LIVONIA – Caleb Lalinsky, adjunct professor and writing center specialist, recently presented at Corridors: The Great Lakes Writing and Rhetoric Conference. His presentation stemmed from a professional development session he had originally created for the Writing Center’s tutors. Lalinsky’s lecture, “Why We Read Aloud: How Reading Aloud Promotes Proofreading, Revision, and Ownership,” focused on the rationale behind reading students’ papers aloud when tutoring them.
Explaining how listening to their papers being read to them can help students notice their own errors and catch any awkward style decisions, Lalinsky also pointed out how reading aloud encourages students to focus on writing as a process of drafting and revision, where they look at big-picture items like organization and the development of their ideas before the final steps of polishing and editing. He also discussed how the practice of reading aloud can be differentiated for international students studying English as an additional language, and for deaf students, identifying ways to adapt the process while still giving the students the benefit of the practice. Lalinsky’s presentation generated a rich follow-up discussion with the conference attendees.
