Is it better to study reading aloud or silently?

It has always been said that "the more we read, the more we will learn, and the more we learn, the further we can go". This is how Dr. Seuss, an American writer and cartoonist, made it known to us. The real problem is that we tend to forget on more than half of the occasions everything we read in the books we swallow.

We spend hours and hours in front of academic manuals when facing an exam, whether it is an oral or written test. Those endless moments in the library studying to take an exam are evidence that memorizing is not easy. The key is the study method. How many times do we become self-absorbed and we repeat aloud what we have learned? It is a very effective way to reinforce what has been studied, but... Is it more useful than reading in silence?

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Study out loud or silently?

In order to rigorously answer the question in the headline, researchers from the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) Colin McLeod and Noah Farrin published their study in the journal

Memory titled “The benefits of listening to oneself”. The results reveal surprising methods that improve study techniques. The study aims to compare the silent technique with that which uses one's own voice.

Farrin and McLeod decided to randomly select 100 students and bring them to their experimental laboratory. They made them play 80 words out loud to all of them. Per investigation guidelines, they were not told when they would have to return to the facility to finish the job. Most of the participants They wrote on a piece of paper all the words they could remember. to be able to face the next level.

Once called to resume the research tests, each individual used different learning methods before entering the laboratory. Faced with the imminent test, they were administered one of four methods: silently reading the words to be recited, listen to audio tapes made by someone else, listen to tapes made in your own voice, or say the words out loud same.

The results

The memory test gave surprising results. Based on a recognition test, the degree to which the students remembered the 80 words they memorized on the spot and the 80 they had reproduced two weeks earlier was tested. It was evident that the second group of words was going to be forgotten, at least by many of them. The participants had to indicate if that word belonged to the one they had memorized at that moment or if it was from the past.

Thus, it was confirmed that the most effective method was to pronounce the studied words out loud. In the vast majority of cases, it was found that reading aloud helped to remember better. In degree of effectiveness, this method is followed by listening to the recorded tapes individually. Thirdly, we find the tapes recorded by someone else and, lastly, and perhaps most relevant, we have the silent reading method as the most deficient when it comes to memorizing concepts or words.

Likewise, we must not ignore the power of reading. As is evident, the more we read, the more we will memorize. The question resides in the capacity of storage, of memory. It should be noted, for example, that the difference between saying things out loud and listening to oneself on a recorded tape was minimal: only 3%. It seems that the fact of hearing our own voice is an added value.

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The production effect

Having discussed these results, the authors of the research coined the term "effect production”, which refers to the process one experiences by reading aloud rather than the normal way. silence. This effect is the reduction of three factors added and dependent on each other. First, reading aloud activates the brain's ability to store information. Secondly, reading increases visual memory capacity, and thirdly, the effect of self reference makes the information more personal and, consequently, easier to remember.

When students resort exclusively to reading information from others, they do not receive that personal experience that makes the difference when it comes to memorizing, they do not audit themselves so that they do not awaken other cognitive abilities mentioned above. Recent studies reinforce the thesis of the insufficiency that all students have of any academic degree when studying, arguing that reading as the only method is inappropriate.