Anybody tried reading out loud, and seen any benefits from doing it? Seems like a great idea for improving spoken fluency, but.... maybe I'm wasting my time lol...

Maybe you should try shadowing instead for spoken fluency...
Shadowing: listening to a native reading, while you quasi-synchronously repeat everything you hear (no matter if you often miss bits or don't understand). Optionally with the text in hand.

The advantage it has over reading aloud is that you can pick up a more natural prosody, while reading on your own has the risk of making mistakes you just can't notice. It can be quite frustrating though (it's not so easy! XD).

But just reading out loud is also good for sure! I did it a lot while learning German and I'm pretty sure it helped!

I read all my Anki sentences out loud, have done from the start.

I find it particularly effective for decks with no audio, as the sound of my own voice often acts as a memory cue.

Every second you spend speaking / hearing / reading the language is a second well spent.

Even if it's not perfect, practice and trial & error makes it perfect.

I read my Anki decks aloud, and I think that's good. But for reading longer things I think speed is much more important - the faster you go the more you read.
I'm sure it can't hurt though, so whatever works for you.

I think saying things out loud as much as possible is really important for smooth speaking, but I'd be a little cautious. For some reason, I was reading this article out loud when my girlfriend was next to me, and she corrected my pitch almost every other word. I didn't believe in reading aloud without audio anyway, but that made me get more serious about shadowing and spending more time listening.

There's no real reason to read aloud without audio. You have the Core and other decks, Japanese news sites with video/text together, audio books etc all readily available. Getting a decent accent is probably the single most difficult thing about Japanese, so it's good to do what you can where you can.

My reading level is still probably in the elementary school level area, so I read aloud to myself when reading to keep it all in my head..but that's more from a reading perspective and not for speaking. It's like how you probably read aloud to yourself when you were first learning to read your own language, at least that's how it is to me.

jimeux Wrote:For some reason, I was reading this article

Are you particularly knowledgeable in maths? Or learning something new in a new (for you) language?

comeauch Wrote:Maybe you should try shadowing instead for spoken fluency...
Shadowing: listening to a native reading, while you quasi-synchronously repeat everything you hear (no matter if you often miss bits or don't understand).

Shadowing does seem to be a great way to practice. I wish we had spent more time in class doing that.

tashippy Wrote:

jimeux Wrote:For some reason, I was reading this article

Are you particularly knowledgeable in maths? Or learning something new in a new (for you) language?

I think we were just disagreeing about the translation of trigonometry. The intro doesn't contain any words that were unfamiliar to me. The problem was more strings of accentless words together. I have a real problem not putting an accent (or maybe more of a screwed up kind of stress?) somewhere after a certain number of sounds. I make plenty of mistakes on a word level too, but I have noticed some improvements lately in that area.