Audio books - a richer reading experience

Seth Godin likes audio books and sees a future for them. So do I. Literature used to be distributed primarily orally, to listeners, since most people could not read. The great works of literature, mythology, philosophy, religion and morality were all intended to be read out loud and listened to. Writing was developed as a convenient way of recording all of this literary production. Now portable and inexpensive digital technology is going to bring back the narrator as an important source of information and entertainment, not to replace writing and reading, but as an alternative and even an enhancement of written literature.

Research has also shown that reading skills are closely connected to listening skills. so audio books can help in the fight to improve literacy.

For those who have not tried audio books, I recommend that you do do. First of all audio books are portable (MP3 players) and convenient. You can listen to audio books while doing other tasks.

There is a richness to a well narrated story or book that is deeper and more vivid than the written page, and, as Godin says, it appeals to a different part of the brain.This is precisely why audio books are so effective for language learning. Most of the audio books I listen to are in a foreign language.

I have always appreciated Seth Godin's marketing insight since I saw a video of his recently on the following list of interesting videos. I was interested to read that his  books are now available in audio book format. As soon as LingQ is up and running commercially we will approach Godin or his publisher to see if we can make them available at  LingQ so our learners can gain his insight about marketing and improve their English at the same time.

Our globalized world will be a multilingual world. We will be looking for an array of informative and entertaining audio books in many languages to make available at LingQ for our members to learn more about the world around them while they learn the languages of their choice.

Comments

[paulino brener]

hi steve,

i love audio books! specially since i drive at least 1 or 2 hours a day from/to work.

my favorite site for free audio books is

http://librivox.org/

there are tons of them. now, since these books are recorded by volunteers not all of them are of the best quality. but once you start browsing around you can find which readers have not only good audio quality but also are good readers.

also, once you find a reader that you like, it's possible to find other recording that he/she made.

you can download all audio books here. they are complete free and they offer 3 different formats.

AND MOST IMPORTANT! you can become a volunteer, too!!! i would encourage non-native speakers of english to:
1) listen or download audio books in english from this site.
2) BECOME A VOLUNTEER READER! There are several recording in languages other than english... but i think there need to be more!

all the information you need is in their website http://librivox.org/
but if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me and i'll try to help you. i've been reading/recording for them for while in spanish and english.

enjoy!

[Steve]

Paulino,

Thanks for this comment. We have content from Librivox on our site loaded up and shared by our members. Anything we receive that is free is also collected at www.thelinguist.com and available free from there. If you have the time to share some librivox content please do so.

I hope you will also create some content in Spanish for other learners at LingQ.

[Ak]

You can find some top quality audiobooks of Sherlock holmes series from Gutenberg website as well.

[Ilya L.]

Authentic Content and the Added Value of the LingQ.

A working definition for an authentic language content could be: a content created for native speakers of the language. It is in contrast to a non-authentic content, which is specially created for language learners.

So why authentic content is still better for the learners? Very simple. There exists a lot of interesting authentic content. There is nearly no such a thing as interesting non-authentic content. (Excluding some adaptations from authentic books). It is because good authors create exclusively authentic language.

May an authentic language be bad for a learner? It may indeed be so if (1) content is too difficult for a beginner; (2) the authors of special language texts and audios, who have created tones of non-authentic stuff, as well as the teachers who have adopted it, have so convinced the students.

Where stays the revolutionary software that Steve speaks about? Of course LingQ, among other innovative features, deals with the objection (1) and mitigates it.

However, in my opinion, the revolution is not exactly inside the LingQ software. It so happens that more and more of any content, including really excellent texts and audio, free and commercial, becomes readily available through the Web. To me, revolutionary is the Linguist’s vision, the attempt to combine the Web connectivity with innovative solutions, and thus create an added value for the learners.

What may be the business problem? There becomes so much content available for free that, indeed, a significant added value should be created by the company to convince their users to pay for it. Today, LingQ has the Skype tutoring and the writing corrections services, which is great. However, these services may not be that profitable for the company, since the tutors have to be paid in proportion to the time spent on tutoring.

