WILL READING OUR EMAILS ALOUD IMPROVE OUR WRITING?

WILL READING OUR EMAILS ALOUD IMPROVE OUR WRITING?

My older brother Mark reads my blog.  While Mark is not a teacher, his job requires a fair amount of high pressured written messaging. - especially in email form.  Recently he sent me an article by Sam Leith that has helped him with his writing. Mark suggested I might use ideas from the article as a blog entry.  Mark’s comments indicate that while he understands that Leith was talking about many important aspects of content in a written piece, Mark’s greatest walk away from the article was in response to Leith’s suggestion of reading aloud any important written Email message before pushing “Send”.  Pretty good advice for any of us…

Mark read the article, the article spoke to him, and, because it spoke to him he heard its message. And, while Mark probably didn’t read Sam Leith’s article aloud, he does now follow the advice Leith gives – he almost always reads aloud any important Email message he needs to convey to his readers.

 A direct quote from Mark reveals how this article impacted his writing habits: “Don’t press send yet… The new rules for good writing in the 21st century.  I cannot recommend the article enough. The article is full of what might seem like trivial little tips, such as, test your writing by reading what you wrote out loud. To me, these trivial little tips are not little - but rather big insights.”   In other words, Mark is sharing with us that he has learned that through the simple act of “hearing” what he has written, he often goes back and revises and so his writing and his message improves. 

Mark especially responded to Number 5 in Leith’s article. “The formally learned skills of reading and writing come from the informally learned skills of speaking and hearing. Such neuroscientific work as has been done on language shows that when we read, we’re activating areas of the brain associated with sound. You “hear” even when you’re reading silently. The reader has an internal ear: so must the writer. Read a lot and write a lot and your ear will improve.” 

While we can’t possibly pass all these complex writing connections on to our students, one take-a-way from Mark’s message is to encourage students to read aloud what they write.

  • Reading aloud will help them hear what the intended reader is hearing. 
  • Writers need to know if the message sounds right – and if it doesn’t sound right, how does the message need to be revised so the reader will understand the message?  And, that - my friends -  is called revision.    

Thanks for sharing, Mark.

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