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1. Introduction
Whether reading aloud （RA） is effective is an interesting topic among English teachers， especially EFL/ESL teachers. Some NS teachers think that RA has little values for students. But some teachers find that RA can be useful if properly used and many Chinese teachers encourage students to read aloud in the morning every day and some learners find it indeed helpful in learning English. This essay will analyze the value and effectiveness of RA for Chinese high school students in practicing speaking and pronunciation.
2. The current educational situation in China
In Chinese high school， teachers pay more attention to reading and writing skills， less attention to listening and especially speaking skills. Teachers usually ignore speaking because the final examination will not test the students’ spoken English and what the examination tests depends directly on what teachers will teach. Hence most students are very poor in speaking English. They are afraid to open their mouth to speak and even some of them do not know how to pronounce words. There are not enough contexts in which students are forced to practice speaking. What is more， there is very limited time for them to practice in class since teachers need to finish large amounts of teaching tasks every semester and also high pressure is put on teachers to force them to get better teaching results. So read-aloud skill is treated as the easier， more useful and convenient skill for most English teachers to help students practice speaking and pronunciation， even listening and writing indirectly.
3. Comparison between NS students and students with Chinese surroundings
For the NS students， they can speak very fluently and recognize the pronunciation of a word very easily. RA is only used at early stages for students to practice pronunciation of a single letter or word. As they learn more， RA seems meaningless and a waste of time and it is ineffective for students to improve reading skill. But it is different for Chinese secondary school students. Chinese has great influence on learning English maybe because they belong to different language families. Speaking and pronunciation are big problems for Chinese students.
There are big differences in language teaching between NS teachers and Chinese teachers. Traditionally， when teachers teach Chinese in class， they usually read aloud a sentence or paragraph and ask students to follow them or they make students memorizing an article by reading aloud themselves. On the contrary， reading aloud is seldom used for NS teachers. Students often have pair work， group work or role-play by talking， discussing or debating. Certain contexts are created by teachers in class for students to learn something relating to their own real life. The deep-rooted different teaching methods determine that students are more likely to be encouraged to use certain traditional learning methods guided by language teachers.
（作者单位：石家庄第二实验中学）
Whether reading aloud （RA） is effective is an interesting topic among English teachers， especially EFL/ESL teachers. Some NS teachers think that RA has little values for students. But some teachers find that RA can be useful if properly used and many Chinese teachers encourage students to read aloud in the morning every day and some learners find it indeed helpful in learning English. This essay will analyze the value and effectiveness of RA for Chinese high school students in practicing speaking and pronunciation.
2. The current educational situation in China
In Chinese high school， teachers pay more attention to reading and writing skills， less attention to listening and especially speaking skills. Teachers usually ignore speaking because the final examination will not test the students’ spoken English and what the examination tests depends directly on what teachers will teach. Hence most students are very poor in speaking English. They are afraid to open their mouth to speak and even some of them do not know how to pronounce words. There are not enough contexts in which students are forced to practice speaking. What is more， there is very limited time for them to practice in class since teachers need to finish large amounts of teaching tasks every semester and also high pressure is put on teachers to force them to get better teaching results. So read-aloud skill is treated as the easier， more useful and convenient skill for most English teachers to help students practice speaking and pronunciation， even listening and writing indirectly.
3. Comparison between NS students and students with Chinese surroundings
For the NS students， they can speak very fluently and recognize the pronunciation of a word very easily. RA is only used at early stages for students to practice pronunciation of a single letter or word. As they learn more， RA seems meaningless and a waste of time and it is ineffective for students to improve reading skill. But it is different for Chinese secondary school students. Chinese has great influence on learning English maybe because they belong to different language families. Speaking and pronunciation are big problems for Chinese students.
There are big differences in language teaching between NS teachers and Chinese teachers. Traditionally， when teachers teach Chinese in class， they usually read aloud a sentence or paragraph and ask students to follow them or they make students memorizing an article by reading aloud themselves. On the contrary， reading aloud is seldom used for NS teachers. Students often have pair work， group work or role-play by talking， discussing or debating. Certain contexts are created by teachers in class for students to learn something relating to their own real life. The deep-rooted different teaching methods determine that students are more likely to be encouraged to use certain traditional learning methods guided by language teachers.
（作者单位：石家庄第二实验中学）