audiobooks

Our audiobooks are flying off the shelves for summer. It is somewhat painful to me to have spent a fortune over the years on the now-obsolete cassette tape collection. And from what I read, CDs are on their way out too, giving way to MP3 downloads. The coolest new version in our library is the playaway, which is an audio book that includes the player and headphones all in one kit. They're kind of like those audioguides you get in a museum. No more missing discs! Most of our families, however, listen to audiobooks together in a car, and the CD remains the simplest format for that purpose.

One of the greatest benefits of audiobooks is for the struggling reader. A student can keep up with the content in a class lit group, for example, confidently participating in class discussion even if she has trouble reading the book. Although some traditionalists complain that the child is not learning to read if he listens to the audio book, reading research actually supports the use of audiobooks to help provide a scaffold for a struggling reader. Listening to the recording increases vocabulary acquisition, fluency, and comprehension. By hearing an excellent reader model phrasing, punctuation and expression, the child gets a deeper sense of reading, learning the cues to enhance comprehension. She can spend her actual reading time gaining fluency with simpler books but still keep up with the class assignments -- and listen to something thrilling, which keeps the magic of reading alive while the hard work of learning to read continues.
Keep listening!