bird word world and work . However, when these learners see the words written down, they tend to pronounce the letters with the same sound values those letters have in German. This well-known phenomenon is not, as far as I am concerned, an argument for the mistaken belief that 'nothing should be read before it is heard'. On the contrary, it is an argument for letting learners hear and see the words at the same time from the very beginning.
A useful teacher- skill that is 'frowned upon' ? Reading aloud to a class
One reason I often read aloud to learners before asking them to read aloud to each other was and is my belief that their 'eyes follow my voice' - and so instead of stopping at every word they do not understand, they 'scan' to the end of each line and to the end of the text.
It has, by the way, been known and understood by many researchers into L1 acquisition that parents and teachers can promote the language development of infants and children by reading aloud to them. One such researcher notes that 'Reading aloud is traditionally discouraged by EFL/ESL teachers and those concerned with EFL/ESL methodology.'
However, recent research has provided substantive empirical evidence indicating that reading aloud to native English-speaking children improves their comprehension and encourages them to read. Reading aloud by the teacher can, in fact, be equally important for EFL/ESL learners, especially in the early stage of learning the language. These learners, when reading to themselves, tend to read word by word due to their limited linguistic competence. Guided by their anxiety to understand each word, they tend to break sentences into unmeaningful parts while they read.
The belief that such practices are bad is yet another example of something that has become a dangerous delusion . This makes it difficult to train EFL teachers to do simple but effective things effectively. The lack of debate in EFL ? the apparently smug and complacent belief that such practices as reading aloud are 'bad' and 'wrong' in spite of the evidence to the contrary; the refusal even to consider that evidence let alone argue about it, contributes in my opinion to the intellectual enervation of EFL; to the tendency to regard the unbearable lightness' of our beliefs as proof of their validity rather than their intolerable superficiality. Even worse, it can lead to a mind-set that causes the holders of those intolerably superficial beliefs to think that anyone who disagrees with them must be motivated either by malice or stupidity - or probably both.
The Third Proposition
Children learning their L1 or adolescents and adults learning an L2 typically 'switch-off' when they encounter language that is too complex or difficult. Especially in the early and intermediate stages 'accessible but naturalistic' input is essential. Language produced by native-speakers for other native-speakers is usually far too difficult for beginners and intermediate learners. This is one of the reasons why almost always 'authentic' materials have to be modified and/or simplified in various ways, and are thus no longer 'authentic'.
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