- Joined
- Mar 21, 2005
- Messages
- 36,987
- Reaction score
- 6,158
- Location
- The right earlobe of North America
This is something I tell my English students who speak too quickly. Read a hard book out loud, for 20 or 30 minutes each day.
Since the book is hard, they have to slow down to say the words correctly and figure out how to say it. By doing it each day, and trying some other tricks to slow down, I recommend the beat system for really bad students, it does work.
I have my composition students read things aloud, in class, and recommend strongly that they do this with their own work, privately. I have them read their own first drafts aloud, and stuff by other authors aloud. And most of them just try to read too damn fast.
So my next piece of advice is to channel Barack Obama. He speaks slowly and deliberately, and it's a great style for read-alouds. You don't have to agree with his politics to understand his effectiveness as a speaker. That's what got him noticed in the first place, and led directly to the attention he got that led directly to his election to the Presidency of the United States.
The second piece of advice I give is for students to become, to some degree, actors. Don't just read; read actively. Use your hands, especially. That will slow you down and naturally point to where emphasis is in the writing.
I read aloud to my children for many years, and got good at it. I was also, for about a decade, a broadcast news journalist, which I suspect helps.
But I am absolutely convinced that reading aloud, and working at doing it well, is hugely important in both improving one's own writing, and in understanding how many other writers make writing work well.
caw