guiding the subjects
to the correct answer, contents grasp exercises of the relevant unit was performed.
Then the scripts were handed out and read aloud. The subjects followed the script
while listening to it, and checked how it was read. Next, they read aloud imitating anative speaker and learned pronunciation and sound changes.
Reading aloud was performed as follows:
1) Vocabulary check
The students reviewed the script and marked unknown words. (There was no needto remember words at this point. This step went no further than identifying words
the students did not know.)― 123 ―

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 162) Reading aloudThe students read aloud the script without any concern about pronunciation.
3) Listening to model reading
The students conﬁrmed unknown pronunciations.
4) Reading aloudThe students read aloud with the intention of reproducing the sounds conﬁrmed in
the model reading.
5) Listening to model reading
The students paid attention to sound changes..
6) Reading aloudThe students read aloud with the intention of reproducing sound changes conﬁrmed
in the model reading.
7) Listening to model reading
The students paid attention to speed and rhythm were conﬁrmed.
8) Reading aloudThe students read aloud with the intention of reproducing the speed and rhythm
conﬁrmed in the model reading.
Once the subjects could read correctly, reading aloud was done at a slightly faster
speed than natural reading. This was practice for the subjects to understand themeaning when listening to the sound at a natural speed of 150 words or more perminute. After repeated listening to the sound and reading aloud, recognition loaddecreased; and it became easier to process input information both in terms of syntax
and meaning, using prosody such as rhythm, pause location, and intonation. Reading
aloud quickly thinking the meaning of the text increases processing speed. Ultimately,
the subjects understood the content by just listening to the sound without following
the script. At this stage, the meaning was processed in the listening order without any
loss of speed and their understanding of the content was almost perfect.

7. Pretest and Posttest
Two types of tests were used in this study for both the pretest and the posttest.
They were reading and listening tests. The reading test consisted of 4 passages from― 124 ―

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading Aloud

TOEFL and STEP for a total of 24 questions. The subjects were given 25 minutes toread and then answer multiple choice questions designed to measure comprehension.
The passages from STEP used in this test were from level 2.
The listening test was the ﬁll-in-the-blank test using VOA Special English. The
ﬁll-in-the-blank tests consisted of approximately 400 words with 50 blanks in every
7-word. The listening materials used in the test and the materials used in treatment
were of the same level.

8. Results
Results from the reading comprehension test given to both the experimentalgroup and the control group at the start of the treatment did not show a signiﬁcantdiﬀerence between groups when analyzed by t test.
One-way ANOVA repeated measure was performed to analyze the following two
diﬀerences:
1) the diﬀerence between the mean score of the pretest and that of the posttest, and2) the diﬀerence between the mean score of the experimental group and that of thecontrol group in the pretest, and the diﬀerence between the groups in the posttest.
Table 1 and Figure 1 show improvement between the listening pretest and theposttest. ANOVA repeated measure detected a signiﬁcant diﬀerence for the results of
the listening tests (F (1,366) = 28.13, p < .01).
Table 1Figure 1Mean��Pretest26.43

��

Posttest

30.88

��
��
��

����

��
��
��
��
�������

― 125 ―

��������

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 16

Table 2 and Figure 2 show improvement between the listening pretest and theposttest of both groups. ANOVA repeated measure detected a signiﬁcant diﬀerence
for the groups (F (1,182) = 14.81 p < .01).
Table 2

Figure 2
PretestPosttest

��

CT

27.41

30.94

��

EX

28.21

33.54

��
��
��

��
��
��
��
�������

��������

Table 3 and Figure 3 show improvement between the reading pretest and theposttest. ANOVA repeated measure detected a signiﬁcant diﬀerence for the results of
the reading tests (F (1,366) = 54.32, p < .01).
Table 3Figure 3
Mean��Pretest8.54

��Posttest

11.27
��

�
�
�
�
�������

��������

Table 4 and Figure 4 show improvement between the reading pretest and theposttest of both groups. ANOVA repeated measure detected a signiﬁcant diﬀerence
for the groups (F (1,182) = 5.72, p < .01).

