Writers Tricks of the Trade Issue 1 Volume 8 | Page 21

L ISTENING I SN ’ T C HEATING : H OW A UDIO
B OOKS C AN H ELP U S L EARN
K I S UNG
K I S UNG
S ENIOR E DITOR
T HIS
ARTICLE
WAS
REPRINTED FROM
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ORG / AUTHOR / KSUNG
AUDIO BOOKS IN
THE NEWS
G OOGLE GETS INTO
AUDIO BOOKS AS RI-
VALRY WITH A MAZON
HEATS UP
Audio books have surged in popularity in recent years, enabled by their ease of
use and advancements in smart phones. Gone are the days of numbered cassettes
and bulky players. Technology has created more opportunities to listen to good
H ACHETTE A UDIO &
books.
W AX A UDIO G ROUP
But not everyone believes listening to books is a good thing -- biases in favor of
L AUNCH V INYL A UDI-
reading run deep, and those who listen are often accused of "cheating." There's a
OBOOK S ERIES , F EA-
TURING L IN -M ANUEL
common perception that listening doesn't require the same amount of work to
M IRANDA , J ERRY
reach understanding as reading does.
G ARCIA & M ORE :
The debate can come to the fore of the classroom, where audio books can be a
E XCLUSIVE
valuable tool for learning. Listening is a critical component of Common Core
State Standards in English Language Arts, as is reading. To help teachers and stu-
dents (and perhaps audio book listeners who get pulled into these debates), pro-
S CRIBD ’ S NEW UNLIM-
fessor Daniel Willingham, author of Raising Kids Who Read, explains the difference
ITED PLAN FOR AUDI-
in how the brain processes listening vs. reading. In his blog post, he answers
OBOOKS AND EBOOKS
MIGHT BE AN AVID
the question he gets all the time, is listening to audio books cheating?
READER ’ S DREAM
Listening to an audio book might be considered cheating if the act of decoding
were the point; audio books allow you to seem to have decoded without doing so.
But if appreciating the language and the story is the point, it’s not. Comparing
audio books to cheating is like meeting a friend at Disneyland and saying
W RITERS
THE T I RADE
PRING 2018
“you
took ’ T a RICKS
bus OF
here?
drove myself, you big cheater.” The point is getting S to
P AGE 13
and enjoying the destination. The point is not how you traveled.
, and if she couldn’t provide it, they would be unable to bring this loving dog in-