Reading or Listening?

Do you take in information better by reading or listening? If you had to choose one which would it be?

I'd go for reading, which is why any time in the Big Brother house would be murder for me.

What are the difficulties for we who make this choice, or have it thrust upon us by some nurturing or genetic forces? Probably there are many but the one that causes me most difficulties is mispronunciation. In my reading I often bump into new words but have no idea how to pronounce them. I think this problem has been with me all my life, suggesting that from an early age I favoured reading over listening. I once asked Mrs Cohen (I would have been 7) how to spell character. When I asked her I pronounced the c-h as in choice, not ache. I also remember telling my Dad I was reading a comic story called Exhibit A, pronouncing it ecks eye but.

Further evidence would be the number of times teachers, parents and wives (OK wife) told me I hadn't been listening to what they said.

Liz often tells me things she's told me already and when she tells me them I remember she told me although I had forgotten. Sometimes I comment on things that she has already told me as if I was the one who thought of them, which rightly irritates her. However if she leaves me a note she can consider the matter closed and attended to, which makes it remarkably stupid of her not to have left me a note saying 'Sort out international poverty'. All the problems in the developing world are her fault. Don't tell her. She rarely reads this stuff and it would upset her.

The late Les Dawson suffered from the reading not listening problem and often mispronounced words in his monologues. I don't know of many other sufferers; people with a public platform who are not natural listeners.

I have been struggling with elegiac for a few years now. I keep reading it but have never heard anyone say it? How should it go?

A few months ago I tackled chutzpah in a sermon, getting criticised later by a woman with a Jewish husband for the terrible hash I had made of it. Maybe no-one should try Yiddish without a run-up.

Perhaps there is a good web-site that might help.