Listen And Learn: Observations On Audiobooks

You Should Listen To The Law -- And To Anything Else That You Want To Remember

I was recently browsing through a Police Administration textbook, authored by Charles R. Swanson, Leonard Territo, and Robert W. Taylor. Pretty standard issue text for a Criminal Justice program ... incredibly thorough and chock full of excellent illustrative examples.

I find law enforcement texts fascinating, because they provide eye-opening background for what police departments really are like--which isn't, unsurprisingly, necessarily what you see on TV.

Much like police officers never know what they'll run into when starting their beats, the intrepid textbook reader/editor/narrator finds each day equally full of surprises. To wit, a discussion about "downward communication"--in this case, the need for police administrators to make sure that instructions and policies are understood throughout the ranks. The authors site experimental research that identifies the most effective means of communicating key info:

    1. Oral and written communication combined;
    2. Oral communication only;
    3. Written communication only;
    4. The bulletin board;
    5. The organization grapevine.

The citation comes from a 1954 PhD. dissertation, but the authors still think its points valid. Me too. Combining oral instruction with written instruction is just common sense. If you want something to stick, give a broad audience the broadest range of options to teach them. Audio provides the best opportunity for learning among people who have trouble reading. For people who read well, audio's repetition cements what they've read--and fills in the gaps of what they may have glossed over. If the consensus still holds that two heads are better than one, two communications mediums surely work the same way.

More instructive is the claim that if a person is exposed to only one medium, the winner for getting the message across is oral communication. A bit ironic that I read this claim in a print-only textbook, but it's only a matter of time before audio textbooks are commonplace.  (Of course, for publishers who agree philosophically, Texts In Audio stands by to help them execute their vision efficiently, effectively, and affordably.)

Yes, yes, I know ... it's equally ironic that I'm making these claims in a print form myself. But a guy's gotta stay open-minded. Besides, number one on the effectiveness scale is oral-plus-written. I make the pro-audio argument in conversations all the time. But to get to number one, I apparently ought to type them as well.

Done!

Audiobooks In The Classroom, German Style

When champions of online education start talking about the web opening up a whole new world of ideas, they aren't kidding. It's a pretty fair bet that just mucking around libraries, I would never have stumbled across the Goethe Institute (or Goethe-Institut). But in its online manifestation, this promoter of German cultural exchange even publishes in English. For me, that's gut.

Although the audience in question is children, a recent post on its website discussed audiobooks' use in the classroom. A scholar at Germany's Institute for Applied Children's Media Research makes a pretty good case: "they can be used over and again in the same quality. This can benefit above all pupils who haven’t grasped everything the first time round, and who are then able to go over things again. In this respect the use of media differs from authentic person-related lessons: they are not dependent on moods or daily form."

Audio's ability to enable easy review is a benefit I've mentioned often in correspondence and conversations with publishers. But I hadn't really considered Professor Stang's realization that audiobook delivery ensures presenting key material by people at the top of their games.  Decent narrators will always go back to re-record things so run-on sentences don't sound that way, and they'll fix their mis-readings so confusing presentations never reach students' ears in the first place. (Assuming, of course, that the book itself makes some sense.)

Audio will never replace really good teachers, because it's a one-way communication. But it sure can fill in for boring fossilized lecturers!