As a young child at night, I could often be found up past my bedtime with a little white flashlight under the covers, reading ‘The Babysitters’ Club,’ ‘Sweet Valley High,’ or ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.’ I took to reading naturally at a young age. I found comfort and escape in it, and still do to this day. I was read to by my mother as a toddler and pre-schooler, and have memories of learning to read with ‘Dick and Jane’ texts in school in the early to mid 80s. I did not struggle to learn to read. Now years later as a teacher who specializes in working with children who are English language learners, and who have learning disabilities, I am well aware that this is not the case for everyone.

Historically there is an expectation in our Western culture that children learn to read print starting around 5 or 6 years old. Success in school, starting as early as Grade 1, depends on it. I have worked in public elementary education for 17 years, and experience has taught me that beyond Grade 1 and 2, there is little time spent on actual reading instruction in class. After this age, students are expected to have ‘gotten’ it, and if not, you are flagged for extra help from the resource centre. This is problematic as the ability to decode written text becomes explicitly tied to success in all other subjects, not just language arts. Math problems, instructions for science experiments, history, and sometimes even rules for games in physical education have traditionally been delivered in print. As a teacher, I find this frustrating.

I have asked people I know with learing disabilities in reading (ranging from children to adult age) how reading made them feel in school, and answers ranged from ‘stupid’ to ‘mad’ to ‘teachers wrote me off’.’ One adult relayed the experience of being put into ability-based reading groups in Grade One. ‘Everyone knew the “Robins” couldn’t read, so whenever I was called to join my group, all the other kids would laugh. I wanted to read more than anything because it so obviously highly prized by the teacher. The anxiety and stress I would feel from being asked to read out loud in class was traumatizing. School and reading were tied together. Therefore school was just not a positive experience.’ So the question here is, what other options do we have to provide access and improve kids’ experience in school for students who struggle? This led to exploration of the use of audiobooks as an educational tool.

The medium for spoken books has changed with the availability of technology over the years – first vinyl records, then cassette tapes, then CDs, to the present today digitization using MP3 or MP4 formats. All one needs in 2021 to access an audiobook is an internet connection and a device to listen on. Spoken literature first became a possibility with the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in the 1870s. Initially Edison hoped that this medium could be used to create phonographic books to allow blind people to hear stories ‘without effort on their part’ (“Audiobooks,” 2021). In the 1930s, the American Foundation for the Blind initiated the Talking Books Project, designed to make reading material available to the visually impaired and wounded veterans. Similar projects were founded through the next four decades, using the medium of vinyl, until the rise in popularity of the cassette in the 1970s. In 1986, the Audio Publishers Association was ‘established by publishers who joined together to promote awareness of spoken word audio and provide industry statistic’ (“Audiobooks, 2021). Various audiobook clubs were started and by 1988, at least 40 companies were publishing audiobooks, then an estimated $200 million US market. As the internet became more widespread towards the end of the 1990s, ‘digital audiobooks were a significant new milestone as they allowed listeners freedom from physical media such as cassettes and CD-ROMs which required transportation through the mail, allowing instead instant download access from online libraries of unlimited size, and portability using comparatively small and lightweight devices’ (“Audiobooks”, 2021). Audible has become a name synonamous with audiobooks in 2021. Founded in 1995, and bought by Amazon in 2008, it boasts over 180,000 audiobook titles. According to O’Leary, while print book sales have declined in recent year, ‘audiobook sales have surged, with annual double-digit growth. This phenomenon is attributed to several factors, including a rapidly expanding audiobook catalog, widespread device compatibility, and appealing pricing’ (p. 16). Recent statistics for audiobook use in Canada reported by Renouf in 2020 show that the ‘highest users were females in their 20s and 30s at 22%, followed by seniors at 19% whose use increased 4% in the previous year, and by consumers with a medically diagnosed vision impairment or print disability at 14%’ (p. 9). From research, it is clear that audiobook use is increasing in adults as a leisure activity, even replacing printed books, and that there are publications touting their use in educational settings. How familiar are teachers with audiobook use and how much are they being used? Why and where are they most useful?

Experience has taught me that many of my fellow teachers would not agree that listening to an audiobook is indeed ‘reading.’ As mentioned in my interview above, reading (specifically the act of decoding) is a high prized academic skill. Perhaps it is related to the fact that, as Gnanadesikan (2011) stated, ‘writing takes words and turns them into objects, visible or tangible. Spoken words, by contrast, are inherently ephemeral. So written language seems more real to us than spoken language. In a highly literate culture it is easy to confuse the two, since much communication is mediated by writing, and the standards of written language influence our sense of “proper” language. But writing is not language, nor is it necessary to language’ (p. 4). An article in Time magazine by Markham Heid in 2018 discussed the merits of audiobooks and some of the differences between audio and printed books. Listeners of audiobooks ‘can derive a lot of information from a speaker’s inflections or intonations. Sarcasm is much more easily communicated via audio than printed text. And people who hear Shakespeare spoken out loud tend to glean a lot of meaning from the actor’s delivery’ (Heid, 2018). Sharing information orally was the only means humans had for many thousands of years, thus our brains had evolved to support this. Reading printed material involves ‘MacGyvering them so they can be applied to the cognitive task of reading’ (Heid, 2018). Evolutionarily, our brains have been hard wired to support receiving and comprehending orally. Ong (2002) supported this viewpoint, stating ‘written texts all have to be related somehow, directly or indirectly, to the world of sound, the natural habitat of language, to yield their meanings. ‘Reading’ a text means converting it to sound, aloud or in the imagination, syllable-by-syllable in slow reading or sketchily in the rapid reading common to high-technology cultures. Writing can never dispense with orality.’ (p. 8).