LingQ effectively grades a difficulty of the content it provides to the users, which is indeed of a value. Unfortunately, the grading mechanism does not work for a new user, whose database has not yet been created. LingQ allows the learners to select words and phrases and review them immediately and later. Many ways to review, and as Steve admits, many more could be added. It currently seems to me like their central development activity.

No doubt the select-review functionality is innovative and interesting. Here I indeed very happy to see my selected words highlighted in new and old texts. Still, you know, it seems to me shooting beyond the central activity of a learner.Namely, beyond that massive listening and reading input. I have become solid that the listening and reading is indeed the most important thing due to Steve and the Linguist, of course.

What the hell, one may ask. Just take your inprintable and reading input and get lost.
My general answer would be: the main activity is the main source of fatigue and frustration. Indeed, remember yourself not understanding the meaning of what you read, but being tired of looking it up even in your beloved dictionary. Remember missing an audio uttering from an audio book, but being not that eager to rewind it back nor to listen it over again for the 10-th (OK, second) time. Does the select-review helps you here?

Specific suggestions, as to what could be done to facilitate the reading and listening, will be given, as they say, elsewhere. I hope before the mountains gets done. Steve, no offence meant, I am joking. Sorry for a sort of decisive style. ( I am learning to write decisively). I have already betrayed my central activities too much for this writting. Back to the added values.

P.s. Now I understand the uttering "Seth Godin" that I once missed from your audio.

[Ilya L.]

In the first link that Steve has provided, Seth Godin writes: "You can even set your iPod to speed up the spaces between the words so you can hear the whole thing faster."

I admit to hear it for the first time. For a language learner just the opposite could be useful: to slow down, in a user-controllable way, a short spaces, but between natural phrases of the narrator rather than between words (otherwise the intonation gets disturbed).

What do you think about it? It's one of our features. None of us here owns an iPod, however, to check what is actually happens with those spaces.

Does anyone knows how iPod speeds up those spaces, which models do, and what is the method of speeding them up? Can it work on phrases rather than words? Can it slow (extend) these spaces? Thanks for any comments.

[Edwin]

My iPod Nano can only vary speed on M4A files. And there are only 3 speeds. I don't think it can insert spaces.

[Chris]

Audiobooks are awesome. But only unabridged ones that come with the text. Otherwise, it's kind of a nusiance. I currently only own two, but I'm enjoying using them for study at the moment.

Also - audiobooks galore:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6386&KW=audiobooks

[Steve]

audio books can last a long time. they are a good investment. I agree with Chris they should be unabridged.

[hiroshi]

Steve san, would you know of pretty good audio books called ladder series?
These books are basically intended for middle school or high school students and therefore written in a way that is easy for intermediate students of english like me to understand. Besides, they cover a wide range of intersting subjects.

I think that they are quite useful to students whose English skills are intermediate.

if possible, why not incorporate these books into the linguist library?
You may have to pay some money for copyrights though,,,,

I have seen them at a kinokuniya book store in Japan.
If you cant get them in Canada, some of the linguist members living in Japan should give you some information on them.

[hiroshi]

sorry, I forgot adding the website of the ladder series: http://www.yohan.co.jp/toeic/newladder.html

Thanks to these books and your advice of keeping english short and simple, it helped me improve my writing a lot.
Thanks:)

[Sheryl]

i love audio books! specially since i drive at least 1 or 2 hours a day from/to work.

my favorite site for free audio books is:

http://im-listening-audio-books.com>”Audio Books”

there are tons of them. now, since these books are recorded by volunteers not all of them are of the best quality. but once you start browsing around you can find which readers have not only good audio quality but also are good readers.

[sheryl Wardle]

I've read all the comments, but am still at a loss as to who really listens to Audio books. Commuters, by train, plane, bus, taxi, ferry and the automobile should be listening...Listening to audio books, rather than senseless music..Sorry, but you can only listen to a song once or twice and then it's gone... In an audio book, you can worry about the poor little child lost in the forest, the man, wrongly convicted, on death row, or the beautiful young woman who falls prey to a scoundrel. In an audio books you can enjoy and think about the . You can listen to Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, you can listen, listen, read and listen again. Your grades will improve. Who else really listens to Audio books... How do we get the word out there??