Audio Books As A Substitute For Reading

People often ask the question: "is it better to read a book, or listen to an audio book version of the text?". To be honest, the answer to this is somewhat more complex than a simple "yes" or "no" response. To address the question in its entirety, we need to choose a group of people, and then discover the pro's and con's of using an audio book format instead of the actual physical book itself.

In this article, we will perform this exact analysis. Firstly, we will look at a group of children aged 2 to 10, followed by a group of teenagers between 10 and 20, and then move on to the adult audience. It is useful to point out a few current statistics about audio book usage. In particular, it is the teenage group which utilizes audio books the most, followed then by adults and finally by children. Let's see if this makes sense, and if this is the correct line up.

Children Aged 2 - 10

Studies suggest that children between 2 and 10 should not have their books substituted for the audio alternative. This is a fairly obvious conclusion, as this is the most fundamental stage of human development. If a child is not exposed to the idea of actually reading the words on a page, they will have great difficulty picking up this skill later on in life - especially in school.

As a responsible parent, a good mix of vocabulary rich audio books and a decent amount on hands on reading experience will ensure you child has the best opportunity and environment in which to learn.

Teenagers & Adults:

Once a child has learned the basics of reading and recognizing text, they may use audio books with little fear of losing the important reading skill. Indeed, if you teenager has an excellent grasp on the particular language which they have learned, audio books will actually prove to be beneficial in their quest for further vocabulary power and writing success. 

The same applies to adults. Assuming that the individual was taught the skill of reading in their early childhood, switching from text based books to audio books shouldn't do any harm whatsoever. However, if there is still a deficiency in this skill, focus should be given to that before taking the "easy" way out.