My piano teacher says practice doesn't improve his pupils proficiency at sight reading. Some people are just good at it while others aren't. Do you agree?

Yes, it can improve your SR. I have improved my flute sight-reading and my piano sight-reading by practising. With all due respect to your teacher, he's wrong. Unless my sight-reading magically improved for no reason and it wasn't linked to me practising sight-reading but it was just a coincidence.....?!

edit: meant to say, yes some people are naturally better than others, but that doesn't mean that bad sight-readers are condemned to be bad at it forever.

I would agree that some people seem to be naturally better at sight-reading than others, but practice can definitely improve it, just as it improves most things! In my experience, the more sight-reading you, do the better you become at it (and I'm one of the naturally bad sight-readers!)

The students I teach who have radically improved their sight reading scores are those who play every piece in every book they possess. Some people do take to sight reading better than others, but practice is essential in improving that basic talent. Sight reading is large about pattern recognition, and the more often you meet certain patterns (such as the shape of a root position tonic triad, or a chromatic scale) the more quickly you will recognise them in future.

To say that practice doesn't improve sight-reading is akin to saying that a 6-year-old shouldn't bother to do his reading homework, because the ability to read is something he's either got or he hasn't got. Yes, some are infinitely better than others, and perfect pitch seems to be a factor in this, but I know for sure that mine improved dramatically over a period of months once I decided to really set my mind to it - ie by practising it. I had to; I had no choice, because I play in church, and what you've practised isn't always what appears on the order of service. So it was a case of "improve your sight-reading or forget it" - so I did.

edit - ie - I improved my sight-reading; I didn't want to forget it!!

My former teacher said that too. It is not true. You will improve by doing a lot of sight reading, but mine has improved by analysing why I cannot sight read to the standard that I should be able to - in my case, not being sufficiently competant with keyboard geography, not looking ahead fast enough and brain being too slow to connect to fingers having looked ahead! I have been using Super Sight Reading Secrets by Howard Richman and am slowly but steadily improving. It takes time and I still have a long way to go to get to my goal of being proficient enough to do the quick study for DipABRSM Teaching.

I'm not sure whether you mean perfect pitch is a help or a hinderance.

You do not need perfect pitch to be a good sight reader on the piano - I do not have perfect pitch but I have always been a very good sight-reader. When I was younger I used to get away without practising by being able to sight read the pieces in my lessons. (Had my teacher only asked me to sight read a new piece at the end of the lesson I would have been rumbled but she never did!)

I think the better you are at sight reading the more you do it and the better you become.

Maybe the teacher doesn't know how to teach sight-reading practice?
simply doing lots of reading at sight may not always help that much, if you only ever play a piece once. It is difficult though to steer that fine course between reading and learning a piece. My kids' first teacher asked them to work through exercises from the Paul Harris books (for piano) - but to play the examples twice.. They ticked the exercises done, and then, the next time, would play the last of the examples once more, then do another few.
For myself, I found playing through books of pieces a couple of levels below what I was learning formally was helpful - again, only one or two play-throughs, maybe coming back to any particular piece a week or more later. You do need to have a lot of music in the house for this, though - which can be difficult for families whose kids are the first generation to be learning.

Personally, I hate sight-reading. I have to do it, but don't claim to be good at it. Getting the rhythm right is probably more important than getting every note correct - the notes can be learned, but the rhythm is crucial from the first moment. Fast passages are the worst, especially if they are laden with chromatics

As supea says, it's looking ahead and then connecting the fingers and the brain fast enough. The added problem of bow control and co-ordination complicates things on the violin.

I agree that some people are just naturally very good sight-readers, they can play ANYTHING without even flinching. It sickens me. Still, I have the upper hand with memory - never have a problem memorising works.

I think that for me as a pianist the major benefit of having perfect pitch is that I know if I'm playing what's on the page in front of me without having to look at my hands.

I'm sure there have been quite a number of earlier threads on aspects of sight-reading. Try a search and see what pops up. It definitely improves with practice.

In my experience, reading, playing and listening are interleaved. If the piano is out of tune, I cannot sight read on it. If it's a piece I know well I can just about let my hands do it as long as I don't listen too much, but when sight reading I rely a lot on what notes I hear myself playing.

You don't need perfect pitch for that to help - if you have good relative pitch, then you can, assuming you start right, know whether you're playing the right notes as long as the piece isn't insanely atonal

I find insufficient knowledge of keyboard geography my main hindrance - I'm using the Howard Richman book, and there are some very good exercises for this problem, but I must admit it takes some willpower to use them everyday (no point if you don't do them regularly) when it's more enjoyable browsing through new pieces! (...must try and be more disciplined...)

