Quote:
Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny
What about reading simply for entertainment? I read 100+ books a year. At the end of the year, I can look back at the list of books which I read and for most of them, the only thing I can tell you about it is whether I enjoyed it or not. A cozy mystery is like an episode of "Murder She Wrote" -- there's no point at all in trying to retain *anything* from it at all.
For children, an audiobook falls into the same category as a parent or teacher reading aloud to them. Maybe better since the reader is a professional, and some audiobooks -- especially for kids -- now have multiple readers so that the characters are more easily distinguished.
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You may be unfamiliar with an idea called "background knowledge." Jim Trelease demonstrates it quite effectively in his book by placing two paragraphs from newspapers side-by-side. One is baseball, one is cricket. He says the odds are good only one will make sense to you, even though both are written at the same level, with the same vocabulary. The difference is whether you have enough knowledge about the subject to make sense of it. Reading for leisure doesn't seem like it is worth retaining, but you pick up background knowledge without trying. That's why the more you read, the more you know, even if you're only reading "trash."
And studies have proven that a parent reading to their child is the absolute best way to learn to speak clearly and properly. Because the children need to hear the same voice consistently. Thus, while audiobooks are better than nothing, they're not "better" just because they use professionals. But my kids are old enough now that we don't have that particular issue anymore, so now it's just a way to cram more literature into their heads.