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Pausing and breathing while reading aloud: development from 2nd to 7th grade in French speaking children

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Abstract

Pauses when reading aloud play an essential role in reading and listening comprehension (for a review: Godde et al., 2020). Among the various types of pauses, breathing pauses during oral reading are particularly important. Their placement, frequency and duration tell us about breath and voice coordination as well as articulatory planning. These skills that develop over time, from the early stages of reading acquisition to skilled reading levels, are under-researched. The present study aims to describe how children develop the ability to use pauses during oral reading by comparing young French speaking readers ranging from second to seventh graders to adults. Voice and breathing patterns of 295 children and 20 adults were recorded during oral reading. Specific attention was given to the frequency, duration and placement of breathing pauses and inhalation to phonation delay. Our results revealed that the youngest students performed more ungrammatical pauses, breathed more frequently and produced longer inhalation to phonation delays. Children older than grade 4 were visibly more proficient at planning their pauses, particularly their breathing pauses, and tended to rely more on punctuation. Finally, pause planning observed for the grade 7 students was almost at adult level. This developmental study suggests that children’s acquisition of pausing patterns during oral reading occurs gradually between the 2nd and 7th grades and highlights the important role of punctuation in planning breathing pauses and syntactic-prosodic breaks. Based on our results, we discuss the relation between pauses, decoding and expressivity, and develop didactic proposals for developing oral reading prosody.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the school teachers and pupils for welcoming Erika Godde and Manon Metz and wearing respiratory belts. Anne-Claire Dugué recorded the adult readers. Margaux Manka, Anne-Laure Piat-Marchand and Camille Deshayes patiently corrected numerous phonetic alignment

Funding

This research has been conducted as part of “Fluence”, an e-FRAN project founded by the “Investissement d’Avenir” program handled by the French “Caisse des dépôts”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS, Grenoble‐INP, GIPSA‐Lab, Université Grenoble Alpes, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Erika Godde & Gérard Bailly

  2. CNRS, LPNC, Université Grenoble Alpes, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Erika Godde & Marie-Line Bosse

  3. LPNC, Université Grenoble Alpes, BSHM 1251 av Centrale, 38058, Grenoble Cedex 9, France

    Erika Godde

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  1. Erika Godde
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Correspondence to Erika Godde.

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This research has been approved by the ethic committee of Université Grenoble Alpes. The ethic comittee approval number is CERNI-Avis-2018-03-06-2.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Mon chat est entré dans ma chambre. Il avait l'air bizarre donc j'ai tout de suite compris qu'il avait fait une énorme bêtise. D’abord j’ai pensé au poisson rouge. Je m'attendais à trouver le bocal vide. Mais mon poisson était toujours là et il me regardait de ses grands yeux ronds. Ensuite je me suis souvenu que maman avait sorti des saucisses et les avait posées sur la table. Le chat les avait volées, c’était certain. Mais dans la cuisine, les saucisses étaient toujours là, prêtes à cuire, personne n'y avait touché. Le chat est alors allé vers mon cartable. Le cartable était ouvert, tout était par terre, mon exposé déchiré en tout petits bouts. Quand j’ai vu mon travail en morceaux, je me suis senti triste, j’avais envie de pleurer. Alors le chat s'est frotté sur ma jambe, il a miaulé, il était désolé. Finalement il m'a aidé et on a préparé ensemble un bel exposé sur l'intelligence des chats.

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Godde, E., Bailly, G. & Bosse, ML. Pausing and breathing while reading aloud: development from 2nd to 7th grade in French speaking children. Read Writ 35, 1–27 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10168-z

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