Scholarly literature suggests that reading aloud can:

• promote better group discussion by introducing the reading of the text as a social activity; 
• help students to experience and understand stories and concepts through different inflections and phrasing;
• help students to identify significant passages;
• provide an accessible narrative structure for complex information;
• improve comprehension of a text, including multifaceted concepts and interconnected processes;
• promote holistic thinking by connecting the specific with the global;
• connect cognitive and emotional knowledge;
• promote listening skills crucial to many academic pursuits;
• target the skills of audio learners, motivating them to read; and
• model the strategy of rereading.
  • Rereading often reveals new uncertainties about a passage, which teaches students to continually challenge their assumptions.
  • Rereading honors the intellectual work done to form an interpretation, rather than teaching students to simply memorize the standard interpretation of a text.

Instructors might wish to experiment with podcasts as a means of reading aloud. Audacity is free, open source, cross-platform software some instructors use for recording and editing sounds.