Are Audio Books Beneficial for Children?

It is commonly accepted that reading is a fundamental building block for education and continued learning. Children who struggle to read often struggle in many other areas in school as well. I work as a Head Start teacher, teaching a class of three and four year old students. At their age my students are too young to read themselves, which leaves me wondering what I can do to help them continue their learning outside of the classroom. I try to come up with creative ways that parents can help their students continue to learn at home, and a simple way to introduce my students to more books and is through audio. Audiobooks can be easily incorporated in school and at home by parents, but the question is how effective are audiobooks? How much do children really get out of audiobooks? Are there any benefits at all? I decided to do a little research to find out.

I was pleased to find out when researching the benefits of audiobooks that research actually suggests that audiobooks can be just as beneficial as reading books in print. The National Literacy Trust states, "listening to an audiobook requires the same cognitive skills as reading in print and supports language comprehension skills and the ability to understand and retain information in the same way reading a book does." 

Listening to audiobooks can have additional benefits for students by also giving students the opportunity to hear speech patterns and rhymes that might be missed when reading print. They also teach children about voice and expression as audiobooks allow children to really listen to how words can be voiced to create feelings and express emotion. Audiobooks also expose children to new vocabulary at an elevated reading level. 

Knowing that audiobooks can be so beneficial for students it is not surprising to find out that audiobook sales have increased exponentially over the last 10 years. Audiobook sales have more than doubled in the last 10 years and of course that has caused an increase in the production of audiobooks. Production of audiobooks today has increased almost 10 times the amount that were produced in 2010. 

With increased audiobook production and sales comes new websites and ways for educators and parents to access the material. One great resource is called Epic. This website allows educators free access to thousands of audiobooks all available with the click of a button. Epic also provides access through a subscription for families. This is a great resource for parents to instantly stream audiobooks all with the click of a button.

After doing my research to confirm that audiobooks can be beneficial for young children, I am absolutely going to make sure to encourage my students' parents to provide access to audiobooks. I will continue to suggest websites like Epic as well as local public library audiobooks. I am also going to do my part and try to increase my classrooms audiobook library for use in the class as well as for children to borrow and listen to at home.