Students are often encouraged to proofread their writing by reading it aloud. Presumably, this will allow writers to correct local errors. Yet even though this strategy may be effective for native speakers, there is little empirical evidence of its benefit among second language writers. Therefore, we wondered how many errors second language students could correct through reading aloud and how that compared when receiving teacher feedback. In this study, 60 ESL students composed four in-class, 10-minute essays over two weeks. Half of the students revised their essays after receiving teacher feedback; the other half revised after reading aloud. All errors on initial and revised essays were tallied and normalized. Results showed that reading aloud affected some surface errors but that teacher feedback significantly outperformed reading aloud. We recommend teachers use reading aloud as a supplementary or preliminary strategy for correcting surface errors but not as a replacement for expert feedback provision.