Mi madre me hizo leer el primer párrafo despacio para corregir la pronunciación.

This is the very common Spanish pattern hacer + infinitive, which means to make someone do something or to have someone do something.

So:

• Mi madre = my mother
• me = me
• hizo = made
• leer = read

Together, Mi madre me hizo leer means My mother made me read.

It is a causative structure: one person causes another person to do an action.

Me is the object pronoun referring to the person who was made to read.

In English, we say:

• My mother made me read

In Spanish, that me appears before the conjugated verb:

• Mi madre me hizo leer

So me is the person affected by hizo and also the understood subject of leer.

You can think of it as:

• My mother made me read
• not My mother made read

Without me, the sentence would lose the idea of who had to do the reading.

Because after hacer in this pattern, Spanish normally uses the infinitive.

The formula is:

• hacer + someone + infinitive

Examples:

• Me hizo esperar = She made me wait
• Nos hizo repetirlo = She made us repeat it
• Mi madre me hizo leer = My mother made me read

So leer stays in the infinitive because hizo is already the conjugated verb.

Hizo is the preterite form of hacer.

Here it refers to a completed action in the past:

• Mi madre me hizo leer... = My mother made me read...

That suggests a specific past event.

Also, hacer is irregular in the preterite:

• hice
• hiciste
• hizo
• hicimos
• hicisteis
• hicieron

So hizo is simply the he/she/it form of hacer in the preterite.

Because primero shortens to primer before a singular masculine noun.

So:

• el primero = the first one
• el primer párrafo = the first paragraph

This shortening is called apocopation.

Other examples:

• el primer día
• el primer libro
• mi tercer intento

But if the word stands alone, you use the full form:

• Fue el primero = He was the first one

Yes, lentamente would also be possible, but despacio is very common and natural in everyday Spanish.

Both can mean slowly:

• leer despacio
• leer lentamente

In many everyday contexts, despacio sounds a bit more conversational and common.

So Mi madre me hizo leer el primer párrafo despacio means she made the speaker read it slowly.

Because Spanish adverbs are fairly flexible, but this position is very natural.

Here the sentence flows as:

• me hizo leer
• el primer párrafo
• despacio
• para corregir la pronunciación

That is, first the action, then what was read, then how it was done, then the purpose.

You could hear slight variations, such as:

• Mi madre me hizo leer despacio el primer párrafo...

But the original version sounds very natural and clear.

It expresses purpose: why the mother made the speaker read slowly.

So:

• para = in order to / so as to
• corregir = correct / improve / fix
• la pronunciación = the pronunciation

So the idea is:

• She made the speaker read slowly in order to correct the pronunciation

In natural English, this often means to improve pronunciation or to fix pronunciation mistakes.

Because Spanish often uses the definite article where English would use a possessive, especially when it is already obvious whose thing is being discussed.

Here, the pronunciation being corrected is obviously the speaker’s pronunciation, so la pronunciación sounds natural.

Spanish often does this:

• Me duele la cabeza = My head hurts
• Se lavó las manos = He washed his hands
• corregir la pronunciación = correct the pronunciation

You could say mi pronunciación, but in this sentence la pronunciación is more idiomatic.

Spanish normally uses a possessive like mi, tu, su, etc. when talking about family members in this kind of sentence.

So:

• mi madre = my mother
• mi padre = my father
• mi hermano = my brother

Just madre by itself is possible in some special contexts, but not as the normal neutral choice here.

So Mi madre me hizo leer... is exactly what a learner should expect.

The accent marks show where the stress goes.

• párrafo is stressed on the first syllable: PÁ-rra-fo
• pronunciación is stressed on the last syllable: pro-nun-cia-CIÓN

These accents are important because they tell you the correct pronunciation and stress pattern.

For English speakers, this is especially useful because Spanish spelling is much more regular than English spelling. If you pay attention to accent marks, you are much more likely to pronounce the word correctly.

Grammatically, Spanish does not state it explicitly here, so the subject is understood from context.

In practice, the sentence usually suggests that the mother made the speaker read slowly so that the pronunciation could be corrected, probably by the mother during the exercise.

So the focus is more on the purpose of the activity than on clearly naming who performs corregir.

That kind of slight ambiguity is normal in Spanish and English:

• She made me read slowly to correct my pronunciation

This also does not strongly emphasize who is doing the correcting; it emphasizes the goal.

Only partly. A very literal breakdown would be:

• Mi madre = my mother
• me = me
• hizo = made
• leer = read
• el primer párrafo = the first paragraph
• despacio = slowly
• para corregir la pronunciación = in order to correct the pronunciation

That gives:

• My mother made me read the first paragraph slowly in order to correct the pronunciation

That is understandable, but in natural English you might say:

• My mother made me read the first paragraph slowly to correct my pronunciation

So the Spanish structure matches the English meaning quite closely, but the most natural translation is not always completely word-for-word.