Reading Aloud in Britain Today

Do you ever read out loud?

Shouting? Whispering? Chanting?

To one person, in a group or completely alone?

Much is written about reading aloud as a teaching or motivational tool – a means to an end – but not so much is written about reading aloud as an end in itself, an everyday adult practice. Anecdotal evidence suggests that adults do indeed read aloud for various purposes and across various life domains and yet these practices are rarely talked about.

We wanted to find out more.

The project

RABiT aimed to expand what we all think of when we hear the word 'reading' by documenting and analysing contemporary adult reading aloud practices. We want to explore the diversity of reading practices (on and offline) that adults perform or experience in different communities, languages, contexts and phases of our lives. This was (and still is) part of a desire to better understand the role of reading in community life and the relationship between forms of reading and other cultural practices, such as speechmaking, story-telling or professions of faith.

Over the course of the funded project, we captured the reading aloud practices of hundreds of different adults as possible across Scotland, England and Wales. We reached people of all different ages, genders, ethnicities, faiths, cultural, educational and language backgrounds, in both urban and rural locations.

Timescale

RABiT ran from June 2017 until the end of May 2019.

Year one

Year one of the project involved data collection and analysis, using:

• a Mass Observation directive
• a questionnaire completed by over 600 adults across Scotland, Wales and England
• 49 semi-structured interviews and
• 44 audio recordings of people reading aloud
• 91 recordings in the British Library Sound Archive, shelfmark C1765

Year two

In year two we travelled around and spoke with different groups of people about what they think about the RABiT findings and reading aloud more broadly. We explored and shared the findings through:

• four regional community events
• an academic symposium
• writing publications of different sorts
• depositing interviews and audio recordings in the British Library Sound Archive, subject to permissions/agreement
• four national and international conference presentations

Table of contents

• Publications and blogs
• Events
• Resources for discussion, reflection and next steps
• The team
• Project partners
• Advisory group

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Publications and blogs

Publications

• Oral Literacies: when adults read aloud
• Duncan, S., Freeman, M. (2019). Adults reading aloud: a survey of contemporary practices in Britain. British Journal of Educational Studies
• Duncan S. (2019). Reading Aloud in Britain Today: an overview and implications. Research and Practice in Adult Literacies, 2018 Conference Edition. Volume 97/Spring 2019
• Duncan, S. (2018). Reading Aloud in Britain Today (RABiT): an introduction. Word Matters: The Journal of the Society of Teachers of Speech and Drama, 68 (1), 19
• Duncan, S. (2018). Lend me your ears: Mass Observing contemporary adult reading aloud practices. Changing English, 1–16

Blogs

• Oral Literacies: when adults read aloud. Launch of the book by Sam Duncan on 8th January
• What does it mean to read aloud – and why is it so important? On The Reading Agency blog

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Events

RABiT academic symposium in London

• Everyday reading: explorations of literacy and oracy, 17 November 2018

Regional community events

• Reading aloud in Britain today – what does this mean for adult learners? 19 December 2018, Pontypool, Wales
• So what does this all mean? RABiT at the Glasgow Women's Library. 24 January 2019, Glasgow, Scotland
• Oral literacies: Poetry, performance and the written. 21 February 2019, Edinburgh, Scotland
• Reading aloud: implications of the RABiT project for teachers. 5 March 2019, Nottingham, England

Conference presentations

• ‘Widening the Ownership of the Word? – When adults read aloud' presentation at the 11th ESREA BGL-ALC Conference in Pécs, 12–15 June 2019
• 'Lend Me Your Ears: when adults read aloud instead of in silence' at the European Basic Skills Network (EBSN) Annual Conference, Tallinn, June 2019
• 'Reading Aloud Today: and what this could mean for the teaching of reading, presentation' at the Ethiopian English Language Teachers Association/Ethiopian English Language Professionals’ Association, 25th May 2019, Addis Ababa
• Research keynote: 'Reading Aloud in Britain Today (RABiT): Lessons for Policy and Practice' at the English, Maths and ESOL Annual Conference, Learning and Work Institute, 14 November 2018
• 'Mass observing adult reading aloud: finding a 'dual vision' of literacy today.' at the Ethnography with a Twist conference, 12–14 February 2019, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

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Resources for discussion, reflection and next steps

Following on from the discussions held in the second year of the project, we have created 'Discussion, Reflection and Next Steps' resources. These are to read, share and discuss. We hope that they will spark reflections and actions of different sorts. 

