Reading aloud in class, whether from a text book, an academic article or a novel, can be difficult for some students. They cannot capture the cadence, syllabic emphasis, or exact pronunciation required to correctly read a passage. At a university, students should demonstrate a level of verbal proficiency which allows them to read in class without making glaring errors.
However, there are many exceptions to this ideal and somewhat naïve evaluation of a student’s ability to read publicly. For nearly every class session, students are asked to contribute to discussion instead of sitting meekly while the instructor lectures. The students can ask questions, answer those of the instructor, or offer comments in response to the material of the day.
There is also the option of reading aloud. But an impediment of some kind might make this hard. A learning disability, declared or undeclared, might prevent the student from being able to reproduce the written word vocally. An example of such a learning disability is dyslexia, in which the person cannot decipher the letters within a word, and inserts new ones or substitutes those on the page for others.
A more widely experienced obstacle is “stage fright,” the fear of being judged by one’s peers for a poor public showing. Constant participation in class, as well as reading a text multiple times can help to alleviate this sort of anxiety.
When interviewed, senior Ben Merkel, a Politics and Government major and self-styled specialist in “extreme elocution,” stated “It’s not remarkable when we don’t stumble. That being said, everybody does, from professors to the most golden-voiced of us.”
“They can be nervous, they internalize this ‘don’t-fuck-up, don’t-fuck-up’ mentality” Merkel declared.
Perhaps the most common and intriguing impediment to verbal proficiency is a sheer lack of auditory exposure to certain words, word sounds, unfamiliar jargon, and the terse sentence structure occasionally employed by academic writers.
For example, a student of Vedic religions might be introduced to the concept of the “subtle body” in class conversation. She has heard the word “subtle” before, but never read it. She has no reason to know that the letter b in the written form of “subtle” is silent.
However, if the night after hearing the word aloud in class, the student reads this phrase to herself, seeing the signs associated with the sounds, she might speak it phonetically, as “sub-tle,” which shares the labial quality of “body” Thus, when she returns to class to talk about this concept, she mis-pronounces the first word.
The knowledge of how to pronounce a word can be intuitive, especially for those who began reading voraciously at an early age. Long term familiarity with printed language enables a reader to distinguish between word roots from numerous Germanic, classical and romance languages. This exposure facilitates English learning and eases the process of pronunciation.
Senior Kelly Wyman, a FLIA Spanish major and minor in environmental studies, stated “I don’t have a problem reading out loud. I don’t usually stumble over words in English.”
“I do get a little bit frustrated when people are stumbling over reading in English,” she continued. “And in Spanish, I sympathize.”
Trial and error in pronunciation is often the most effective teacher. Last year, I watched the Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York. I mentioned it in a class, and said “synecdoche” as “sin-ek-doshe,” when it is properly pronounced “sin-ek-doky.” A term in classical rhetorical theory, synecdoche means “a part of something being used to refer to the whole,” as drawn from the OED. It is also employed in the film title as a pun. I learned this when one of my classmates, a kid from New York, said, “I think it sounds like Schenectady,” which is a town in New York.
The only solution to the mistake of this latter kind of mispronunciation is research and experience. A student reads in private, asks how to say words with which she is unfamiliar and recites whole passages to improve verbal proficiency.
But still, hearing someone stumble over sentence after sentence can be frustrating in class, especially given the preconceptions a fluent reader might hold as to what degree of language mastery native English speaking university students ought to have.
“One of the most entertaining things is when someone reads aloud a key term, passage, or name and they mispronounce it,” said Merkel,” and you get to be a douche and pronounce it the right way.”
Nonetheless, the fluent reader has the responsibility to be patient. No one learns under the pressure of rolling eyes and ridicule. Furthermore, the fluent reader also has the opportunity to think of the instance of another’s error in terms of metacognition, asking such questions as, “What are the psychological and social mechanisms that enable or discourage a person from attaining an unencumbered sense of language and thus the confidence to reproduce the printed word aloud?”