Will Audio Books Help to Solve The Literacy Related Problems of Education?
The arrival of multimedia initially pushed the use of audio books as an educational tool into the background. Seen against the backdrop of a generation of young television addicts, it is hardly surprising that the already beleaguered literacy-related abilities of children were subject to yet another setback when audio books disappeared from the scene.
Several educators soon started adding two and two together, and came to the conclusion that in order to address the myriad of challenges associated with the decline in literacy, the underlying problem of listening skills needed to be addressed. As a result, audio books have yet again stepped to the fore and have regained recognition as valuable contributors in educational terms.
Many educators are downloading audio books from the web to address this issue. All the latest titles ranging from Narnia to Harry Potter are available as audio book downloads today. Because of the popularity of these stories, children need not be coerced into listening to these audio books. They look forward to story time – regardless of whether it is a part of the curriculum or whether it is the reward for a day’s work well done!
What is the educational value of audio books to children?
The very first value that comes to mind is listening skills. The first contact an unborn babe makes with the outside world while she is still in her mother’s womb is through hearing. After her birth, she uses hearing to acquire the skill to verbally communicate with others. This language skill she develops over the first few years in her life is her first step towards literacy.
The second contribution made by audio books, revolves around language ability. Children are bombarded with visual stimuli. Television, movies and the majority of educational toys available today, are all visual. In the absence of aural stimuli, such as those offered by audio books, listening skills become under-developed, impacting both language and literacy.
Audio books impose the need on the child to listen to the spoken word (language). In addition to improving the child’s grammar, it also improves vocabulary and elocution all of which underpin literacy. Audio books allow children the opportunity to create images in their mind’s eye. By stimulating a child’s ability to imagine, her ability for lateral thinking is also greatly enhanced.
The third benefit of audio books as an educational tool falls within the ambit of reading and comprehension. These are critical learning skills. Reading centers and laboratories report that as many as 80% of all students tested not only read at speeds 2 years or more below the levels required for their specific age groups, but also show a comprehension / retention of 65% and less. There are many different methods employed to assist enrolled students with recovering the ‘lost years’. Of note is the fact that some of these centers make use of audio books in conjunction with the readers they provide.
The students follow the written text in time with the audio books being played back to them. A visual / aural link is forged between the written word and the spoken word. Once this divide is crossed, tangible progress is made both in terms of reading speeds and comprehension. In addition to the hour or two spent at these centers per week, twenty minutes’ supplemental reading is required per day. Instead of issuing a student on the read-along program with a CD, many centers offer the student access to the appropriate audio book online.
How can parents help?
The answer is simple: Get them listening to audio books – sooner rather than later. Opportunities for listening to audio books abound. For smaller children, parents can play audio books in the car. For teens, consider allowing audio book downloads to their iPods and other Media Players. Compared against the printed medium, audio books procured in this way are relatively cheap. The range of titles available means that there is something for anybody. Even for the most ‘difficult’ of teens!
Although buying audio books may not be the biggest investment a parent can make in money terms, investing in audio books may well turn out to be the biggest in terms of value.
Bou Allem
http://www.spoken-books.com
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This article may be reproduced provided it remains unaltered and the author box is kept intact.
About The Author
Bou Allem is a former teacher, now a successful internet marketer and publisher, owner of the sites:
http://www.spoken-books.com
http://www.planet3000.info
Improve Your Business Acumen With Audio Books
Most of us who are in business love to improve our business acumen. In general this involves reading or taking courses for which we often lack the time to do so. So we attend only the ones we have to, however audio books can solve this problem.
With an audio book you can enjoy the same value of any business book when preparing to go to work in the morning, when commuting to and from work, or when doing your daily workout.
Below are five of some of the best business audio books:
It’s not the big that eat the small… it’s the fast that eat the slow - by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton
In today’s business, one of the single most common words that we need to embrace is “CHANGE”. In this era where what was the latest yesterday is no longer the latest today, we need to constantly be ready to embrace change.
This audio book by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton, provides you with all of the information on how to keep your company afloat, despite the ever-changing nature of business today.
Asserting that the fastest organizations in the world today will be those that will thrive, this audio book shows you how to make your company or business among the fastest, using the power of commerce, deployment of resources and good management of people.