― 126 ―

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading Aloud
Table 4

Figure 4PretestPosttest

��

CT

9.03

11.20

��

EX

8.71

12.29

��

��
��

��
�
�
�
�������

��������

The improvement seen in the listening and reading tests of both the experimental
and control groups can be attributed to studying, but the signiﬁcant diﬀerence between
the groups in the two tests can be attributed to reading aloud.
Accordingly, in response to research question 1) “will a teaching method utilizing
reading aloud show a diﬀerence of reading ability between the experimental group andthe control group?” the use of reading aloud can be considered eﬀective because of thegreater improvement seen in the experimental group than the control group.
After these ﬁndings, further analyses were performed to examine the diﬀerent
eﬀect that reading aloud has on the students of diﬀerent proﬁciency level. This time,the experimental group was divided into four groups based on the mean score of thelistening pretest—high intermediate (HI), middle intermediate (MI), low intermediate(LI) and high beginner (HB) — and the improvement of each group on listening andreading tests was measured. Results showed a signiﬁcant diﬀerence in the reading testsof the four experimental groups.
Table 5 and Figure 5 show the improvement between the listening pretest andthe posttest scores of the four groups. A signiﬁcant diﬀerence between test scores wasseen among the three groups other than the HI group. Scores were 4.54 for the HI
group, 6.00 for the MI group, 4.87 for the LI group and 5.93 for the HB group. There
was not a signiﬁcant diﬀerence by proﬁciency level.

― 127 ―

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 16

Table 5PretestPosttest

HI

35.69

40.23

MI

31.43

37.43

LI

25.23

30.10

HB

20.47

26.40

Figure 5
��
��
��

��
��
��
��

��
��
��
��
�������

��������

Then, what eﬀect did the reading tests have? Table 6 and Figure 6 show the
improvement between the reading pretest and the posttest scores of the four groups.
Though a signiﬁcant diﬀerence between test scores was seen among the four groups,
the score improvement decreased alongside the proﬁciency level with the HI groupscoring 5.23, the MI group scoring 4.44, the LI group scoring 2.87 and the HB groupscoring 1.73.
Table 6PretestPosttest

HI

10.23

15.46

MI

10.30

14.74

LI

7.97

10.84

HB

6.37

8.10

― 128 ―

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading Aloud
Figure 6
��
��
��
��
��
��
��
�
�
�
�

��
��
��
��

�������

��������

To imitate the intonation, rhythm, pause location and so forth of model readingwhen reading aloud, attention must be carefully paid to the model reading, whichreadily improves listening ability. A possible reason why a signiﬁcant diﬀerence was
not seen in the listening test of the HI group is because the pretest score was a high35.69, so conceivably a ceiling eﬀect worked. In general, students of a high proﬁciency
level will ﬁnd it hard to improve.
On the other hand, the reason why the HI and MI groups’ improvement rate on
the reading test was higher than other groups was likely that, by reading aloud, readingwith accurately positioned pauses enabled them to identify meaning units (chunks)
and thus read smoothly while understanding the content. The LI and HB groups still
do not successfully transfer listening ability into reading ability. To begin with, if
intonation, rhythm and pauses are not correct in the reading aloud stage, the content
cannot be understood by chunks while reading. If the content cannot be understood
while reading aloud, it is diﬃcult to transfer listening ability into reading ability.
Though a correct interpretation can be made even at this level, it takes a very longtime. Accordingly, the reason why the score improvement of the LI and HB groups islower is conceivably because reading aloud has not yet a signiﬁcant impact on reading
ability at this level.

9. Conclusions
Instruction that uses reading aloud can improve the listening and reading abilitiesof the students. The listening improvement was roughly the same for all groups fromHI to HB, but the reading improvement was markedly higher in the HI and MI― 129 ―

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 16groups than in the LI and HB groups. It is believed that HI and MI students readily
improve because they have fundamental listening and reading abilities. On the other
hand, LI and HB students lack these fundamental abilities, therefore, even withreading aloud, they learn no more than intonation, rhythm and pause location. Theirlistening ability improved, but it did not transfer into reading ability.
A future topic of study will be to identify at what proﬁciency level do students
beneﬁt from instruction that utilizes reading aloud and how.

