On the Importance of Reading Aloud
October 13, 2011
THE DISCUSSION in this entry about books has turned to the importance of reading aloud to young children and adolescents. Jill Farris wrote:
I grew up in a reading household with no TV in the 1960s and 70s when, even then, TV was dominating many homes. I married a man who is extremely intelligent but who spent many hours in front of the TV as a child. He had what I consider to be an impoverished childhood even though his parents were college educated.
I’ve written here before about our son who didn’t read fluently until the age of 13 but because we read great books together his vocabulary was phenomenal. When he did finally begin to read he jumped to an adult level quickly and became a fluent and gifted writer because his mind was filled with rich imagery.
I speak and write on the subject of reading aloud and the importance of being a word filled people. Neurodevelopmentalists have studied the brain and how to stimulate it and they have found that the brain functions best when it hears or sees words and imagines/pictures what those words are saying. Doing this stimulates chemicals in the brain and creates new neuropathways. Did you get that? Words that are pictured by the mind cause physical changes to the brain! When we watch images (such as movies) we short cut the way the brain is designed to function because the brain is no longer required to visualize the image.
I also believe that God designed us to be readers because He chose to reveal Himself through the written word; the Holy Bible. Jesus Christ, Himself, is called the Word of God. God’s people have always been a literate, word-rich people and this (I believe) is the way God created us to learn best.
Reading aloud to our children is a rich and essential gift for both their intellects and their souls.
In addition to these intellectual and spiritual benefits, reading together is a shared experience and offers opportunities for conversation. It was much more common in the nineteenth and eighteenth century for adults to read aloud to each other. For instance, Charles Darwin and his wife often read to each other. The idea of an adult reading aloud to, say, a 17-year-old would not have seemed as odd as it does to us today.
