The Newbolt Report and reading aloud: an overview of the emergence and subsequent development of a poetry pedagogy

Abstract

ABSTRACT While speaking, reading and writing are identified in the Newbolt Report as components of English and are still acknowledged as such one hundred years later, Reading Aloud, which the Report ranks alongside them, is no longer accorded any prominence. The Newbolt Report connects Reading Aloud with literature and announces it as a method of interpretation, though this is not elaborated as a pedagogic practice. This article examines how a Reading Aloud methodology evolved and was articulated in theory and practice, first in government guidance and then in influential books about English teaching. During this process a methodology emerged in which a focus on voicing and hearing a poem was a means to interpreting and understanding the poem and ultimately to an ideal reading of it. Reasons are suggested why attention shifted away from this practical methodology whereby familiarity with reading poems aloud gives more confident access to understanding and appreciation.