I'm not familiar with the Richman book, but I expect both Richman and browsing through new pieces will improve your sight-reading. How about playing (paying!) something useful from Richman as an "entry fee" to each new piece that you browse through for fun?

Yes, practice does improve sight reading. I struggled with sightreading as a child until I was able to join youth orchestras once I was Grade 5/6 - a couple of rehearsals a week where the rest of the group don't stop and wait for you to work the notes out makes a big difference! Years and years later after taking a break from orchestra playing to have babies I was shocked to find how rusty the sightreading could get. Use it or lose it!
Admittedly orchestras aren't an option for pianists but one piano playing friend said she got the same effect by accompanying a local ballet class. And of course playing for church has already been mentioned.

I have been reading a book in which the authors have looked at a wide range of research into different aspects of performing and identified ways of impoving performance based on that research. One of the performance aspects they cover is sightreading. They conclude that although some people are naturally better at it , it is possible to improve with practice.

The are lots of suggestions given for improving sightreading drawn from the research. These include training yourself to read 6 or 7 notes ahead of what you are actually playing, thinking about the structure of the piece when playing, practicing fluency when moving down a line in the music, learning to recognise patterns in the music, practicing common patterns using as many different finger patterns as possible etc etc .

They also recommend recording attempts at sightreading, then analysing the mistakes made to identify what things need to be impoved (for example, are most of the problems to do with incorrect rhythm or notes, are errors due to misreading or just not being able to play the notes?). I have found this helped a lot.

I have been trying out the suggestions and they do help.

Given that:

1) No one is born able to sightread, or suddenly becomes able to do it at some point in their life without ever having done it;
and
2) Some people are good at sightreading.

Then it must be the case that it's possible to improve sightreading by practise.

I'm still practising .

Thanks for all the replies. I have found them really interesting. I wasn't sure that I agreed with my teacher's view on sight reading - ie that practice doesn't help - and the responses given here seem to corroborate my view. I will try out some of the tips suggested.

I think that there is a difference between exam sight reading and practical sight reading.
In a real life situation if someone gives me something to try out I can have a quick look and play through and manage a reasonably useful attempt, maybe leaving out or editing trickier bits to allow me to keep the overall picture intact. In the exam much more accuracy is needed in much less time (in the later grades at least)

I absolutely agree with this.
I'm not a great sight-reader, but I always hope that with practise I will improve! Some people are of course better than others, but then it's the same with all things, including scales and aural etc. Everyone has a strong and a weak point.
My older sister is a violin teacher, and she says that one of her pupils has definitely improved with his sight-reading since practising more, even although he wasn't that good when he first started. So I think that's proof enough of practising being helpful!

Yes, absolutely - some people will take to it more naturally than others. It doesn't mean you can't improve. As AP says, no one is born being able to do it!

I tend to panic in exam situations, I can sight-read much better when it's just for fun.

A few random suggestions:

Practise your scales and arpeggios from your scale book, (possibly as well as from memory, if the latter skill, which is not very useful in Classical music, is required in other circumstances), so as to become familiar with their appearance.

Get into the habit of scanning all the information on the copy beforehand. Look at the busiest bars as well as the tempo markings and choose a compromise speed if you decide you can't play the piece as fast as the composer would like. Then rehearse the metric pulse mentally and try to maintain it when you play, even if it means leaving notes out.* See whether there are any traps, like pauses, commas, accelerandi or ritardandi, so as not to be surprised by them.

* This is a particularly important skill when you play chamber music for fun.

It certainly improved mine!

The Richman book doesn't have anything in it to play, in the sense of playing a piece - there are exercises which are very good for their purpose, and need doing on a regular and frequent basis, but they are not for "playing through". You use suitable "proper" music as required. It's not like doing the Paul Harris books or similar - it's much more thorough. I use the ideas from it with my students, but wouldn't give it to them to work through unless they were committed adults with a reasonable playing standard but struggling with sight reading skills.

Is it a piano-specific book?

The book is written for keyboard instruments but he writes in chapter 10 that it's "easily adaptable to players of other instruments. The sense of touch and visual perception principles are universal".

At the moment I'm using the drills where you read a note, then play it without looking, take your hands off the keyboard, then read the next note etc etc. I can't believe how difficult this is to do!

I'm about G6 on the piano, but am really rubbish at sight reading. I've started using the Sight Reading for Fun books, and they are very helpful. They follow the AB grades and progress in very small steps so you are always succeeding. They analytically explain how to sight read.

I've also found Kodaly to be invaluable.