HEY, adele...

My final journal entry this semester would be more appropriate if I read it out loud—a phrase that I have been repeating ad nauseam throughout the semester to my reluctant tutees.  It seems, from my meager observation, that other tutors (specifically student tutors) have been doing the same thing.  Beyond the obvious benefits of hearing mistakes rather than glossing over them, what is it about this technique that we student tutors find so helpful?

Initially, I began my habit of reading-out-loud as a starting-off point with ESL students.  Not knowing exactly how to keep the sessions instructional, I would read the student’s work out loud and explain my corrections along the way.  While this was beneficial for these sessions, I am not sure how helpful such students find the technique when doing their own editing.  Without having been born an English-speaker, their ears are not as trained to the subtle errors of the language as ours are.

However, that is not to say that the average English-as-a-first-language college student is any more adept at noting mistakes when heard out loud.  It is my hope that anyone at this institution would be able to note the normal typos and errors found in papers upon hearing them spoken, but there is no guarantee.  Abandoning this rather cynical perspective, I want to focus on why our generation in particular might find the reading-out-loud technique more helpful than others.

Growing up, we have become accustomed to multiple-sense stimulation.  Radio, television, the Internet—all have worked together to simultaneously improve our ability to multitask while increasing our chances of developing ADD.  Living in a world with so many outlets for our senses, it is no surprise that students may have problems with finding their own mistakes by simply reading them.  There’s not enough going on to hold their attention!  No, students in the 21^st century must use this method of reading out loud so they can stimulate their auditory and visual brain sections.  Though this may be an extreme vantage point, I don’t mean to belittle the technique—I obviously use it every chance I get.  But I do think there is something about the time period that makes reading out loud one of the most valuable forms of self-editing that a student can use.

Or better yet, students can record their papers onto a podcast and listen to them on their iPods while walking to class if they really want to discover their mistakes.