Reading Aloud Can Remedy Covid Learning Loss

Reading aloud is perhaps the most efficient and effective way to promote cognitive development, while also imparting a host of social, emotional and cultural benefits. Young children who have had lots of stories read to them enter kindergarten as much as 14 months ahead in language and pre-reading skills. While listening to stories, children drink in more sophisticated vocabulary than they are likely to hear elsewhere, while also picking up grammar, syntax and general knowledge. The more that children under 5 are read to, the richer and deeper their language capacities become, with good effects later in English, math and other subjects.

It used to be thought that the practice primarily helps the very young, with little benefit for older children who lacked such early nurturing. A 2019 study led by

Jo Westbrook

at the University of Sussex, however, shows that being read to helps into adolescence. For the study, 20 English teachers at 10 schools, all with classes of poor-to-average students 12 or 13 years old, chucked out their regular lesson plans for three months. Instead of making the kids labor over short passages of text, the teachers read them novels such as

John Boyne’s

“The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” at a tempo intended for enjoyment rather than didacticism.

The results were astounding. Morale and test results soared. Children who had hated English lessons, who had experienced literature as daunting and indigestible, were practically running into the classroom to find out what was going to happen next in the stories. Seventeen of the educators used the word “joy” to describe their own experiences of this unorthodox teaching method. When the children were given reading-comprehension tests afterward, average readers had made 8.5 months of progress while poorer students had made 16 months of progress. As the study authors observed: “Simply reading challenging, complex novels aloud and at a fast pace in each lesson repositioned ‘poorer readers’ as ‘good’ readers, giving them a more engaged uninterrupted reading experience over a sustained period.”

The simple, inexpensive expedient of a teacher reading aloud a few times a week produced students who were happier, more motivated and more capable academically.

This is wonderful. It means that it isn’t too late for children who have slid or stalled academically. It means that schools groping for some way to recover from the catastrophe of prolonged closures have a tool easy to wield and ready to hand. They should use it.

Mrs. Gurdon is author of “The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction.”