Page Created: 03/17/11. Last Updated: 03/21/11.
Most groups do not read their stories aloud. Instead, they follow the Milford / Clarion Workshop Tradition. This Science Fiction Writers of America article below by James Patrick Kelly http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/writers-workshops/ describes this process in more detail.
I have known professional writers state that this is a terrible way to critique work. Here are some arguments from the anti-reading side.
The experience of reading something aloud is different than the experience of reading something on a sheet of paper (or electronic reader). Your audience will experience the work through their eyes, not their ears. To critique a story which has been read aloud is to make alterations based on a form of input different than what the reader will experience. Moreover, a good reader can make an average piece sound better. Likewise, a poor reader can make a given piece sound worse.
These are legitimate points. However, their are other factors to consider.
To quote Pauline Alama: "But the most helpful part, to me, is hearing someone else read my work aloud & witnessing others' immediate response. If no one said anything afterward, there would still be a tremendous amount to learn from that exercise. The reader-aloud teaches you what's confusing, what's a tongue-twister, what just plain sounds bad, and what can be easily misread. You hear the reader say one of your sentences emphasizing the wrong word, and you realize that your sentence structure isn't clear enough. You hear the reader deliver a line of dialogue in the intonations of the wrong character, and you realize you need to add an "X said" instead of assuming that it's obvious who's speaking. And the audience contributes too -- laughing (or not) at the humorous lines, looking attentive or bored. Even if no one had any comments, you could already learn from that."
..........Milford / Clarion SF Workshop Method