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Look Ma! No Pages!Aug 28 '00 Write an essay on this topic.It's hard for a bibliophile to welcome change. I love books, I've read voraciously since age three, and I never desired the intrusion of technology in my world where paper reigned. Books are texts, I believed, stamping my feet and holding a hardcover. Why would anyone want a Book-On-Tape? I resisted audio book arguments with feeble assertions, like "You can't curl up with a cassette player." Reluctant Readers Time passed, I taught Seniors on the brink of college how to interpret difficult texts like Plato's Republic and Shakespeare's Hamlet. More often than not, students would not read. Anything. Somewhere along the line, the majority of people with whom I interacted did NOT find pleasure in reading. It was a chore, a struggle and an absolute bore. "Why read when I can watch the film?" <wince> Something needed to change, and I revisited audio books with less reservations, noticing something that would later prove to be the literary equivalent of the Holy Grail. I visited a just-opened audio book rental store that was ironically situated caddy-corner to a Barnes and Noble. Rows were filled with audio tapes--selections were varied and plentiful. Testimonials and recommendations from customers dotted the shelves on note cards. All of the Harry Potter audio tapes were rented and sold out. Reading was taking on another form, and I was ready to discover how and why. Reading By Listening Most arguments against using audio books in favor of texts revolve around intimacy. There is something personal and tactile in holding a book, skimming language to create images in the mind. The misconception that an audio book would be less engaging since I couldn't fondle it in the same way I would a novel kept me from embracing this literary trend. I realized that for the most part, my students had been taught more on how to listen than how to read. They are always listening, to lectures, directions, each other. Plopping a book in their laps, whether fiction or otherwise, was frequently a foreign and unwanted object--not because of laziness per se, but because the training to read for meaning & enjoy it was missing. Audio books filled this gap. Listening to a story, and having the control over where to stop and discuss points allows students who would have never opened the book to "read." And it is reading; reading encompasses more than a dead tree, a hardcover and your curled up body on the couch. Using audio texts as a supplement to the hardbound paper text, I found that students enjoyed audio books and were able to examine difficult classics on their own with the help of audio books. Kids found that using the paper-text was easier after some exposure to an audio book. For some, reading is a terrific struggle. Individuals with limited attention spans (like attention deficit disorder) or suffering with dyslexia perceive books as enemies. After recommending audio books to parents who wanted to help their children read and keep up with the class, the positive feedback was enough to tell me that there was something in audio books that could no longer be ignored. Audio books create and empower readers. Now I've learned that audio books are used in many ways outside of my classroom. My Grandfather listens to audio books because he has always been a reader, but his eyesight is poor. Now his mind can read while he listens to a tale, which he explained is quite similar to radio days, where tales were shared with eager listeners every night. Many children's books come packaged with audio cassettes; I purchased Toy Story this way and my son was thrilled to hear his favorite characters come to life as we listened and read from the accompanying text. For commuters, audio books make sitting in traffic valuable! It is the only way to read and drive at the same time! The trend to read through listening is so popular that audio bookstores are cropping up quickly, and doing excellent business because of the convenience and ease audio books afford customers. Reading is in the Mind, Not the Pages Individuals read differently; I don't like being "read to"--that is not the sort of learner I am. My son, however, loves being read to (as I attest to hundreds of mom-read-this-aloud-to-me pages later) and he enjoys listening to tales and reading along. In the days before books, stories were told orally, with nothing written--and yet we recognize these stories as the greatest classics of all time. Homer never wrote a word, Beowulf was an oral tale of unknown origin until an anonymous writer scratched it down on parchment. Were these listeners reading? I believe that they were indeed, finding meaning in the story and using their imaginations in the same way as I do when I read a book I'm holding in my hands. Final Thoughts I have revised my initial knee-jerk reaction to audio books. Anything that stimulates the mind and allows all sorts of learners to become readers should be embraced. There is nothing more exciting as a teacher to hear a student say I really loved that book! Does it really matter which path (audio vs. paper) the student took to get there? Audio Books are creating readers, which in turn inspires thinking. You can't ask for a better guarantee than that.  |
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by texas-swede
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by PacManY2J