It is well recognized in the field of education that engagement with reading is crucial for cognitive and academic growth. Much research on the role and influence of reading has been done on children, initially with a focus on academic outcome. In recent years, researchers have also turned their attention to positive outcomes in other domains. In a study done by Milani, Lorusso and Molteni (2010) involving students with dsylexia, the experimental group, who used audio textbooks in place of printed versions, showed significant improvement in reading accuracy and a decrease in emotional/behavioural episodes. They suggest that ‘it is likely that a tool enhancing the subjects’ independence may contribute to reducing their sense of frustration, aggressiveness, oppositional behaviour and distractibility’ (p. 93). Chang (2011) conducted a study questioning whether audiobook use would improve second language learners’ listening fluency and vocabulary acquisition. Results showed ‘that the listening score of the RWL (reading while listening) group on the dictation task increased more than 100% shows that RWL must have a large effect on improving listening fluency. It could be that these students became more efficient in word recognition, which increased the speed of the listening process and thus led to a higher level of comprehension’ (p. 52). Zientarski and Pottorff (1994) investigated the benenfits of a teacher reading aloud to a group of struggling readers in high school. They found that the previously disengaged students were ready to discuss the readings in-depth afterwards, and that their responses showed a good deal of critical thinking. The students also showed vocabulary gains, likely due to using context clues to help define unknown words. Considering language broadly, beyond reading printed word, has been an area studied in greater depth in recent years. Lera Boroditsky (2011) shares that ‘language appears to be involved in many more aspects of our mental lives than scientists had previously supposed. There may not be a lot of adult human thinking where language does not play a role’ (p. 65). So while our traditional education model focuses heavily on the act of learning to decode written word, becoming aware of and training our brain in areas of non-reading language use are also beneficial. Cahill and Moore (2017) state that ‘advocates of audiobooks have lauded the format for its role in motivating reading, developing children’s language, developing children’s vocabularies, and promoting comprehension’ (p. 26). So while it appears that while using audiobooks may not aid or strengthen reading decoding, the benefits in other areas (self-esteem, motivation, vocabulary acquisition and comprehension) are well worth consideration.

The term ‘listenrature’ is used by Pedersen and Have (2012) to describe the experience of listening to literature – ‘a possibility for other sensorial inputs to contribute to the literary experience – of listenrature’ (p. 93). Their discussion around comparing the facets in modalities of printed reading versus audiobook listening (the material, the sensorial, the spatiotemporal and the semiotic) lead to the suggestion that the meta-modality this creates cannot be directly compared to decoding in print – listening to an audiobook is not the same as reading a book. Considering the research in favour of the benefits of audiobooks and the advances in technology in recent years that have made them more accessible will hopefully encourage educational professionals and researchers to continue to explore their place in school for all students. Past research shows us that audiobook use is not a magic cure for struggling readers and will not improve reading decoding. Other programs such as HearBuilder and Lexia can assist with this. However, use of audiobooks show strong evidence of improvement in students’ self-esteem, motivation, vocabulary development, and comprehension of material. As Denise Johnson (2003) explained, ‘undestanding the message, thinking critically about the content, using imagination, and making connections is at the heart of what it means to be a reader andy why kids learn to love books (p. 3). When reading plays such a key factor in student success in school, it would be prudent for teachers to provide multiple means of supporting acquisition of this skill, and audiobooks have shown themselves to be a formidable tool.

 

References

Audiobook. (2021, February 18). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiobook

Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65

Cahill, M., & Moore, J. (2017). A sound history: Audiobooks are music to children’s ears. Children & Libraries, 15(1), 22-29. https://doi.org/10.5860/cal.15n1.22

Chang, A. C.-S. (2011). The effect of reading while listening to audiobooks: Listening fluency and vocabulary gains. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 21, 43-64.

Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).“The First IT Revolution.” In The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet. (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).

Have, I., & Pedersen, B. S. (2012). Conceptualising the audiobook experience. SoundEffects (Aarhus, Denmark), 2(2), 79-95. https://doi.org/10.7146/se.v2i2.6967

Heid, M. (2018, September 6). Are audiobooks as good for you as reading? Here’s what experts say. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/5388681/audiobooks-reading-books

Johnson, D. (2003). Web watch – audiobooks: Ear-resistible! Reading Online, 6(8), 1-6.

Milani, A., Lorusso, M. L., & Molteni, M. (2010). The effects of audiobooks on the pyschosocial adjustment of pre-adolescents and adolescents with dyslexia. Dyslexia, 16(1), 87-97.

O’Leary, M. (2017). Audible rides the audiobook wave. Information Today, 34(2), 16-17.

Ong, Walter, J. Taylor & Francis eBooks. (2002). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. New York; London: Routledge.

Renouf, S. (2020). Audiobooks : Building capacity for canadian creation and publishing. Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Zientarski, D. P., & Pottorff, D. D. (1994). Reading aloud to low achieving secondary students. Reading Horizons, 35(1), 44-51.