There are so many benefits to using audiobooks, both for education and mental health support.
Here are a few of the reasons you should use audiobooks with your pupils:
- Using audiobooks helps children to concentrate on the content, rather than the process of reading. They can increase literacy and communication skills, as well as help students to keep up with the books their peers are reading and support reading for pleasure.
- Listening to audiobooks eliminates the struggle some may have ‘decoding’ the words on the page, allowing the listener to visualise as they listen.
- Student's understanding of the text is helped by the tone of voice, accent, emphasis and timing given to the text by the professional reader.
- Students absorb the structure and conventions of storytelling and develop much greater confidence to communicate both orally and on paper, which has enormous benefits for their writing.
- When they discover the excitement of books through listening, pupils want to read more rather than less. If they follow the text while listening, their word recognition and reading speed improve.
Not only is it beneficial to have access to audiobooks at school for learning support, access at home can also have mental health benefits:
- Using audiobooks can help rest a busy mind
- Using audiobooks can calm feelings of anxiety
- Uplifting or funny audiobooks can distract from emotional pain
- Listening to books about mental health can be a great learning tool for managing symptoms
- Students can 'read' books that are written for their age, not their reading ability, improving their confidence
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