Books – reading versus listening

I listen to quite a few audiobooks a year. I have a 24 book subscription through Amazon and am now accessing some for free through my library. I also “read” books through Kindle. Some don’t see Kindle books as reading, but I would argue that my opportunity to physically interact with these book via highlighting, adding notes, and then searching the books and my notes offer a deeper form of reading than is afforded by reading words on paper.

It is the reading versus listening difference I want to address here. This post was prompted by reading another post on this same topic. I can’t quite decide what this other author wanted his readers to conclude. I agree that listening to audiobooks allows a shallow form of processing. I typically listen on my Echo before going to sleep and I frequently have to ask Alexa to go to the previous chapter when starting again because I have nodded off before reaching the limit I set with the sleep timer. It is true that the audiobook player continues whether you are listening or not and most of us who consume audio content do so while doing something else (I listen to podcasts when we drive). I admit that when I want to process a book carefully I buy the Kindle rather than the Audiobook version.

So. I would also suggest I “read” 30 or so books by listening a year and maybe 40+ hours of podcasts. Much of this content would not be experienced via reading. I would very seldom read a book on history or politics without the audio. I would not read classics such as the complete works of Conan Doyle (70 hours of audio) or Winds of War (45 hours), but I did listen to both. I would also have listened to more music or maybe CNN without the many hours of podcasts.

I am certain that there is considerable research on the potential of reading versus listening. It is a complicated topic and certain issues vary with age (listening comprehension is more highly correlated with reading comprehension at lower grade levels). In some circumstances, I have been an advocate of reading over listening. Circumstances that might surprise you. As a college prof, I gave my share of lectures. However, I know that offer the same content in a written format would have offered students a greater element of control. You can reread when you fail to understand or are distracted, but you can’t relisten to a live presentation. A case can be made for putting content processing under learner control via their metacognition (the capacity to realize when you understand and when you don’t). I am not certain what the difference would be with one pass, but reading would typically be faster.

So, if you are against audiobooks, I would ask you this. Do you read a quality newspaper daily or do you watch/listen to television news programs? Which do you think allows you greater understanding? Why is it so few people read a quality news source?