Please email Sam on sam.duncan@ucl.ac.uk to share what you have done or thought about.

• RABiT discussion and next steps: poetry focus (PDF)
• RABiT discussion and next steps for women library users, everyone and anyone (PDF)
• RABiT discussion and next steps for teachers and trainee teachers (PDF)
• RABiT discussion and next steps for prison reading groups (PDF)
• RABiT discussion and next steps for adult learners and adult educators (PDF)
• Reading Agency Reading Ahead RABiT Resource (PDF)

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The team

RABiT was led by Sam Duncan, Senior Lecturer in Adult Education and Literacies, through an AHRC Early Careers Research Fellowship.

Sam was supported by her mentor, Dr Mark Freeman, Reader in Education and Social History.

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Project partners

We were delighted to work with the support of our project partners: 

• The British Library
• Learning and Work Institute
• The Reading Agency
• The Mass Observation Project

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to these project friends who helped us navigate around Skye, and find people to interview and reading aloud practices to record.

• Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches: a collaborative project which has been set up to preserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online several thousand hours of Gaelic and Scots recordings.
• Island Voices – Guthan nan Eilean: slices of life and work in the 21st century Hebrides – for language learners, and anyone else.

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Advisory group

We are very grateful to the RABiT Advisory Group for their invaluable guidance throughout the project and, we hope, beyond.

• Dr Ann Swinney, Discipline Lead, Community Learning and Development, University of Dundee
• Debbie Hicks, Creative Director, Reading Agency
• Dr Farid Panjwani, Director, Centre for Research and Evaluation in Muslim Education, UCL Institute of Education
• Professor Greg Brooks, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield
• Jane Mace, Practitioner, Trainer and Author in Adult Literacy Education since the 1970s
• Jonnie Robinson, Lead Curator for Spoken English at the British Library
• Kirsty Pattrick, Mass Observation Archive Officer
• Lesley Allen, South-East London, Co-Ordinator of the Diamond Club, Holy Cross Parish, Catford and Stockwell Good Neighbours, Oval
• Dr Maxine Burton, Researcher and Writer on Adult Literacy, Linguistics and History of Education
• Professor Mike Baynham, Emeritus Professor of TESOL, School of Education, University of Leeds
• Sarah Turvey, Principal Lecturer in English Literature, University of Roehampton and Director, Prison Reading Groups (PRG)

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In the media 

How do adults read aloud?

Dr Sam Duncan discusses the findings of the Reading Aloud in Britain Today (RABiT) project, which explores when and why adults read aloud.

Read: FE News

Why we read out loud

Dr Sam Duncan discusses the motivations behind reading aloud and Reading Aloud in Britain Today (RABiT).
Listen (from 28:30): BBC Radio Shetland – The Books Programme
18 March 2019

Get involved

We are very grateful for all your involvement. Most of the project work is now complete, but if you are interested, we would still love to hear from you. Could you help by:

• Talking to us about reading aloud and your life?
• Listening to the sound recordings and letting us know how they relate to your own experiences?
• Trying out the 'discussion, reflection and next steps' resources on this page and letting us know your thoughts?
• Getting in touch with any ideas you have for the project?

Please contact Sam Duncan sam.duncan@ucl.ac.uk

Listen to sound clips of different voices from the project

Reading to the potentially isolated

An actor learning lines

Poems from Addis Ababa

Woman reading to an ill partner

Reading from phones and tablets

Everyday reading in a marriage

An altar boy's memory

Reading aloud in spiritual and professional lives

Tweets by RABiTProject 

RABiT was made possible through an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellows Scheme for Early Careers Researchers.