I love audiobooks. I have a monthly subscription to audible.com and love the free books from librivox.org. So lately I’ve been thinking about the use of audiobooks in the classroom.

I’ll start with the obvious. Listening to a book is pleasant. For very young children, it’s more than enjoyable, it’s a critical part of their literacy development. Listening to books helps children develop a positive attitude about books and increases their motivation to read.

When formal reading instruction begins, audiobooks can be a powerful instructional tool. Following a written text while listening gives students examples of fluent reading and helps them develop decoding skills. It’s fun and can inspire students to read printed books on their own.

In addition, many assigned texts, such as Shakespeare, The Odyssey, and literature with dialect, are much more accessible when they are heard read aloud by a good reader. I found mp3 versions of many standard high school literature texts available for download from my local library. These audiobooks could be a great help to students and teachers.

Frank Serafini, in Audiobooks and Literacy,  proposes several benefits of audiobooks and suggests strategies for using them in the classroom. I’ve been wondering, however, about their use with older students as part of reading instruction.

First of all, most students with reading problems are fine decoders who can read words correctly but do not comprehend what they’ve read. The problem with audiobooks is that the text keeps going unless you stop it. This would make it difficult for readers to take the time to predict, ask questions, and make connections.

Although advocates of the use of audiobooks suggest that students follow along with a text as they listen, I think older students are unlikely to use them that way. Teenagers are used to listening to content as they go about their day and would probably listen to school texts the same way, listening while they do other kinds of activities.

The problem is that the learning isn’t about the reading, it’s about the thinking while reading. With audiobooks, re-reading, highlighting, or annotating is difficult, if not impossible, and there’s no convenient way to look back or ahead in the text.

Listening to a book on an iPod might seem to be an easy way for proficient readers to complete reading assignments, and it would certainly be an improvement over not doing the reading at all, which is often the status quo. It could also be a good tool, along with support and guidance, for students who are struggling. Joel Montgomery makes an interesting case for the use of audiobooks with English Language Learners.

I think the jury is still out on the use of audiobooks, or audio texts in general, in K-12 classrooms, beyond the sheer enjoyment of listening to a good book. I’m interested in hearing about your experiences and opinions about audio texts in the classroom.

Additional Resources

Librivox.org
A wonderful free site where volunteers record books in the public domain. You can download entire books or subscribe to them as podcasts. You'll love the different accents!

Is Listening to an Audio Book Reading?
Blogger Christina Morano extols the use of audiobooks with students.

Audiobooks: Ear-resistable
An article about audiobooks that includes a nice collection of links to audiobook review sites.

Listen and Learn
A blog that addresses a wide variety of issues related to using audiobooks in the classroom.