I think the articles presented in class can serve two purposes. They can be short, thus you can get the students to speculate about them, do pre-reading exercises etc., scan it, ask each other questions about it, and possibly read aloud if you have time and if there are doubts. Reading aloud DOES help to fix words in your long-term memory. If they are long, they need to be read at home to be discussed in class or they will take up too much time. I agree that there are classes that won't read articles if you assign them for homework. It really depends on the class you are working with. However, I think that reading SHORT articles aloud can be useful

, especially if you choose the students in a random order.