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Learning With Audiobooks
Audiobooks enrich a student's overall use of language and love of literature. Today more and more educators understand the value of integrating unabridged audiobooks into classroom curriculums. 
 
What results can you expect from using audiobooks in your classroom?

1

Audiobooks increase language skills and literacy.
Audiobooks allow students to hear language, an activity essential for building vocabulary, stimulating imagination, increasing reading fluency and providing models of pronunciation, sentence structure and grammatical accuracy. They introduce the art of storytelling.

2

Audiobooks pave the way for a lifelong love of reading and extend the genre.
By increasing a student's language skills, audiobooks make reading more accessible and appealing. Often intimidating to many students, books become a positive source of pleasure and knowledge. The accessible format of audiobooks easily expands the diversity of a student's interests.

3

Audiobooks help reach special needs/gifted students.
For students who find reading books problematic, or students who are not fluent in English, audiobooks allow exposure to text through aural interpretation and aural/ visual connection. Low-functioning students often comprehend more easily by "reading with their ears" than struggling to decode text on its own. Audiobooks offer the competent and avid reader or gifted students individualized learning opportunities and expand the volume of their reading.

4

Audiobooks are the ultimate classroom equalizer. They put everybody on the same page at the same time.
Audiobooks provide you with an additional, cutting-edge language arts tool to stimulate maximum student comprehension regardless of different learning styles and individual needs. As a result, all students become capable of classroom involvement and are happy to actively participate, resulting in a strong classroom community.

Why do audiobooks produce these results?

1 Audiobooks enhance reading levels and comprehension.
Audiobooks help differentiate between language as written or spoken and provide the link between the two. When students discover this bridge between text and speech, the world of reading opens for many. The sound/symbol link provides a necessary key to language arts resulting in improved content comprehension, heightened use of imagination and picture-making, proper pronunciation and inflection, sentence structure and accents through example. Improvement in reading levels and vocabulary leads to increased writing skills as well.

2 Reading becomes an enjoyable and anticipated activity.
Text dramatization results in a deeper emotional reaction to what's being read - this deeper involvement is a welcome change from the bombardment of visual overstimulation. Visualizing one's own pictures as a result of being read to is mentally stimulating. Character identification - important for emotional maturation and the development of life skills - is greatly enhanced through the use of audiobooks. Books will become a source of comfort as reading becomes easier and paves the way to greater confidence and knowledge. Improved communications skills and a heightened curiosity about the world around us result because literacy broadens horizons. Many children are never read to and many parents stop reading to their school-age children, but research has proven being read to is crucial to learning to read well and develop language skills. Audiobooks can fill this gap - resulting in immediate improvement in listening skills, vocabulary levels and reading comprehension. As an added benefit to students' increased skill levels and self-esteem, teachers often find that behavioral problems in the classroom decrease.

3 Audiobooks are the link to language for special needs students.
There's no better tool than audiobooks for special education - ESL, At-Risk, inclusion, remedial, Title I. Pronunciations, speech patterns, image correlation, and content comprehension are greatly improved by hearing at the same time as seeing. Special needs students are excited to hear their first books - often understanding for the first time what a joy books can be. At the same time they are gaining a quick understanding of plot, they subconsciously absorb narrative structure. Better character identification allows students to enter imaginatively and empathetically into the experience of others, thereby developing abilities to decode and understand moral behavior, problem-solving and building relationships. And using audiobooks as a classroom activity means remedial readers aren't singled out for special classes, but can stay and learn with the others. Being "included" can't help but build confidence and much-needed self-esteem.

4 Audiobooks offer a shared learning experience.
Regardless of individual students' learning capacities, emotional maturity, social backgrounds or interests, audiobooks played in the classroom can create an atmosphere which foster a collective experience. Audiobooks transcend different learning styles and levels, promoting total classroom participation in follow-up discussions, activities, and writing assignments. Students sharing their impressions and responses to the audiobook can enhance each other's horizons, leading to appreciation of different viewpoints.

"Audiobooks are a powerful literacy tool. I've used them in my classroom for over ten years and watched audiobooks change my students' lives."
- Phyllis Jacobs, Head, Reading Department, Atlantis Academy, Miami, Fl.
 

We hope you'll try Audio Bookshelf's award-winning audiobook productions in your classroom to see these results for yourself. On our website we provide suggested activities and Curricular Connections to many Audio Bookshelf titles. Whether you are new to this literary genre or have experience and success using audiobooks in your classroom, you are sure to find that Audio Bookshelf productions will support your efforts to increase your students' love of reading!

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Contact us the following ways:

Toll-free: 1-800-234-1713
e-mail: info@audiobookshelf.com
Fax: 401-842-0440
Write:
Audio Bookshelf
44 Ocean View Drive
Middletown, Rhode Island 02842
 

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