Read aloud: Why adults should read to each other more often

Note: We first published this text in December 2022. We recommend it again for today’s “Read Aloud Day”.

Sometimes my husband reads something to me before I fall asleep. Unfortunately it happens far too rarely. Life and fatigue usually get in the way. When it happens, they are special moments. I love his voice. I like this special concentration when listening. And I like what happens afterward: when we return to certain words and apt descriptions. Asking ourselves what this or that meant.

What is special and rare for me as an adult was something taken for granted as a child. Ideally, that’s what it should be: At the Reading Foundation they talk about reading aloud together as a “superpower”. “The benefits of reading to children are manifold,” says Betty Becker-Kurz, research associate at the Reading Foundation’s Institute for Reading and Media Research. Reading aloud not only promotes creativity and imagination, but also helps children expand their vocabulary and concentrate better.

Reading aloud as a superpower

Becker-Kurz points to study results that show that children who are regularly read to not only have higher academic achievements but also higher socio-emotional skills. They show higher levels of empathy, helpfulness and responsibility and are more likely to have the ability to listen to others. “The connections are independent of the parents’ level of education, the gender of the children and the communication in the family.” So even equal opportunities is part of the superpower of reading.

And adults benefit from it too. Reading aloud strengthens social relationships in the family, says Becker-Kurz. In addition to increasing positive emotions, another study has shown that the shared reading ritual benefits parents in dealing with stress. It can be assumed that reading aloud together has, in addition to the already known cognitive effects, also a positive influence on the emotional health of children and adults.

The popularity of audio books shows that many adults also enjoy being read to. A trained voice in your ear that reads a book while doing the dishes, on the way to work or while taking a walk. “Audio books also have their special quality; but that can sometimes create a certain distance when listening,” says Carsten Sommerfeldt. He worked as a literary agent and publishing director before setting up Shared Reading in Germany.

The idea comes from Liverpool and has long been established in Great Britain. During shared reading, people come together in groups for an hour and a half. They don’t need any previous literary knowledge, they don’t have to read any text beforehand. This is provided by the leader of the group, the facilitator. If the participants want, they can then read to each other. And talk about the story afterwards. At the end of the meeting the same thing happens again with a poem.

Sommerfeldt emphasizes the community-building nature of reading to each other, the connection that is created: “You sit opposite each other. That creates a lot of closeness. And bringing a text to life with your own voice can be very enriching.” For him, it’s also a memory of reading aloud as a child: “That feeling of comfort that you felt when reading aloud as a child can also be found as an adult – in reading out loud and listening.”

“That means me. This is my book.”

Reading in a group creates a different perspective on literature, says Sommerfeldt. “In the shared reading groups, most people quickly start talking about themselves and reflecting on their own experiences when they talk about the text afterwards.” After all, world literature revolves around the big themes: grief, death, love, shame, guilt. “Each of us can understand that. When you have a text read to you, you tend to get stuck with a word or a sentence that makes you think: That means me. This is my book.”

I know what he means. In the summer I was lying on a meadow in Erfurt with a friend; we had met there for a weekend. We had to check out of our holiday apartment and lay on a picnic blanket under a tree until the train left. My friend started reading to me from the book we had bought the day before. The women it was about were just us.

Conflicting feelings and literature

Jane Davis, the founder of Shared Reading in Great Britain, said five years ago at the Leipzig Book Fair, when the reading groups were also presented in Germany, that this shared reading is not therapy, but has a therapeutic effect. She has had good experiences working with dementia patients, drug addicts, mentally ill people, old people and lonely people.

In a text on the topic from 2017, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” quotes the doctor Christiane Faust-Bettermann: “We get to know patients whose inner dilemma is to experience contradictory feelings that they cannot cope with. Good literature has that already put into words.” A recent study from Great Britain comes to the conclusion that shared reading is also positively received in prisons.

Reading together is popular

Unlike shared reading, in most reading groups a book is read privately in advance and then discussed at a shared meeting on site or online. Bookstores, libraries, literary houses or adult education centers offer such offers. And they are popular. Kerstin Hämke, operator of the website mein-literaturkreis.de, assumes there are a considerable number of 70,000 physical reading circles in Germany, two thirds of which are private. An exchange between friends and acquaintances about literature.

Hämke says in an interview with the industry magazine “Börsenblatt”: “Through reading groups you have the opportunity to share your hobby with others, have company and get to know new books that you wouldn’t have found otherwise. It also gives you the opportunity to read your own To share your opinion and get other perspectives in the discussions.”

Social media has once again opened up new, widespread, location-independent opportunities for reading groups. And also for a younger target group. “Die Zeit” wrote in the fall how TikTok is currently becoming the “largest reading group in the world.” Posts with the hashtag #BookTok are seen billions of times. This includes an exchange about reading experiences, book recommendations, but also books that end up in the bin. Small trailers for books and artistic summaries. They are productions of and with books. It is an argument against cultural pessimism: the young generation reads. And perhaps the young people will later become adults who read to each other more often.

Sources: Börsenblatt, Book market, The time, FAZ (I), FAZ (II), HM Prison and Probation Service, Shared ReadingTikTok, Reading monitor