References
Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford University Press.
Baddeley, A. D. (1999). Essentials of human memory. Hove: psychology Press.
Blachowicz, C. L. Z. (1977). Semantic constructivity in children’s comprehension. Reading Research
Quarterly 13: 188–199.
Bransford, J. D. & J. J. Franks. (1973). The abstraction of linguistic ideas: A review. Cognition 1:
211–249.
Coltheart, M., & Rastle, K. (1994). A left-to-right serial process in reading aloud. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 1197–1211.
Ellis, R. (1997). SLA Research and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Franks, J. J. & Bransford. (1976). Memory for syntactic form as a function of semantic context. In
H. Singer & R. B. Ruddell (eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (2nd ed.),103–107. New York: International Reading Association.
Garrod, S. & Pickering, M. (eds.). (1999). Language Processing. UK: Psychology Press.
Griﬃn, M. S. (1992). Reading aloud. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 784–787.
Kadota, S. (1982). Some psycholinguistic experiments on the process of reading comprehension.
Journal of Assumption Junior College 9: 49–70.
Kadota, S. (1984). Subvocalization and processing units in silent reading. Journal of Assumption
Junior College 11: 29–58.
Kadota, S. (1987). The role of prosody in silent reading. Language Science 9: 185–206.
Kadota, S. (1990). The contribution of rhythm to reading Japanese. 16th LACUS (Linguistic
Association of Canada and the United States) Forum, 332–339.
Kadota, S. & Noro, T. (eds.), (2001). Eigo Ridingu no Ninchi Mekanizum [How the mind works in
EFL Reading]. Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan.
Kadota, S. (2002). Eigo no Kakikotoba to Hanashikotoba wa Ikani Kankei Shiteiruka [How Phonology
Works in L2 Reading Comprehension]. Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan.

― 130 ―

Improving Reading with the Help of Reading AloudKido, H. (1993). Reading Aloud no koka wo shidojikken niyotte kenshosuru [An experimental study
on the eﬀect of reading-aloud teaching]. Eigokyoiku Kenkyu [Studies on English Language
Education], 16, 136–143.
Mineo, M. (1985). Yomukoto no gengo katsudo niokeru ondokuno yakuwari ni kansuru kosatsu [Rolesof oral reading in reading]. Eigokyoiku Kenkyu [Studies on English Language Education], 28,
65–71.
Miyasako, N. (2002). Kokosei no ondoku to eigoryo wa kankei ga aruka [Does oral reading ability
have a relationship with English language ability for senior high school students?]. STEP
Bulletin, 14, 14–25.
Miyasako, N. (2003). What relationships does metacognition of oral reading have with oral reading
ability and English ability for Japanese senior high school students? LET, 40, 121–140.
Miyasako, N. (2004). What relationships does working memory have with reading comprehension
for Japanese senior high school students of English? LET, 41, 17–36.
Miyasako, N. (2005). The eﬀects of oral reading practice on English language ability and metacognitionof oral reading among Japanese senior high school students, JLTA Journal, 7, 92–109.
Miyasako, N. & Takatsuka, S. (2004). What realationships do the eﬃciencies of phonologicalcoding and lexical access have with reading comprehension for Japanese learners of English?
ARELE, 15, 159–168.
Niizato, M. (1991). Ondoku no igi to shidoho [Why and how of oral reading]. In Sanseido (ed.),Eigo Kyoikugaku no Shiten [Perspectives on English Language Education], 130–141. Tokyo:
Sanseido.
Ono, N., Midorikawa, H. & Robson, G. (1999). “Exploring the Nature of Good and Poor L2
Reading Process,” Paper Presented at 12th World Congress of Applied Linguistics.
Sakuma, Y. (2000). Ondoku no Shido [Teaching oral reading]. Takanashi, Y., & Ushiro, Y. (eds.),
Eigo Ridingu Jiten [Dictionary of English Reading], 136–146. Tokyo: Kenkyusha Shuppan.
Suzuki, J. (1998). Ondoku shido sai-hyoka: Ondoku shido no koka ni kansuru jissho kenkyu[Reevaluation of oral reading instruction: Empirical studies on the eﬀectiveness of oral reading
instruction]. Monograph Series 7: A Re-consideration of Foreign Language Teaching Methods.
Kansai Chapter, LLA.
Takanashi, Y. & Takahashi, M. (1984). Ridingu ni kansuru 12 no shitsumon (9) ondoku wa hitsuyoka [12 questions on reading (9): Is oral reading necessary?]. The English Teachers’ Magazine,
Sep., 1984, 32–34.
Tuchiya, S. (2004). EIgo Komyunikeshon no Kiso wo Tsukuru Ondoku Shido [Instruction of Oral
Reading Aiming at Communication in English]. Tokyo: Kenkyusha Shuppan.
Watanabe, Y. (1990). Ondoku saiko: Mokudoku no sokudoku-ka wo unagasu ondoku sido no igi
to arikata [Reconsideration of oral reading: why and how oral reading improves silent reading
speed]. Leo, 19, 101–130.
Ziegler, J. C., Perry, C., & Coltheart, M. (2000). The DRC model of visual word recognition andreading aliud: An extension to German. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 12, 413–
430.

― 131 ―