Jennie Sjursen 0:00
I was considering using audiobooks to help my dyslexic child. But now I'm second guessing myself. Someone close to me said audio books and immersion readers aren't real reading. They're just a new way to cheat. Is that true? I'm Jenny Sjursen. X special educator turned dyslexia interventionist. It wasn't so long ago that I too, was overwhelmed by balanced literacy versus structured literacy, education speak, and everything in between. Fast forward after many, many hours of self driven education. And you'll see I've built a thriving dyslexia practice helping students from ages six to 18. My specialties, working with a quote unquote difficult almost always to the student, and breaking down the complexities of dyslexic to everyday language strategies and action steps. The short answer is no. Using audio books and immersion readers, or what is sometimes referred to as ear reading is not cheating. That's sort of like saying a blind person using Braille is cheating. The main reason for reading is to gain information. How you receive the information is unimportant. In fact, using audio books and immersion readers can only help increase your child's reading skills, and researchers agree. In 2007, doctors David Rose and Bridget Dalton reported in their study, learning through listening and the digital world that quote, both learning to listen and listening to learn are critical to literacy in the 21st century, as new technologies rebalance, what it means to be literate and to learn. In 2013, a Swedish study the impact of audio books on reading comprehension, and reading attitude in a Swedish comprehensive school setting. Conducted by alphabet, Wahlberg explored the impact of using audio books on reading comprehension, and attitude towards reading among students in a comprehensive school. The findings suggested that audiobooks positively influenced both reading comprehension and the students attitudes towards reading. And finally, a survey by Bookshare. An accessible online library for individuals with print disabilities found that 82% of respondents with dyslexia reported that audio books significantly improve their reading comprehension. So let's dive into some specifics. Reduction of anxiety, reading difficulties can lead to anxiety for many students with dyslexia. Audiobooks can alleviate this anxiety by providing an alternative and less stressful means of accessing information, vocabulary and pronunciation. Listening to professionally narrated audiobooks, battles what they call the word gap, where less exposure to books in general leads to a vocabulary deficit, especially if you're limited to the complexity of text you can access. Basically, the fewer words you're exposed to the fewer words you know, audio books can contribute to the development of vocabulary and proper pronunciation. hearing words pronounced correctly can be particularly beneficial for students with dyslexia, who may struggle with reading and decoding unfamiliar words and phrases. background knowledge, the more you read, the more you know, audio books help develop background knowledge and support grade level content knowledge. They give students access to grade level content, allowing them to stay on track with their peers and actively participate in class comprehension. Difficulty decoding words can impact reading comprehension. And dyslexic works so hard to decode all the words in a sentence, that by the time they get to the end of the sentence, they can't remember the beginning of the sentence. Audio books helped bypass this challenge. Students can focus on understanding the content without struggling through the decoding process and holding everything and their short term memory. access to a wide range of content. Audiobooks allow listeners to stretch their horizons and tackle complex text. A young person's listening skills are typically a minimum of two years above their reading skills. Independence audiobooks empower students to learn independently. They can listen to audiobooks at their own pace, replace sections as needed, and take control of their learning experience. And that's what we're really trying to do. Our ultimate goal is to teach students how to learn on their own, not just fill in a box and regurgitate information. So to wrap this all up, no audio books are not cheating. If you have any further questions about dyslexia, please feel free to sneak into my inbox. I'd also love your input. What would you like to hear from me in the future? Is there a topic I haven't covered yet? You really want to learn more about or do you have a pressing need and you're not really sure how to handle it or move forward? Send me a DM on Instagram or drop me an email at Jennie at literacy untangled.com That's je n n ie at literacy untangle that calm. I can't wait to hear from you. Until next time. Bye. I hope you enjoyed this episode of literacy untangled if you love this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you want to continue the conversation or share your takeaways, head on over to our Instagram at literacy untangled and comment on your favorite part. I can't wait to hang out with you again soon. Bye