The Great Formula - by Mark Joyner
In The Irresistible Offer, Mark Joyner showed marketers, salespeople, and business leaders how to craft an offer that no reasonable person could refuse. But, that is only the first ingredient in Joyner’s recipe for consistent sales success.
In The Great Formula, he shows you how to:
o Create The Irresistible Offer
o Present it to a Thirsty Crowd
o Sell Them a 2nd Glass
The Great Formula has been used by every great business success in history - it works because it stresses simplicity and focuses only on those actions that get results. It’s real-world, down-to-earth selling advice that’s so straightforward even the smartest people often overlook it….but great businesses, whether they know it or not, use this formula everyday. As proof, Joyner examines successful companies and shows you how they used the formula to great success.
Plus, Joyner includes his most effective selling tips and tricks as he shows you how to:
o Use word of mouth to turn satisfied customers into free advertising,
o Find the perfect potential buyers for your product,
o Increase your profits by selling even more product on the back end.
The Great Formula is simple because, as Joyner shows, success is never complicated. It’s only a matter of seeing, with clarity, which simple actions will render the desired result and then taking those actions with zeal. Regardless of what you sell, this time-tested system can be applied to any business-even yours-in any industry.
Working With You Is Killing Me - by Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster
Through real-life case examples and field-tested strategies, you’ll quickly learn how to identify and handle any relationship that holds you back on the job. With your newfound emotional skills, you’ll be able to;
o Manage an ill-tempered boss before he or she explodes
o Detach from annoying coworkers whose irritating habits ruin the day
o Defend yourself from idea-pilfering rivals
o Get out of the grip of toxic relationships
o Protect your personal and professional territory from “boundary busters”
o Break out of the limiting roles that box you in
o Parent your difficult employees to get the results you want
.. and much more.
Bonus Materials Include: The Corporate Culture Assessment
The assessment is broken down into two parts:
1. A personal inventory
2. A workplace appraisal
The 25 Sales Strategies That Will Boost Your Sales Today - by Stephan Schiffman
Noted sales trainer, Stephan Schiffman, succinctly describes 25 effective sales strategies that will build your customer base and increase your sales.
This will boost your communications, planning, knowledge, rainmaking, visibility and confidence. a wonderful tool for new salespeople who must first learn the basics of selling, and for any established salesperson who needs a refresher!
Rich Dad’s Before You Quit Your Job - by Robert T Kiyosaki with Sharon Lechter C.P.A.
Rich Dad’s Before You Quit Your Job
- Do you have a million-dollar idea?
- Are you afraid of failing?
- Are you fed up with making other people rich?
- Are you sick of taking orders from your boss?
- Are you tired of working hard and not getting ahead?
- Are you ready to go out on your own?
.. then this audio book is for you!
Robert Kiyosaki has been an entrepreneur since he was nine years old. You may be familiar with some of his million-dollar products:
-Nylon surfer wallet
-Runner’s shoe pocket
-Developing merchandise for rock bands
-Rich Dad Poor Dad
-CASHFLOW 101 the board game
In Before You Quit Your Job Robert shares his successes, but more importantly, he shares his failures and the lessons he has learned from them. This audio book will give you a jump-start to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
These 5 audio books can do a lot for your business and career if you take the time to listen to them, and apply what you will learn therein to your business and career.
About The Author
Janna Halioris, a Training & Development Consultant for many years, now belongs to the Global Audio Book Store Team. Visit http://www.globalaudiobookstore.com to download the audio book of your choice. Enter the author or the title in the search box and this will take you to the selected audio book. Also check the http://globalaudiobookstore.blogspot.com/ for recommended audio books or latest releases and specials.
The History Of Audio Books
It’s really amazing that you can get the exact value listening to an audio book while doing your normal chores as you would reading it.
Certain experts even say information sinks in more when we are not paying direct attention to them.
But when did this audio book phenomenon really start? In other words, what’s the history of audio books?
From all indications, audio books look like a very recent invention, right?
WRONG!
It is very easy to make the assumption that audio books are a recent invention because of the mention of CDs, downloadable digital formats, MP3s, PDAs and other technological jargons each time audio books are discussed. But audio books started a long time ago.
To know how long audio books have been, it is pertinent to understand exactly what audio books are.
