Listening while reading: how learners pair an audiobook with the book, and what it changed
Listening while reading means playing the audiobook and following the same words on the page. It sounds like a small change, yet in learners' accounts it is often the moment a book finally gets finished. The voice keeps you moving when you would otherwise stop, and the page shows you the words your ears missed. This page collects what learners shared online, with their numbers as they wrote them.
The book that finally got finished
One learner measured their vocabulary at about 8,686 words and started reading English books instead of books in their own language. Most of six or seven earlier attempts went nowhere: The Moon and Sixpence and The Great Gatsby stayed unfinished, and Robinson Crusoe put them off. What changed it was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with Jim Dale's audiobook, one narrator playing many characters, which, in their words, carried them into the story.
From there they read more than 60 books in a year, about 100,000 words each on average and roughly 6 million words in total, at one to four hours a day. In one month they listened to six books and read four, about three hours of listening and one of reading a day. On the vocabulary test they used, their score went from 8,686 to 43,790 in that year. Their rules:
- Only books that interest you, or you will not keep going for long.
- Combine listening and reading, with the audiobook at 1.1x to 1.3x, for listening and a feel for the language.
- Listen on an MP3 player, not a phone, to stay away from other temptations.
Faster reading, better listening
21 books in two months. An adult with an IELTS score of about 5.0 and a vocabulary of about 5,000 words, reading full time with no work or school, read romance and mystery novels in print while listening on Audible. The first book took four days; later they read one and a half books a day. The audio went from normal speed to 1.7x to 2.2x. Their listening on harder news went from understanding 20% to 50%, and they could get the gist of 80% of sentences on a single read. In the comments, many people found the pace hard to believe.
An audiobook at 2x. Another learner played the audiobook at 1.7x or 2x and followed with their eyes. Their example, Young Queens, runs 18 hours 24 minutes at normal speed, 10 hours 52 minutes at 1.75x and 9 hours 14 minutes at 2x. At three hours a day, one in the morning, one at midday and one at night, that is six days for the book; reading without the audio could take them a week to a month. The advantages they listed: seeing the total time is motivating, you get used to many accents, it helps most when names of people and places come from other languages, and the narrator's phrasing shows weaker readers where they had split a sentence into the wrong chunks of meaning.
Graded readers and short texts
441 books in a reading app. One learner listened to the audio while following each book in a graded-reading app: 441 books and 1,019,733 counted words by the 13th month, with an average of 96% on 441 quizzes. The longest book was the 20,395-word Sideways Stories from Wayside School.
Bookworms with the recordings. An adult who had scraped through China's university English exams more than ten years earlier read Oxford Bookworms levels 1 to 4 and half of level 5 in under a month, listening to the recordings as well and guessing unknown words from context. At level 5 they found almost no words they did not know.
From listening to reading in Spanish. A learner who had listened to 300 hours of Dreaming Spanish found graded readers and novels hard to stick with. What worked was one short article a day with the audio playing, looking up every new word. Six months later they could read B2 news directly.
How to set it up
- Start with a story you already know. A post on free audiobooks suggested classics whose plot you know, and a post on Project Gutenberg suggested books you have seen as a film or read in translation, one chapter at a time.
- Prefer a single narrator. LibriVox recordings are read by volunteers, and the quality and speed vary. One reader suggested trying a sample first and choosing books read by one person, for steadier speed and sound.
- Watch the language of old books. Many public-domain classics use old-fashioned English that is hard for beginners.
- Check where you are. LibriVox and Project Gutenberg books are in the public domain in the United States; the rules differ by country.
- Choose your speed. Learners started at normal speed or 1.1x to 1.3x; those who wanted to push their reading speed went to 1.7x or 2x.
What it does not do by itself
The reader of 21 books in two months noted that their vocabulary grew slowly in numbers. Listening carries you past words you do not know, which is why it keeps you reading, and also why some words never get learned. A commenter under a post about not looking words up, who listens to and reads ten to fourteen books a month, said they still look words up even when they understand 99%, because a word you have just looked up often comes back a few pages later.
Where Solaread helps
Solaread covers both halves. For listening, the web app lets you import your own audio or video, such as a chapter of a public-domain LibriVox recording, or find a podcast episode. The captions follow the audio, you can choose any line to hear it again, and marked words show their meaning when you hover or tap.
Questions
Does listening while reading help you learn a language?
Learners report faster reading and better listening, such as harder news going from 20% to 50% understood, but slow vocabulary growth.
What speed should the audiobook be?
Learners started at normal speed or 1.1x to 1.3x, and some moved to 1.7x or 2x once it felt easy.
Where can I find free audiobooks with the text?
LibriVox has free recordings of public-domain books, and Project Gutenberg has the matching texts.