Well before, our parents and teachers were reading stories to us. Now, many of us enjoy listening to audiobooks while we’re commuting, doing household chores etc.

Interested in trying audiobooks? To get started, check out what Science and research have found on listening to it.

 

According to Science

Berkeley News showed color-coded maps of how the brain give semantic similarities during listening and reading. In fact, the brain maps looked nearly identical.

The most recent study compared brains whether listening and reading, showed that words tend to activate the same brain regions with the same intensity. The brains were creating sense from words in the same way.

As stated by Fatma Deniz, a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience in the Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley.

“At a time when more people are absorbing information via audiobooks, podcasts and even audio texts, our study shows that, whether they’re listening to or reading the same materials, they are processing semantic information similarly.” 

A large network of brain regions was activated with strong similarities when hearing and reading the same word. In audiobooks, this enables to sustain language learning while busy with other things.

 

Benefits of listening to an audiobook

  1. Convenience since you can read while doing other stuffs.
  2. Improves listening skills as you rely mainly on hearing, this trains you to listen to modulation and accent of native speakers.
  3. Improves vocabulary, pronunciation, and comprehension just like reading a book.
  4. Provide additional clues about what’s happening through prosody (such as changes in pause, tempo, and rhythm in speech). 
  5. More enjoyable to hear a book aloud as emphasis, humor, or joy that narrators bring to stories.
  6. Makes reading more accessible for those who are blind, visually impaired, or have no ability to read - audiobooks are a wonderful alternative.
  7. Get in the way of learning to read as many experts said it can help kids get better at reading. It’s a good thing for kids to read with their eyes and ears at the same time. This can help kids gets better at sounding out words (decoding) and reading comprehension.

 

To start listening to audiobooks

Here’s what you need to get started. You will need an internet-capable device to download books and listen to them, a source of books to download from or from audiobooks app, and a headset, earphones, or speaker.

For a device, you can use your computer, tablet, mobile phone, iPod, iPhone, or MP3 player depending on the source and file format. You may also listen to samples of audiobooks to get an idea on how the book starts and how the narrator sounds like. Many titles are fiction or nonfiction literatures with different genres as well as best-sellers.

You can subscribe to an audiobook app for more choices. You can also look where to find free or discounted audiobooks. Enjoy listening!