Forget about any other jargon you have heard, audio books are simply books that are recorded to be heard, instead of read.
That being the case, such recordings of books in audio formats have been around for a very long time. If you want to be specific, it is safe to say they were first introduced over half a century ago.
It could even be longer, if you include the Library of Congress recordings made especially for the American Foundation for the Blind and distributed free throughout the U.S.
However, according to Robin Whitten, the editor and founder of the only magazine which is dedicated solely to the audio book industry:
Audiofile–http://www.AudioFileMagazine.com, Caedmon (now a subsidiary of Harper Collins Publishers) can be credited to have started the recordings of literature as far back as 50 years ago.
Going further, he said Caedmon was just a small company way back then in New York, which started recording the audio of great authors and poets of the 1950s. Specifically, he said one of the earliest recordings were by greats such as Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Fitzgerald and Robert Frost.
What happened then was that they were simply recorded while doing their own works and made as vinyl records.
But these early recordings can arguably pass off for the first collection of audio books ever.
However, the transition of these book recordings into audiocassette tapes didn’t happen until the late 1970s up to the 1980s. From thence, it blossomed until audio books in audiocassette tapes came to be accepted by all and sundry.
For whatever reason however, the audio book phenomenon didn’t really kick off until the 1990s.
And with the transition from audiocassette technology into CDs, more people have become interested in audio books.
With the advent of the Internet and its paraphernalia, audio books have now transited from vinyl records, audiocassette taps and CDs into downloadable digital formats that can be listened to with a desktop computer, laptop computer, PDAs, etc.
If you are still interested in “going back in time” you can get the original book recordings that started this audio book industry.
Impossible?
Not really.
Some of those early 1950s analog recordings by Caedmon which were performed by the greats of those days can be purchased today on the Internet.
For example, recently I was able to browse the Internet thoroughly and found the original recording of “The Lord of the Rings” as read by J.R.R. Tolken.
You can find that classic you have always dreamt of in audio book format if you search hard enough on the Internet.
About The Author
Janet Rusky is an upcoming author who runs one of the best audio book stores on the internet where 7000 titles divided in hundreds of categories are available for immediate download.
http://www.best-audiobook-store.com
Audio Book and the Future of Libraries
Imagine a time when you could get any audio book you want to read from the library without having to physically visit the library to lend the audio books.
Well, imagine no more because it is now possible.
Public libraries from New York City to Alameda, California are now leading the packs of libraries that have begun allowing members to download audio books which they can listen to on their Personal Computers or portal audio book players such as PDAs — all from the comfort of their homes or offices.
>From Tom Clancy’s techno-thrillers, Arabic, Spanish, French tutorials to as many titles as possible, librarians can now enjoy the best of audio books without having to leave their homes or offices.
What better way for libraries to stay needed and relevant in the new digital age than this?
With the Internet, many people are beginning to lose interest in the libraries, but this move will help the libraries to retain their memberships.
When asked what prompted this development, Barbara Nichols Randal, the director of the Guilderland Public Library in suburban Albany, explained that they took the needs of their younger readers and other people that were too busy to visit the library into consideration before coming up with this move.
Specifically, she said, “This is a way for us to have library access 24/7″.
For example, the Madison Public Library has access to a subscription database of audio book content. It provides this service for people who want to access this information from the comfort of their homes or offices, without having to physically visit the library.
The name of this subscription database of audio book content is OverDrive.
Anyone that has a LINK library card and access to the Internet can benefit from using OverDrive.
Note that while some of the libraries allow you to download and even copy their audio books into your PC and/or other portable CD or MP3 players, others don’t.
With those that do not allow downloading or burning of their audio books, you will only be able to read them on your computer… while being connected to the Internet.
Whichever service or library you prefer, the point is that you can benefit from the audio book without leaving the comfort of your home or office.
Take the time to search for the particular library that you prefer and register with them. Some of them offer free registration for particular periods of time, while others charge a token fee to access their database of audio books.
About The Author
Peter B Butler is the Ceo of the Audio It Now Network at http://www.audioitnow.com.
My fantastic daughter!
I have a wonderful daughter, and I really want to write a book about her but I just don’t know where to start???
How do you find the words to describe someone so fantastic?
I’m certainly lost for words, but I’m sure I’ll think of something one day….
By Susan Denny