How reading aloud can benefit your child

Barcelona"Reading aloud helps consolidate the reading habit because it transforms reading into an active, emotional, and social activity," says Vanessa Ortega, coordinator of the Reading aloud Contest (CLVA), which reached its 21st edition this year with 1,248 schools registering and 3,927 students on the final day.

"Teachers fully corroborate this," responds Ortega when asked about the relationship between the reading aloud promoted by the contest and the promotion of reading habits, improved reading comprehension, and fostering children's oral expression. Likewise, forcing them to pay attention to the meaning of the text in order to convey it effectively improves reading comprehension. Finally, oral expression also benefits, "as diction, fluency, and public confidence are worked on," argues Ortega.

David Bueno, professor and researcher in the Department of Biomedical, Evolutionary, and Developmental Genetics at the UB, emphasizes that reading aloud "can be" a good way to promote the reading habit. "That doesn't necessarily mean it should be," emphasizes the founder of the Chair of Neuroeducation, who points out that this depends on how the reading aloud is done. "Reading should be a moment of pleasure, of calm, and of a certain intimacy between the people reading aloud, precisely to awaken that intrinsic reward that reading brings," he explains. Thus, the brain instinctively and automatically associates reading with a pleasant time or a time of well-being. If reading aloud is done under pressure, warns Bueno, "it doesn't produce that effect and can even have the opposite effect."

In this sense, the researcher continues, establishing a shared reading time at home is one of the best ways to promote the reading habit in children and all the advantages of neurocognitive development that this entails: "It can be either a shared reading, we all read the same thing and we read at a time where each one of us reads what interests them, or a time in which we accompany the children so that they read and we encourage them, stimulate them, question them, share some of the stories..." The most important thing, Bueno emphasizes, is that during these times the adults enjoy the act of reading. "That the children see that we also read and that we read for pleasure, that we like it, that we have a good time, that it enriches us and that afterwards we talk about what we have read, so that they also want to talk about what they read," he concludes.

Shared experience

The Veu Alta Reading Contest also highlights the need to create spaces where reading becomes a collective act and a source of personal empowerment for children and young people. The organizers emphasize this aspect precisely because, when reading is experienced collectively, "it becomes a shared experience that connects, excites, and gives meaning." A book can be difficult to read individually, whether due to comprehension difficulties, lack of motivation, or simply because it seems boring. But when read aloud, Ortega points out, "everything changes: the characters are given voice, the text is given rhythm, and, ultimately, it is interpreted."

Contest coordinator Vanessa Ortega points out that the key to the contest's success over these 21 years has probably been "the collaboration between teachers, families, and institutions." The contest has taken root in schools "as a collective experience that values reading and makes children feel like protagonists." Most schools that sign up to try it out repeat the program, and "if you add word of mouth and the positive impact teachers see on students' reading motivation and oral expression, you have the formula for sustained success."

Repeating schools

The Pious School of Igualada is one of the schools that participated in the CLVA this year. But this isn't the first time it has participated.

The selection of participants was made through an internal process where all interested students were able to apply. At each level, reading aloud was worked on in the classroom, and then a short test was conducted in front of teachers from different stages. "The criteria we took into account were fluency, and above all, the ability to convey emotion through reading, and we also valued effort and a positive attitude toward reading," notes Villarubias. Preparing for the contest, explains the pedagogical director, "has been a shared process between the student, the school, and their families, who have played a key role in supporting, encouraging, and encouraging reading."