How to Use Audiobooks: An Educational Reflection

Do you use audiobooks, or wish you did? Before a few years ago, I was of the mindset that audiobooks were a "lazy" option. Then Child came around, and I realized that the only way I could keep up with my reading addiction while integrating parenthood was to allow at least some personal audiobook use. In the spirit of Mortimer Adler's classic, How to Read a Book, I present you with How to Use Audiobooks (especially if you're a potential or current home educator).

Why Should(n't) You Use Audiobooks?

There are practical and philosophical reasons to consider whether or not to use audiobooks for yourself or for your family members. I'll consider a few reasons to use them and a few reasons not to. There's a whole debate in other circles about the proper role of technology in a Christian's or generic human's life, which is beyond the scope of this post.

Good Reasons

Audiobooks can help you get through more material than you would be able to get through using a printed version of the book.

Additionally, people with a strong auditory preference may understand what they hear more easily than what they read. This also applies to people who are physically or mentally incapable of reading a printed text (e.g., blindness).

If you're a parent whose kids would benefit from read-aloud (because the benefit doesn't stop once the child learns how to read!) but your voice is giving out and you don't have the time when they would like the time, audiobooks can be a nice substitute.

Bad Reasons

To borrow a point from Adler, reading in quantity is not necessarily as good as reading in quality. Audiobooks can promote a mindset of "how many pages did I read this year?" versus "what did I learn this year from my reading?"

Additionally, if you're so focused on getting through that set number of pages that you constantly have a book recording playing regardless of whether you're listening to it or not, that will not benefit your knowledge or your habit of attention.

Finally, if you're always choosing audiobooks in lieu of the printed word when you are capable of reading, that excuse needs a lot stronger justification to continue making that choice.

How Should You Use Audiobooks?

While I would love to, I don't think I can hold a candle to Adler's classic work on How to Read a Book. I'll do my best in under 500 words!

Mortimer Adler's Inspiration

While drafting this post, I'm working through the Audible version of the updated edition of How to Read a Book. It's 11-12 hours on 1.2x speed, representing 426 pages of 6 x 9" text. What are the key takeaways from this book?

• Reading is always somewhat active on the reader's part, and the more directed mental activity the reader exerts, the more deeply s/he can learn from the author as a "dead teacher."
• Superficial reading does not lead to lasting memory or deeper understanding of a book.
• A "beginning" level of reading can be called inspectional, the goal of which is to determine whether one wants to read the entire book in more depth. This is done by skimming organizational pieces of the book such as table of contents.
• A more in-depth level of reading can be called analytical, the goal of which is to understand the book in relation to itself. After understanding the book, the reader is qualified to critique the book by agreement, disagreement, or suspension of judgment.
• An even more in-depth level is syntopical, where one reads multiple books on the same subject to compare them. This is basically analytical reading but with more notes and deciding the order in which to read syntopical books (historical or other order).

As background, Mortimer Adler was a philosopher whose goal was to make philosophical ideas as accessible to as many people as possible. Becoming Episcopalian (nominally) in adulthood, then received into Roman Catholicism, he behaved as a Catholic through much of his academic and professional career. Traditions he held to were Aristotelian and Thomist in terms of philosophy.

• Aristotelianism stems from Aristotle, Plato's most prolific immediate successor. Big ideas that have persisted to the present day include grammatical terms, deductive and syllogistic reasoning, and the prominent role of reason in determining and evaluating knowledge. As it pertains to the book, Adler says that one doesn't need to be a logician to be a good reader . . . but the rest of the book seems to imply that logical training will make someone the best reader possible.
• Thomism stems from Aquinas' thought. Aquinas brought together Christianity and Aristotelianism. In its current form, it has been set (mostly by Roman Catholic academic institutions) against idealism and subjectivism. As it pertains to the book, Adler's Thomist dogmatic stance shows up in his stating and defending propositions, then assuming them as fact versus leaving them with variable degrees of certainty.

Tips and Steps

When I consider the use of audiobooks, I see several possible levels of using them, similar to Adler's book structure. Here they are:

1. Decide what your goal is for potentially listening to an audiobook. Some examples to get you started:
1. Covering required material for class in moments of your spare time (whether you're a teacher or a student)
2. Fact-gathering for a research project
3. Deepening your own understanding of a subject
4. Substituting for a lack of your own voice or lack of another's ability to read
5. Helping you get through a printed book more quickly without taking a speed-reading course or buying into speed-reading philosophy
2. Choose the reading speed that will best match your goal:
1. Normal (1x) speed, in my experience, best fits goals 2 and 4 that I've listed above.
2. Slower (0.8x or so) speed may help people whose first language is not the language of the audio recording, but will annoy many native speakers, for goals 2-4 especially.
3. Slightly faster (1.2x or so) is helpful for goals 1-4 in particular, and approximates the normal speaking cadence that I'm used to.
4. Rather faster (2x) speed is closer to the rate at which most people can read if they aren't silently vocalizing, so can fit goals 1 and 5 especially
3. Choose when to play the audiobook:
1. When all around you is quiet. This is best for when you need 100% of your attention and critical thinking engaged with the book.
2. When you're on a walk, car ride, or other outing. This is best for when you can devote some attention to the book's material but don't need to do constant critical thinking about it. In my family, we use this time for second listens of "harder" books and first listens of "easier" or fiction books.
3. When you're doing other tasks such as cleaning or resting. This is best for when you can devote some attention to the book's material. Some critical thinking may be possible depending on how automatically you are doing the other task.
4. When you're reading a printed version of the same book. Some of my friends (and Husband) use this strategy at 2x recording speed to get through a book more quickly because the ear can process about as fast as the eye can, with the audio correcting for one's tendency to vocalize silently.
4. Implement your plan! Unless you are on a strict, imposed deadline, don't worry about how long it takes you to get through the book.

Considerations for Young Families

Shifting a quantity of reading towards audiobook versions can be pretty easy if you're the only one in the house without other people around to make noise. However, some things change when there are small children in the mix. 

In our case, Child is a toddler, so while interested in the concept of books (paging through them, pairing oral text with pictures on certain pages), also nowhere near being able to read independently. Read-alouds occur when Child is moving around because, developmentally, sitting still for more than a short mealtime is inappropriate.

That leaves my reading in a couple of categories:

• Work-related reading is inevitably printed, not audio. During periods when Child needs my full attention or when we're both being physically active (cleaning, walking), I will not be doing this type of reading.
• Pleasure reading blends with self-improvement reading. Here, I will typically have an audiobook going so both Child and I can hear it, whether in the car, on a walk, or around the house.
• A few audiobooks whose material I deem inappropriate for Child's age I will save for when I am putzing on my own (e.g., driving after dropoff or before pickup, resting on the sofa after work tasks are completed)

Feel free to check out what I've written over at TRB about audiobooks: useful for fitting reading into snippets of time, cautions for avoiding misunderstanding, and reflecting on household education over the 2023 calendar year. Add your own thoughts and tips in the comments!