Tuesday, June 1, 2021

How Audiobooks Can Make People More Literate ▬ Medium

How Audiobooks Can Make People More Literate
Professional audiobook narrators help bridge the ‘understanding gap’
AudioFile Magazine

Medium: 9.08.2018 by AudioFile Magazine *

Educators and cognitive scientists recognize that “reading” is a very broad term. In the audiobook community, we already know that “reading” can and does mean critical listening as well as visual understanding of printed text. Pushback still comes from some who believe that“to read” is to decode visually. I like to call them reading “print-bound purists.” As most long-established “eye-readers” know, assumptions about characters, plot direction, and capacity to grasp how facts in chapter one will be required in chapter seven, can and do miss the mark on any first complete reading of a book. How many of these print-bound purists re-read texts — silently, of course, as 20th century pedagogy taught many of us to be a requirement of “skillful” reading?

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Professional audiobook narrators, in fact, are the people who do that essential pre-reading for us before we sit down to acquire the author’s work by listening to interpretive choices that make sense the first time around as listening readers. Professional narrators, having familiarized themselves thoroughly with the book before the recording session begins, know and impart appropriate pacing and alterations in inflections that we can have from the get-go when we hear their reading. Passages dense with significant and complex information are delivered in a manner that allows us to concentrate point by point instead of rushing by without collecting what we need for understanding the next stage of the work. And when personal names may be too close for eye comfort, narrators introduce specific tones — if not outright voices — that allow us to distinguish between speakers readily.

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Try these audiobooks as examples of how reading comprehension can receive significant boosts from hearing skilled narrators:

What do I need to understand about this character? The War that Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, read by Jane Entwistle

How can I make sense of all these technical explanations when I’m not even sure which clause is important? Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, read by Dion Graham

Who’s who when I see a cavalcade of character names that I can’t distinguish among quickly? Death Notice, by Zhou Haohui, translated by Zac Haluza, read by Joel de la Fuente

 
* AudioFile Magazine
reviews and recommends good listening, top-notch performances and dynamic listening experiences. We do not sell audiobooks.

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Based on 7 readability formulas:
Grade Level: 14
Reading Level: difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 21-22 yrs. old
(college level)


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