Gesture Reading (How to Learn to Read Aloud (4))

This is an English version of my previous post, 音読学習のあり方④.

As part of the "How to learn to Read Aloud" series, I am writing primarily about what high school students should be aware of when practicing reading aloud. In my previous post, I wrote about "storytelling to yourself" when reading aloud. In this post, I will introduce a way of reading aloud called gesture reading.

Avoid reading mechanically

When practicing reading aloud, you may find yourself "just reading" without interpreting or processing the meaning in your mind. This should be fine when you read short conversational passages or at the beginning of reading aloud, but when you are reading long sentences consisting of multiple paragraphs, it is quite common, even for very advanced learners, to fall into the mode of just reading mechanically from the middle of a long sentence. (I myself often do this.)

This phenomenon often occurs not only when reading aloud on your own, but also when you are overlapping or shadowing along with the audio material. The students are just mechanically uttering the sounds they hear, and are not able to read while thinking about the meaning and processing it in their minds.

Even if the teacher asks the students to read aloud while thinking about the meaning, they inevitably end up in this mode when they are actually reading aloud. Therefore, when I have students practice reading aloud, I have them read aloud with gestures so that they can (somewhat automatically) process the meaning in their minds while reading aloud. I call this gesture reading.

How to practice Gesture Reading

Gesture reading is very simple: whether you are overlapping, shadowing, or reading aloud on your own, you simply gesture as you read. There is no need for exaggerated gestures, nor is there a rush to move your hands like in sign language. All you need to do is make small hand gestures according to the meaning of the text you are reading aloud.

You may find it easier to understand if you imagine the gestures that you would make when giving a speech or presentation.

The hand movements President Trump uses while speaking might serve as a good example.

As you will notice if you actually try a little, you cannot make any big gestures while reading, especially if you are keeping up with the speed of the model voice. Perhaps, you can only make simple gestures of emphasis by raising your finger at the emphasized part, or by spreading your hands at the point where you raise a question as if to say "Why ~?"

If you get your students to do this, at first they will look hectic with rather exaggerated gestures, but as they get used to it, they will settle into simple hand movements as if they were giving a typical presentation. Also, eventually the gestures become more like rhythmic hand gestures (think of a rapper keeping the rhythm) rather than actual gestures, and this level of motion is sufficient.

Gesture Reading forces semantic processing

Reading aloud with gestures helps you to be aware of the emphasis and to read questions as if you are actually asking them. You will feel as if you are giving a speech or presentation, and you will read the text with more emotion. This is directly related to what I wrote in my previous post (Reading Aloud as Storytelling).

When reading aloud, we tend to focus only on vocalization and pronunciation, and not on the meaning of the text. However, by trying to make gestures while reading along with the meaning, you will feel as if your brain is processing the meaning on its own, whether you are consciously aware of it or not. I always tell my students, "Read with the meaning in mind. If you read with gestures, your brain automatically processes the content of the text on its own."

Gesture reading is effective not only in processing semantic content, but also in making students more sensitive to rhythm and pauses. If you are reading aloud mechanically, you will end up reading in a monotone-like manner, but by adding hand gestures, you will become more aware of rhythm and intonation.

Integrating gesture reading into routine read-aloud

In this article, I have written about gesture reading. Gesture reading does not need to be practiced as an exercise menu like "Let's do gesture reading." Rather, it is something that should always be incorporated into reading aloud in any situation (including overlapping and shadowing), whether in class, at home, or in any other situation, and should be practiced as a regular habit.

I encourage you to incorporate this technique into your own learning and teaching practice.